(This article first appeared in the September print edition of the Hendersonian.)
It occurred to Rev. Gary Chapman that this past May 18 marked the 50th anniversary of his becoming an ordained United Methodist clergyman.
“Fifty years sort of did a sneak-up on me,” he said.
But there wasn’t much opportunity for the retired pastor and his wife, Sheryl, to celebrate because he was suffering from some serious illness in his abdomen that left him practically unable to eat.
“It turns out (the exact anniversary) of my 50th year was on a Sunday morning… I had not been able to go to church; I was just too sick to go,” Chapman said.
In mid-June he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and on June 26 underwent a Whipple procedure, a major surgery that lasted some 12 hours, in hopes of removing tumors. But subsequent tests found that the cancer was continuing to spread. Gary Chapman’s days were numbered.
Simultaneously, Chapman began to go through files from 50 years in ministry, including old sermons. As someone who has heard Gary Chapman deliver hundreds of sermons, I can attest that he is a compelling preacher. On any given Sunday, he could deliver a sermon that was arresting or thoughtful or provocative or reassuring, keenly sculpted with scholarly research, peppered with recollections from his life and capable of alternately amusing or challenging those in the pews.
He resolved to preserve 50 sermons from his 50 years as an ordained clergyman. That would seem to be quite a challenge given that he’s written an estimated 4,000 sermons.
But, Chapman said, “Once I felt the pressure because of my health situation, I made quick decisions” in selecting them.
He downloaded them to a thumb drive and handed it to me and my wife, Donna, to see if we could put them in some kind of presentable form.
The result is a newly printed paperback book, “50/50: Fifty Sermons from Fifty Years.”
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In some ways, it seems inevitable that Gary Chapman would become a preacher.
He grew up in Bennett Memorial Methodist Church on Letcher Street. “I’m a cradle baby at Bennett Memorial,” Chapman said.
And Bennett was a cradle for many future pastors. Out of approximately 600 congregations in the former Louisville Conference over its 150 years, Bennett Memorial sent 18 members into ministry—more than any other church in that conference.
“My grandmother Chapman was a pillar and a force to be reckoned with in that church,” Chapman said. “She was very determined to make both of her sons ordained ministers.”
Gary’s uncle, Les Chapman, did just that. Gary’s father, Ron, worked in the business world, eventually becoming administrator of what’s now Deaconess Henderson Hospital.
Gary’s love for Bennett Memorial ran deep. “It was just fertile soil for a family” with 300 to 400 active members during his childhood, he said. “You just thought you were a child of all of them.”
By his junior year at City High School, he resolved that he would enter the ministry. “It’s really what I wanted to do and felt called to do,” he said.
After graduating from Murray State University with a degree in English, he earned his master of divinity degree from Vanderbilt University.
Over the course of his ministry, Chapman was appointed to nine United Methodist church assignments around Kentucky. From 2001 to 2008, he was senior pastor at First United Methodist Church in Henderson. He also served twice as a United Methodist district superintendent and, in retirement, served as interim pastor at three churches, including Community Baptist Church here.
Writing and delivering sermons were his passion. “I’m a guy who loves to do that … I’ve always loved the written and spoken word.”
“I learned by the seat of my pants by reading and studying other preachers,” including renowned pastors and theologians.
When researching a sermon, “I do a full dive into Scripture.” That said, Chapman said he isn’t a “God said it, I believe it and that settles it” sort of preacher.
“I try to serve the Biblical text, but not in a fundamentalist way,” he said. “I’m not trying to lock it down; I’m trying to set it free.”
But “text” also presented the principal challenge in preparing his sermons for the book. Chapman typed in all capital letters, so we set about changing that to conventional capitalization, then collected the 50 sermons into a single volume.
Donna consulted with our friend Sharon Burton, who had helped local humorist Bob Park get two books printed; she pointed us toward a small publisher in Michigan that could print and bind the 382-page “50/50” in mere days. A Chapman family friend volunteered to underwrite the printing costs.
Just a week after the Chapmans took possession of the first edition of 100 copies, 70 had already been committed to friends and family. Donations (such as $20 per book) will be applied toward a planned second printing.
“This is beyond my imagination,” Gary Chapman said of the printed book. “I certainly was thinking much smaller and less ambitious.”
But his commitment to producing sermons and other works—even without a pulpit from which to deliver them—remains as ambitious as ever.
“I still write,” he said, “and I’m using lower-case letters now.”
