Remembering Jimmy

“Pastor Jim” as so many men, women, and children called him over the years was simply “Jimmy” to me. I remember so clearly when I first spoke to him in the cafeteria line at Oral Roberts University in 1967.  “Hi, I believe you’re new on campus,” I volunteered as I extended my hand to shake his. He turned his head and focused those azure blue eyes on me as he returned my greeting.  “Oh hello. I’m Jimmy Hatcher,” he said flashing a smile and speaking with a pleasant touch of drawl. “What a dreamboat!” I clearly remember thinking.

He stood six feet tall and sported sandy hair. He was friendly and easy to approach. I found my heart “strangely warmed” to use the words John Wesley used to describe a divine encounter. I was from that moment of connecting with those beautiful blue eyes of his on the alert for other places and times when I might “run into” Jim. I discovered he was a seminary student and had just arrived in Tulsa from Louisiana at the mid semester break. He worked in the library in the evenings, friends told me. I was suddenly in need of much research assistance. In fact every night you could find me hitting the books and looking quite helpless.

Our relationship was first a friendship, and how blessed I was to call Jim Hatcher friend. He would help me with my studies, he would offer to pray for me when I was ill or homesick. He shared insights into the Bible which he obviously loved and read with frequency and even devotion. He told me about a retreat where Tommy Tyson, a much loved Christian speaker, would be speaking in Ardmore, Oklahoma and offered me and other friends a ride to the weekend gathering. I accepted the invitation to accompany him and other hungry college freshmen to a “Camp Farthest Out.”

At the retreat in rural Oklahoma, a hundred or more assorted Christians from many denominations sang choruses and listened to sermons and testimonies. We prayed in small group settings for each other. We took long hikes among the camp trails and cabins. It was a slice of heaven for me so far from home and facing all the many new academic and social challenges of life at a university. I met Jim’s Dad and Mom and his brother Craig. I also was surprised to hear that the other featured speaker at the retreat would be the Reverend James Brown from Parkesburg, Pennsylvania. This man led the service of praise and prayer on a Saturday night two years previous in his small Presbyterian church close to my home in Maryland where I had opened my heart to the Lord and asked Him to fill me with the Holy Spirit. I was so happy to see Rev. Brown, and I still remember that he delivered a powerful sermon that night called “Jesus, Friend of Sinners.”

During Rev. Brown’s message that evening I felt a profound moving of God’s Spirit in my heart. I knew I was having a divine appointment. And now as I look back on that providentially arranged service of worship, I realize God was giving me a peek into my future because six years later I would stand with this man who was sitting to my left- Jim Hatcher- in front of this minister Rev James Brown, and we would be married and enter into a holy covenant that would determine and bless the rest of my life.

Eventually our friendship would grow into a  God-breathed love and a long lasting commitment although it would not be an easy route to marriage and a new life together. Jim’s Dad would pass away in 1968 and Jim would leave seminary to care for his Mom. He would work in several different jobs and try to find his way after the sudden loss of his father whom he adored. I, meanwhile, would graduate and return to my home in Maryland in 1970 and eventually find a job and ministry position in Parkesburg serving as the youth minister at the Upper Octorara Presbyterian church where Rev. Brown was the pastor.

By the grace of God Jim and I would come together again after being separated by hundreds of miles and four long years. Jim called me out of the clear blue one day and said he was wondering if I were “dropped, pinned, going steady or engaged.” When I said “No, to all of the above,” Jim drove to Pennsylvania at Christmas of 1972 and asked me to marry him. I was speechless, but managed to nod my head in assent. God had given me the friendly blue-eyed Southern gentleman! It was all a girl come ask for.

The wedding took place in the old historic church in Chester county Pennsylvania on May 5, 1973. We would first live in Tulsa and try to make a life around Jim’s position as an admissions counselor for the university. However we both were restless and felt God’s calling to ministry on our lives. Jim would try a stint at Perkins seminary in Dallas, and I would try a secular job in real estate. During his entrance interviews at Perkins, the officials spoke of “demythologizing the Bible.” We both knew God had Bible teaching and pastoring for us. After prayer and fasting we decided to refuse the liberal interpretation of the Scriptures that the seminary offered and simply trust the precious Holy Spirit to teach us how to minister the truths about God’s love and Jesus’ grace to people. In the fall of 1974 we left Dallas and drove to my parents’ home in Baltimore where we could live rent free for a season and seek the Lord.

Jim worked as an office painter at night in Washington D.C. and used the money to pay off student loans. I soon got involved with young people and served as a youth counselor and activities’ director at Randallstown Presbyterian church in the northwest suburbs of Baltimore. We loved this period of our early lives. We sensed God’s Spirit’s anointing on us to sing and teach God’s word to youth and home groups. We eventually moved to Jim’s home in Shreveport, Louisiana when some of the leaders in the area formed a multi-faith ministry non-profit organization in the north part of the state and invited us to sing at a conference they were sponsoring at the Shreveport Civic Centre. The invited speakers gave testimony to dramatic new outpourings of the Holy Spirit among denominational churches across the nation. Jim and I sang and also gathered the children up and prayed with them while the conference speakers held forth. Many parents told us they preferred our meeting with the children where we sang and laid hands on each other to the learned speakers.

“Christian Ministries of Shreveport” became our spiritual “covering” and provided many varied opportunities for us to learn about caring for people. They offered to provide some financial support in exchange for our representing them in home groups and churches interested in the charismatic renewal. In this way we were introduced to venues for our guitar playing and singing and for our teachings about the Holy Spirit’s workings in our lives. We were like the early church. We met in homes and in rented public venues. We shared in Catholic masses and Pentecostal churches. We shared in summer camps and marriage retreats. We shared in children’s meetings and youth conferences and adult study groups. But soon our flexible life style  of travel and ministry would be interrupted by the coming of our own children.

Rebecca Christine Hatcher made her appearance in the Schumpert hospital in Shreveport on the Sunday morning of May 2, 1976. Our good friend Ed Dilworth’s father was the well respected  area obstetrician who delivered her. She was a precious pink little creature who completely stole our hearts. She was good natured and put herself to sleep easily with the help of music and recorded books. She was a singer from an early age and a reader too. In a few months after her birth, I discovered we were expecting again. This time it was a beautiful baby boy – James Christopher- who made his way into our hearts the very next May 4th.  He was born playing the guitar and making everybody smile. Not really, but it seems like it.

After the children came, Jim and I had a gathering of friends at our house, and we prayed together about starting a new church in Shreveport where the Holy Spirit would be free to move in the many gifts of His presence in the church. Tongues, interpretation of tongues, prophecy and words of knowledge and wisdom and discernment, healing and miracles were all desired and welcomed. It was a rich time. We incorporated our faithful friends and supporters into a non- denominational church and called ourselves Zion Christian Fellowship. At first we met in a local Doctor’s home but moved to the Smith building on the Centenary College campus in Shreveport as we grew and needed more room. We sojourned for a while at the LSU-Shreveport campus, but eventually purchased a church property on Greenwood Road in west Shreveport.

From 1979 to the year Jimmy passed away in 2002, this local fellowship of believers met and worshiped the Lord and prayed for people to be saved from sin and filled with God’s Spirit. We taught the truths of discipleship and how God has made healing and abundant life available to us in this life. We invited the local Jewish congregation to our service during the Feast of Tabernacles. We hosted tours to Israel and prayed for the peace of Jerusalem. We loved our city and always tried to be a blessing to the people God brought to us.

I miss those days. They were not without stresses and challenges, but nothing worthwhile is. Jimmy was a pastor at heart. He loved people. He  performed hundreds of weddings and dedicated countless babies. He was moved with compassion for the sick and was a frequent visitor of the sick from all different churches at the area hospitals. He was a worshipper. He could play any musical instrument but was especially gifted on the guitar. He and I led many folks in worship over the years. It brings tears to my eyes to remember making harmony with my sweet Jimmy in every possible setting. We even sang at the walls of Jericho. And shared sweet adoration of the Savior down in the dark dungeon in Caiaphas’ house in Jerusalem where Jesus was held on the night before He was crucified.

In the year before Jim died suddenly of an AVM (an arterio-venous malformaton) hemorrhaging in his brain, Jim was compelled to write down all the Lord had taught him through some thirty years of ministry about communicating the Gospel to people. He had no idea he had little time left on the earth, but he faithfully rose early in the mornings in the years of 2000 and 2001 and sat at the computer writing and editing His remembrances. He was consumed with the desire to get it all down on paper for his children and anyone else who might want to read his memories. Jim had been influenced by many ministers and teachers, but I have to say Oral Roberts was probably the strongest mentor. Jim could preach by heart “the Fourth Man” sermon that Oral preached so effectively in the tent revivals of the 40s and 50s.

Jim often shared the story Oral used to illustrate our loving Father’s heart. Jim, sounding a lot like Oral, would often tell how a little boy once carved a sailing vessel out of wood and played with it for hours in a stream that flowed behind his house. One day a strong wind blew up and carried the boat out of reach in a moment. The boy could not catch up with the boat in the swiftly moving water and was so saddened by its loss. However one day the boy was in a toy store in a nearby town and saw the boat for sale. He knew it was his very own boat because his initials were still faintly visible where he had carved them on the bottom of the boat. When the store owner heard the story of the boy losing his boat, he simply said, “You will have to pay the price I have set. It is mine now and is for sale.”

So the little boy determined in his heart to work hard for as long as it would take to raise the steep price. He did chores at home as well as for friends and for strangers, and at long last, he had saved the money for the purchase of the boat. The happy day came when the boy went and claimed his boat. As he walked home, the boy was heard to say, “Little boat, little boat you are twice mine. I made you and I bought you back.”

As you read through the memories Jim records about the Lord he served so well, please know God loves you and that you belong to Him. He made you and He bought you back. He paid the high price to buy you back from eternal separation from God by sacrificing His only begotten Son whose spotless blood paid for our sins. We have a place in the Father’s heart through the atoning love of the Son. You have a place in the Son. You always will have the place of a beloved son or daughter who is twice Your Father God’s. He made you and He bought you back.