Our dear friend, pas­tor and con­fi­dant, Rick Woll­ing, is hang­ing up his col­lar af­ter 43 years as a min­is­ter, the last 33 as se­nior pas­tor of the church where my fam­ily and many oth­ers in the South Hills wor­ship, Bev­erly Heights Pres­by­te­rian.

It’s the church with the dis­tinc­tive red doors on ei­ther side of its stone ex­te­rior at the south end of Mt. Leb­a­non on Wash­ing­ton Road and it’s been there since 1929. the Rev. Rich­ard George Woll­ing — Rick to all who ad­mire and love him — is the sev­enth pas­tor to lead Bev­erly Heights in its his­tory and the lon­gest ten­ured by 15 years.

At a time when many folks are jus­ti­fi­ably ques­tion­ing the in­teg­rity of the clergy in the Chris­tian church, it’s a use­ful mo­ment to ex­am­ine a coun­ter­point and pay trib­ute to a man who em­bod­ies walk­ing with Christ. If ev­ery clergy mem­ber had pur­sued ex­cel­lence and pu­rity with the same ded­i­ca­tion as Rick Woll­ing has, the church would be on far firmer ground.

Along with his lovely wife Mary, who di­rects the choir, they’ve been a fix­ture in our com­mu­nity for gen­er­a­tions. Be­cause of their re­mark­able lon­gev­ity and con­tri­bu­tions, their de­par­ture is a sad mo­ment. A per­son of wit, wis­dom and in­tel­li­gence, Rick has also demon­strated a leader’s cour­age and re­sil­ience. He is a gifted speaker, thinker, coun­selor and mu­si­cian who has writ­ten five hymns and thou­sands of ser­mons. I will miss his per­pet­u­ally cheer­ful de­meanor, warm smile and reg­u­lar quips, such as his self-de­scrip­tion of the se­nior pas­tor as the per­son “of­fi­cially at fault.”

But among his many gifts and good cheer, what I and oth­ers will miss most is his heart. Even though he was hos­pi­tal­ized re­cently with a heart ail­ment, and it may not beat as re­li­ably as it once did, Rick has a great heart. It is the heart of a shep­herd.

As a shep­herd, Rick knows his flock. Some­time ago, I got reg­u­lar ev­i­dence of this when I helped serve com­mu­nion. As the peo­ple rushed by, I’d fum­ble just to voice the cor­rect words. Then there’s Rick, look­ing ev­ery per­son straight in the eye and ad­dress­ing each — at least a hun­dred — by their first name. I never heard him fal­ter once or fail to miss a name. As a per­son who can stum­ble over my own chil­dren’s names, I found such re­call as­tound­ing and deeply com­fort­ing.

This is the same man who bap­tized my grand­son; who par­tic­i­pated in the mar­riages of both of my daugh­ters; who com­forted me at times of over­whelm­ing grief; who coun­seled me amid my worst mo­ments; and who was pres­ent to cel­e­brate some of the best.

“Dur­ing the pro­cess of my father’s death, which lasted two years, Rick gave me com­fort by ex­plain­ing that he was fold­ing his earthly tent,” read one email from a mem­ber of Bev­erly Heights.

“When I hear his voice in the hall­way, I al­ways feel that sense in my heart that all is well and that what­ever is be­fore us, Rick will know what to do and take care of us,” read an­other.

This is the heart of a shep­herd.

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Rick also ex­hib­ited the heart of a lion.

In his ex­cel­lent book on Moses, Chris­tian au­thor Char­les Swin­doll makes the point that a leader “must be one who … has suf­fi­cient re­sources to stand alone, even in the face of fierce op­po­si­tion. He or she must be pre­pared to have ‘no one but God.’ ”

On this score­card, Rick has pleased the Lord.

Dur­ing much of his ca­reer, he sought re­newal within the Pres­by­te­rian Church (USA), the de­nom­i­na­tion in which he was first or­dained in 1975, in the Pres­by­tery of New York City. After calls at PCUSA churches on Long Island and in Okla­homa, he came to Bev­erly Heights in 1985 when it, too, was a PCUSA church.

While hardly a mav­er­ick, Rick was con­cerned about the church’s drift away from his­toric or­tho­dox Chris­tian views. He helped form a group called the New Wine­skins which sought to re­es­tab­lish or­tho­doxy within the Pitts­burgh Pres­by­tery and be­yond. I saw first­hand the an­guish he felt when he fi­nally de­cided, af­ter 21 years in 2006, that re­newal was hope­less and that the time had come to steer Bev­erly Heights out of the PCUSA.

Sever­ing ties could have had ter­ri­ble con­se­quences for his staff and con­gre­ga­tion, the re­gional and na­tional Pres­by­te­rian bod­ies and Rick him­self. It im­me­di­ately trig­gered a thicket of fright­ful le­gal ques­tions: Would the lo­cal Pres­by­tery seize con­trol of the church prop­erty? Would wor­ship­pers be evicted? Would Rick lose his job and his pen­sion? We lis­tened to law­yers for hours as they talked about prop­erty deeds, con­vey­ances and cov­enants.

“I didn’t go to sem­i­nary to do this. It’s hard. And yet I think there’s a real strength and joy in do­ing a hard thing that we be­lieve God is call­ing us to do,” Rick told a Post-Ga­zette re­porter af­ter the con­gre­ga­tion voted over­whelm­ingly in 2007 to leave the PCUSA. The man­date of the vote – 195-to-4 – was as much en­dorse­ment of Rick and his lead­er­ship as it was more con­ser­va­tive the­ol­ogy. Many Pres­by­te­rian con­gre­ga­tions through­out our re­gion and state fol­lowed soon there­af­ter.

It took great cour­age to stand alone with no one but God, but Rick’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion was sim­ple. To para­phrase Steel­ers Coach Mike Tom­lin, the stan­dard is the stan­dard, not in the pur­suit of Su­per Bowl rings but a far more eter­nal quest (if say­ing such a thing doesn’t count as her­esy in Pitts­burgh): be­ing faith­ful to Christ.

Through his ac­tions and in­struc­tion, Rick has em­bod­ied and de­fined, with his char­ac­ter­is­tic pre­ci­sion, what it means to be a Chris­tian.

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I’ll miss hear­ing him speak the same ben­e­dic­tion at the end of each ser­vice: “Now go out into the world in peace and be of good cour­age …” A hy­brid of two bib­li­cal pas­sages, it was Rick’s self-writ­ten com­mand for how we ought to be­have in the sec­u­lar world in which we were scat­tered, un­til we gath­ered in our sanc­tu­ary a week later.

And I’ll es­pe­cially miss his an­nual nar­ra­tion of the Christ­mas story, which he’d re­cite from mem­ory each Christ­mas eve. Rick would be­gin as the world be­gan, in to­tal dark­ness, and, as can­dles passed from one per­son to an­other, cul­mi­nate with the joy­ous proc­la­ma­tion of Je­sus’ birth in a fully lit sanc­tu­ary.

He has taught me more about God than I have learned from any other source save the Holy Spirit it­self. Not the de­ity I be­lieved in as a child, nor the one I wanted to imag­ine as a young adult. No, the Tri­une God of the uni­verse — the cre­ator, re­deemer and spirit whose char­ac­ter and at­trib­utes Rick has faith­fully de­scribed and cel­e­brated. A God who is ma­jes­tic, faith­ful, all know­ing, all pow­er­ful, wor­thy of ad­o­ra­tion and praise, the an­cient of days, ef­ful­gent (to cite one of his fa­vor­ite words).

Much as Rick would cringe at me call­ing him a “good man” – bad the­ol­ogy, Tom, he’d say – he is, in­deed, a very good man, to the ex­tent any hu­man be­ing can ever be called good (I was pay­ing at­ten­tion to the the­ol­ogy he taught).

I’ll end with Rick’s own words, from the emailed “e-care” mes­sages he sends out weekly to the peo­ple of Bev­erly Heights. Re­count­ing a re­cent over­night hos­pi­tal stay to get an el­e­vated heart­beat back in rhythm and nor­mal, Rick was, pre­dict­ably, fix­ated not on his health but scrip­ture.

In the e-care, he re­called that “while ly­ing on my back in the ER, an­swer­ing the rapid-fire ques­tions, my mind was fixed on Psalm 147,” in which we are told that the Lord “heals the bro­ken­hearted, and binds up their wounds.”

Good ad­vice, too, for the folks who have known Rick and Mary Woll­ing lo these many years, have had the deep plea­sure of be­ing pa­s­tored and be­friended by them and will miss them ter­ri­bly.

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Rick Woll­ing re­tires as the se­nior pas­tor of Bev­erly Heights Pres­by­te­rian Church on Oct. 31. His suc­ces­sor, Nate Devlin, has served as Rick’s dep­uty for more than a de­cade.

Tom O’Boyle (to­boyle@post-ga­zette.com) is a for­mer Wall Street Jour­nal re­porter and Post-Ga­zette as­sis­tant man­ag­ing ed­i­tor who now is the PG’s se­nior man­ager of au­di­ence.

First Published: October 21, 2018, 4:00 a.m.