By DAVID EPPS
Pastor

I first met John Weber, the pastor of Christ Our Shepherd Lutheran Church in Peachtree City, Ga., at a minister's breakfast at the old Riggins Barbecue in Tyrone. Riggins had the best country breakfast I had ever eaten and its passing was intensely mourned. My first impression of John was that he looked like Stacey Keach, who played Mike Hammer years ago in the television show by the same name. John was warm, friendly, and made me, the new kid on the block, feel right at home.

Over the next several months, I learned a good deal about Pastor Weber. John was one of the few Lutherans I had ever met who was a church planter. A church planter (one who plants a new church) has a difficult road ahead of him or her. Normally, the pioneer pastor is sent to an area to build a church out of nothing. That's exactly what John did. Peachtree City was in its infancy when Weber came to the community to build the city's first Lutheran church. The church was built the old fashioned way — John went door-to-door inviting people to be part of a new worship community. The going was slow, but, eventually, Christ Our Shepherd would grow to become one of the largest and most influential congregations in the city.

Weber also gave himself to community service, serving as a volunteer with the Peachtree City Fire Department and serving as the city's emergency services chaplain. John served as the chaplain for both the fire and police departments and, today, “John Weber Station,” located on Peachtree Parkway, stands as a visible testimony to the respect he earned from those who serve those in trouble.

It was in this capacity as the city's emergency services chaplain that I really came to love and appreciate John Weber. In April 1984, after only having been a resident of the community nine months, disaster struck my family.

Our new music minister and her husband were visiting with us as our two older sons played outside to give us a few moments of privacy. Suddenly, an automobile just outside our home struck down John, my 9-year-old son.

A scream from outside shattered the calm spring day, the door slammed open, and John, covered with blood, ran into the living room and collapsed in the floor. My oldest son, Jason, 11, followed right behind him and he was followed by the distraught woman who had run over John in the parking area.

The next few moments were a blur as 911 was called and as my wife, a registered nurse, fought through the panic to attend to our son. Almost instantly, the emergency services personnel arrived and took charge. John Weber was right behind them.

Within moments, our John was loaded into the ambulance and Cindy climbed into the vehicle with him. As the vehicle pulled away, sirens blaring, the music minister, Paula Muncey, and her husband Tom, took charge of Jason and our 3-year-old, James, and ushered them back inside our dwelling, leaving me standing in the parking lot feeling like the loneliest man in the world. John Weber put his hand on by shoulder and told me to get into his car.

Pastor Weber, knowing perhaps that ministers have no one to minister to them during such times, took me to the hospital and stayed with my family during the long hours ahead. He gave no pat answers, knowing the futility of such words, and let me weep for my son.

In those hours, when I was no longer the spiritual leader of a congregation but only the terrified father of a terribly injured child, John became strength, a friend, and a pastor. Eventually, my son would recover from his injuries, but I would never forget the horror of the moment or the compassion of John Weber.

Two years later, the church I served would experience a fire that would destroy our sanctuary. There, in the awful darkness of that early Sunday morning, standing in the smoldering rubble of what had been our church, surrounded by the mist of fire hoses and the flashing of blue and red lights, John Weber put his hand on my shoulder once again.

“What are you going to do, David?” he asked. “I don't know, John, I really don't know,” I replied.

John offered the sanctuary of the Lutheran church to us and, at 2 a.m., we assembled a team of people from our church and began to make telephone calls. At 8:30 a.m., just a few hours later, our congregation met in the Christ Our Shepherd sanctuary and began to recover and prepare for the future. For 10 months, we met on Sunday morning at McIntosh High School and on Sunday evening at Christ Our Shepherd. Both John and the people of Christ Our Shepherd were wonderful to us.

John's example would serve as a model for us and we would, eventually, loan our sanctuary to several temporarily “homeless” churches in the years ahead. I would become a police chaplain and follow in John's footsteps, hoping that I could help people in the same way he helped my family, my church family and me.

John continues to faithfully serve his city and his church and, hopefully, is many, many years away from retiring.

Sometimes, pastors look over their lives and wonder if they have made a difference, if they mattered at all. Men like John Weber matter a very great deal. They matter to their church, to their community, and — in the case of John Weber - they matter to me. I just thought that it was time someone else knew.

[Father David Epps is rector of Christ the King Charismatic Episcopal Church. He may be contacted online at FatherDavidEpps@aol.com. The congregation meets Sundays at 10 a.m. in the chapel in the Carmichael-Hemperley building on Ga. Highway 74 in Peachtree City.]

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