Eulogy for Dr. Joseph Kenneth Grider by Dr. Paul Bassett 
My acquaintance with Joseph Kenneth Grider goes back to the mid-1940s, and the city of Toledo, Ohio.
To offer this eulogy—these “words of praise”—is a singular honour and privilege; yet I offer it with reluctant joy. Our friend and brother in Christ, Joseph Kenneth Grider, made it too well and too widely known that I was to “say a few words over [his] pine box,” for me to back away. My reluctance arises from my awareness that Kenneth merits the praise of someone far more qualified than I. My joy springs from the deep confidence that Ken has now run the race straight home where he does hear the praise of Christ Himself—King of kings and Lord of lords.
Back here, since last Wednesday, December 6, I have often smiled, sometimes giggled, and occasionally guffawed aloud at some memories. Ken knew he was eccentric and enjoyed telling stories on himself as much as others have enjoyed recounting them. And, he rather enjoyed as well some of the apocryphal tales in which he figures. You can find many of these in older issues of the Reader’s Digest—all of them told for truth (and $25.00) about someone else.
Nonetheless, after his sheer joy about being one of those who is graciously justified and sanctified through the atoning work of Jesus Christ, Ken delighted most in his vocation, his calling, as a Christian theologian; and a Christian theologian with a specific task. In the mid-1970s, as Ken was hitting full stride in his work, a Nazarene General Superintendent told him that he was “the theologian of the church” (meaning the Church of the Nazarene). Kenneth found in this dictum the articulation and definition of what he had been doing and what he was to continue doing. To him, it meant that he was to call the Wesleyan/Holiness Movement to keep faith with itself, especially with its own past and its official statements of faith. So he tended to look at his work as a matter of developing or honing responses to questions and issues within the Movement that are orthodox; that are faithful to the movement. He was generally content to let others take up the toil of conversing with other theological perspectives. He would converse with them only as they affected Wesleyan/Holiness theology for good or for ill.
In this way, Kenneth kept close to the grassroots of the tradition and avoided any charges of trendyness or yoking up with unbelievers. He felt little or no obligation to know what was going on in the Church of Whazzup Now. But, as he saw it, it did charge him with the responsibility of assessing the positions of others within his own beloved Wesleyan/Holiness Movement. So it was that in his most comprehensive work, his systematic theology, he believed himself obligated to present a chapter entitled “A Touch of Error.”
And yet—and for this we give thanks—Kenneth’s was an irenic spirit. In fact, while he so often believed that he must show his parochial side, to know him was to know a passionately ecumenical soul. He firmly believed that Nazarene Theological Seminary, his principal platform for 39 years, should commit itself as an institution to Wesleyan/Holiness doctrine; and he did wage a rather fierce campaign to see to it that his view of how one receives the experience of entire sanctification was accepted as the norm. And yet, breaking Christian fellowship with those colleagues whom he believed to be in error, even grave error, seldom crossed his mind; and he was thoroughly puzzled if he suspected that it had crossed theirs. He fought some of his colleagues vigorously from his “post” as “the theologian of the church,” but he accepted their testimonies that they, as he, enjoyed the experience of full salvation.
He often busied himself making personal bridges across theological, cultural, denominational and traditional divides, for as utterly committed as he was to his (normative) understanding of the doctrine and experience of entire sanctification and to the movement that proclaimed it, he was even more convinced that “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. . . .” (I Jn 5.1 NRSV). So it was, that with guileless delight, not because of their importance but because of their clear commitment to the Gospel, he welcomed to NTS a number of scholars who stood far from the Wesleyan/Holiness tradition. And he consistently resisted any attempts to require students to subscribe to any theological point of view held by the tradition as a condition of their academic success.
Our brother, Joseph Kenneth Grider, demonstrated over and again that he knew what God requires of us—doing justice, loving covenant loyalty, and a humble walk before God. I shall let one short account stand as an example in each case.
Micah says, “God has shown you, O man, what is good and what he requires of you—that you do justice. Kenneth was deeply affected by his reading of John Howard Griffin’s book, Black Like Me (1961), in which the author recounts his taking oxsoralen and ultraviolet treatments to darken his skin and then tells of his travels through the deep south for six weeks, suffering the injustices laid upon a black man there and then. Kenneth conceived a sequel, Poor Like Me, and spent considerable time among the homeless in Kansas City’s central area, sleeping under bridges and in flea-infested flophouses. He, too, found that injustice was sovereign and he hoped by his writing to awaken at least this area to the dire need to “do justice.” For some reason, his book was never published; but his experience was indelible and he struck his theme incessantly. From the time of the race riots in 1968 (when here at NTS, at night, you could see a fire filled sky and hear gunshots less than three miles to the north) into the early 1970s, he would say, over and over, “We hear the sounds of injustice and see its reflection in the night sky. Let us find some way to do justice for these who are routinely treated so unjustly.”
“God has shown you, O man, what is good, and what he requires of you, Love chesed. Love covenant loyalty, love mercy, love kindness.” A large word, chesed. Kenneth caught the letter and spirit of that one, too. I saw it most clearly in his attitude toward the student who was not up to graduate level studies. His strategy was not to pump the student up, or to treat the student easily (although he might assign a D----, instead of an outright F). Rather than applying some emotional salve or passing one who should not pass, Kenneth would strongly affirm the student’s call to ministry (if he was sure it was there) and then work hard to help the student find or design a suitable program of theological studies in preparation for fulfilling that divine calling to ministry. Ken loved to apply mercy and kindness, but always nested in covenant loyalty—fidelity to God’s gracious and marvellously multi-faceted call on each person, in the context of Christ’s body, the Church.
Beneath all of these things was prayer. It has taken me almost forty years to sew together the bits and pieces of his prayer-life that Ken had let drop in conversation. His prayer life, Ken kept to himself. I note here only that he kept very long lists of those for whom he interceded, daily; whether he wrote these out or simply worked from memory, I do not know for sure. I shall miss knowing that he has prayed for you and for me and for my spouse, Pearl, day after day after day—by name.
Of course, as with much of Ken’s life, this has its funny side. While he was teaching in Scotland, he and others took great interest in a very promising young man with a call to ministry; and Ken was troubled to learn, after he had returned to the United States, that the young man had run away from God and had run away from his calling and the church. Ken’s prayers immediately turned from petitions for the young man’s growth in grace and maturation as a pastor to petitions for mercy upon him, and petitions for his return to Christ and the Gospel. These prayers, specific and always naming the man, rose from Ken for decades. Then one day, in about 1990, a faculty colleague came excitedly into the NTS faculty lounge where Ken and some others had gathered to chat, and said, “Have you heard? So-and-so (the one for whom Ken had so long prayed) has confessed, repented, and returned to the Lord.” Well, a number of us even on this side of the Atlantic knew something of his case, so this announcement stirred praise to God and thanksgiving. Then we heard Ken clear his throat and say, sheepishly, “Oh, say, you know, I dropped his name from my prayer list about two months ago.”
Ken also took care to grow and sustain collegiality. Sometimes it became strained when a theological battle had been reduced to a sort of do-se-do, and Ken usually left such tensions to relax simply over time. But at least I can testify that in all of the conversations he and I had over almost forty years, Ken never spoke a single disparaging word about any colleague—either spiritually or in terms of character. Such discipline is not natural to a mind as analytical as Ken’s was. He gave himself to practicing silence. And, he rejoiced, genuinely rejoiced, when any of his friends or colleagues received special recognition or honours. An example: for years, it was the practice for every NTS faculty member to give a written report of his or her activities for the year, including off-campus activities—e.g., revival meetings, camp meetings, headquarters committees, academic conferences. Each report appeared in an appendix to the President’s report to the Board of Trustees. As you might imagine, these reports varied greatly in scope, influence, scholarship evidenced and other categories. Several trustees were judging the effectiveness of the profs by the relative length of these reports. At one point along the way, a decision was made to take the reports and simply type them up in such a way that they appeared to be about equal in length. The Tower, too, was to be careful not to give any one faculty member more publicity than any other. Kenneth, whose report was always one of the shortest (he once said that he had been many places once), and who, as managing editor, kept notices about himself very brief, stoutly defended the older practice. “Whenever a colleague does well, that reflects well on all of us. I take what I hope is godly pride in the accomplishments, many or few, of all of my colleagues.”
In these past few days, I have sought to understand my friend and colleague better and to speak of him judiciously, not that the story has concluded. I hope I have done what he wanted me to do over his “plain pine box” (which, I understand is, as he would wish, pressed wood because pine is now expensive). He wanted something of a eulogy, but even more, he wanted someone to say something about who he really was.
In the minds of most of us, as we seek a word to describe Joseph Kenneth Grider, the word “eccentric” comes easily to the surface; and the word “godly comes along with it. “Godly eccentric”: in an earthy way it fits. In another, it does not; for the term “eccentric” means “off centre,” and on that ultimate issue of issues-loving God with all of the heart and soul, mind and strength, and neighbour as self—God’s grace placed Joseph Kenneth Grider squarely at its core. We have not watched him wobble his way to the Celestial City; rather, we have watched him march straightforwardly and resolutely to its gates. May he be received there with joy and the Father’s good pleasure.
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