For Wilshire Baptist Church
“When I grow up I want to be just like Perry Kite.”
I heard that a lot in the past few days as we said goodbye to LeAnn’s father. I heard it from church members, colleagues in his profession, neighbors, family and longtime friends in the community. Those who knew Perry witnessed a life that was consistent in its joy and generosity with everyone he met through all of his 91 years. It was a life that bore witness to the love and grace of God.
Recently in our Epiphany class at Wilshire we studied Christ’s great commission – to go into all the world and make disciples of all people – and the talk naturally came around to the concept of “witnessing.” Many of us in the class were raised at a time when the word “witness” was synonymous with “convince.” You were witnessing if you were telling people, “This is what I believe, this is why I believe it, and this is why you should believe it too.” And there was literature and music to press the point and close the sale.
But while “witness” in our evangelical history is something you do to someone, in the wider world it is something you see or experience. Coming home from the Kite house on a recent late night I saw two cars collide and I pulled over and called 911. When the police arrived and checked on the drivers – they were OK but their cars would need to be towed – they looked at me and asked, “Are you the witness?” I was and I told them what I saw without judgment or opinion. It likely was a more accurate telling than what they might have gotten from the two drivers.
Certainly, Perry shared his faith in a telling kind of way. He was an educator in the mortuary and funeral business and I heard several of his students and colleagues say they were grateful that Perry shared his faith with them. That’s interesting to know because I held the mistaken belief that funeral directors were like ministers. After all, I had seen them at work being reverent, helpful and compassionate, and I’d mostly seen them in churches. But I’ve come to learn that it indeed is a business and a competitive business at that. So hearing about faith in that business could have been as life changing for some as it was at a bank or a law firm.
But telling is much stronger when you back up your words with your actions. In my business of writing there’s a concept of “show vs. tell.” You can tell what a character is feeling – “Bill was nervous.” – or you can show what he is feeling – “Bill paced silently with his hands stuffed in his pockets to hide his trembling fingers.” Both sentences say the same thing, but the showing is more powerful and memorable than the telling; it breathes life into a character.
And so it is with what we show people about our faith versus what we tell them. It’s the idea of “actions speak louder than words” and “seeing is believing.” To see Perry live was to believe what he said.
The last words Perry said to me that I could understand were, “You look great.” He said that to me often in the brief eight years that I knew him. In a nutshell it was what he said to everyone he met for all of his years, and it was another twist on the concept of witnessing. In those three words – “You look great” – he bore witness to what he saw in a person’s life: a beautiful, handsome, favored, worthy, valued child of God.
And as a child of God, I want to be just like Perry Kite when I grow up too.