I’m busy with translation work today, and I’m still reading the long book I’ve been working on. But I do have something to write about.

My friend and former boss, Pastor Paul M. Nash, passed into glory, far too young, on Saturday following hospitalization. I’m not sure of his exact age, but he was younger than me and – to all appearances – in better health.

It was Paul who hired me and brought me back home from Florida in 1995. Through the years I worked as his office assistant in the Home Missions Department of the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations, we were sort of a Laurel and Hardy team, each complementing the other in terms of our strengths.

Paul was one of the godliest men I ever knew. He wasn’t just godly in his heart – he worked actively at his holiness. He disciplined himself and kept himself on a leash. I expect I was a disappointment to him in that arena.

Yet, unlike a lot of disciplined types, he was not grim or cheerless. Quite the contrary. Paul was always the life of the party. Things got interesting when Paul showed up. Laughter soon followed.

In many ways he reminds me of descriptions I’ve read of Hans Nielsen Hauge, the founder of our branch of Lutheran Pietism, of whom I’ve written often. Like Hauge, Paul was an A-type who had trouble sitting still, who always had to be doing something useful. He loved airplanes and flew them to facilitate travel for his ministry. He got up early and worked late, and figured there’d be plenty of time to rest after death. Which, sadly, has come.

After his retirement from Home Missions, he started a work called Shamgar Ministries. There’s a brief bio there.