May Choirs Of Angels Sing Thee To Thy Rest

I last talked with him in June after my wife asked, “Who do you want to do your funeral?”

“Jim Auchmuty,” I quickly replied.

I called Jim, who agreed, after asking me why the hurry. He oversaw my mother-in-law’s funeral two years ago and was always a caring presence.

Jim died Aug. 5 at age 90 after a short illness. After serving for 27 years at Shades Crest Baptist Church in Birmingham, in retirement he served First Baptist Church Roebuck Plaza for 25 years. He went to Roebuck as interim and remained the rest of his life. When friends asked why he returned to the pastorate so quickly after retiring, he joked, “Well, if I gotta’ go to church, I might as well hear a good sermon!”

I met Jim long ago through a mutual friend. I served the Fairfax First Baptist Church near his hometown of Lanett. I invited him to do a revival, and he took me to meet his mother in the town next door. We began to treat her like a homebound church member and I visited her often, which Jim appreciated.

Jim became a trusted mentor and friend.

He was adept with a pen and encouraged me to learn to use one, too (before God gave us the keyboard).

One of the images I most remember is a photo in “The Alabama Baptist” of Jim in the Shades Crest baptistry with Beeson Divinity School students whom he was teaching how to baptize.

Our move to First Baptist Selma, I suspect, was something Jim helped facilitate since he and the church’s interim pastor, Dr. John McCrummen, were friends. At the time McCrummen was president at Judson College where Jim was a trustee.

Jim loved our denomination and we grieved when we experienced some turbulence in the 70s and 80s.

We pastors often telephone one another upon hearing of some duress, and say to our brothers, “Call me if I can do anything.” Instead, Jim would call and say, “I’m on my way. Where do you want to meet?”

In retirement Jim inherited a ministry from a Methodist minister and conducted funerals every week for families without pastors. Several times he asked me to help when he “double-booked.”

“Got your preacher-blue suit?” he’d ask.

The poem he recited, “The Dash,” was familiar to every funeral director I met. The point of the rhyme is that the dates of birth and death aren’t as meaningful as the life lived between.

Jim taught me what we leave behind is the investment we make in the lives of others.

The “dash” is significant, indeed.

The Christic benediction is appropriate: “Well done, faithful servant! Enter into the joy of thy Lord.” -30-

“Reflections” is a weekly faith column written by Michael J. Brooks, pastor of the Siluria Baptist Church, Alabaster, Alabama. The church’s website is siluriabaptist.com.