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.