Try as I might, I can’t remember why my husband and I started attending Idlewild Presbyterian Church when we moved back to Memphis in 1995. 

It was an odd choice for us, especially for me. Sadly, my formative Christian education years were in a Southern Baptist church in a one-stoplight town in West Tennessee. Hellfire and brimstone were always close at bay, and even thinking a sinful thought was going to land me in eternity with the devil.

Eulogies, hymns pay tribute to Montgomery’s pastoral, prophetic voice

The primary benefit of my parents’ divorce and my mother’s remarriage was becoming a Methodist. The Methodists’ dour hymns were an easy trade for the Southern Baptists’ burning fires of hell. I was Methodist to the core, but somehow we landed at Idlewild.

Idlewild Presbyterian Church had just begun a year-long search for a senior pastor when we began attending. The interim pastor from Austin, Texas, was amazing, but when Steve Montgomery was chosen as senior pastor, our lives changed forever.

Beloved pastor’s funeral to be livestreamed, broadcast

For the first time in my life, I never wanted to sleep in and skip church. Steve’s sermons were a true gift from God. He expanded my mind and my soul in ways I’d never experienced in church. He opened my eyes and my heart to what it really means to love and understand strangers, detractors, the homeless and the mentally ill.

And when our world was turned upside down on Jan. 25, 2002, Steve and the Idlewild congregation not only fed our souls, but also our bodies.

After years of infertility, we were so excited to share the news that I was pregnant with twins due in April 2002. Instead, they came early – really, really early. Cooper and Mary Claire were born on Jan. 25, 2002, weighing 1 pound, 9 ounces and 1 pound, 6 ounces. At 25 weeks’ gestation, the newborn ICU doctors did not provide much hope, but Steve and Idlewild provided hope, encouragement, spiritual grounding, constant prayer, and lots and lots of casseroles during the 91 days we were in the NICU.

The NICU experience is described as the ultimate roller coaster, plummeting lows and soaring highs, sometimes multiple times per day. Our experience was no different. Several times we left the hospital in the evenings, only to be called back to say our goodbyes to Mary Claire, the most fragile twin. Ultimately, we made it home with both babies, and I have no doubt the prayers of the congregation were a critical part of our journey home.

A year later, on Sunday, April 20, 2003, Steve Montgomery did something he’d never done before in an Easter Sunday service. He performed a baptism, well two actually. Presbyterians aren’t known for clapping in church, but they did that day. The church that prayed my babies to life broke tradition and clapped.

Steve Montgomery, beloved Idlewild Church pastor, dies from injuries in bike accident

We moved to San Antonio a few months after their baptism, and kept in touch for many years. The twins are 18 years old now, but still hanging in their rooms are the framed, needlepoint confirmations of their baptism at Idlewild Presbyterian Church.

With every birthday and every milestone event for the twins, I relive the grace and wisdom of Steve Montgomery and Idlewild Presbyterian Church. I thank God for putting us in that community of faith.

What I would give to walk through the doors of Idlewild Presbyterian Church right now with my husband and children. We would sit on our pew, the third pew on the left, and breathe the air of that welcoming, beautiful sanctuary where Pastor Steve Montgomery and the congregation saved my family and my faith.

While Memphis mourns the passing of Steve Montgomery, I can only imagine how many hundreds, maybe thousands of us mourn from afar and thank God that we crossed paths with this incredible man.