This is being written as I go from meeting to meeting at a Homecoming of a university, (then a college) where I was president for seventeen years. I was the tenth. The thirteenth is now well ensconced in the office. The institution has grown since my administration – has increased in numbers at every level including faculty, staff, students, campus and budget. Today a seminary is announced as a part of the University, a seminary named after A. W. Tozer whose writings made him eminent in his later years, with highest reputation among readers having mystical bent. I knew Tozer who, at the time, was the minister of a flourishing church on the south side of Chicago, and a forceful, admired Christian leader. His reach was beyond his denomination in his preaching, with even larger recognition gained because of his writings. He ended his career as the preaching minister of a major church in Canada. He died one Sunday morning as he prepared to go to the church to preach. The driver, who usually picked him up, returned to the church to report Tozer’s death. As I recall, Tozer never chose to drive a car. He possessed other personal differentials. Like so many gifted persons, he suffered a bit under his own known paradoxes.
I met Tozer when I was a student. Later I was involved in ministry in his district, and was in services with him. He was on my ordaining committee, and his hand was on my shoulder the night I was ordained, with several other men, in his church. It was, for me, a memorable event with exchanges that will never leave me. His support of me in the ordaining committee is one of the encouraging events of my life. When I was challenged on a doctrinal point, at odds with a committee member, he spoke up and made clear that he agreed with me, that the point was a problem for him as well, and that when discussing the doctrine in the future he would use my response as his. The challenger retreated. Who would challenge Tozer in the context of such a discussion? He was an effective pulpit communicator.
He had a droll sense of humor, partly based on appropriate doubt and concern about factors in society and the church. He had a deep and remarkable devotional life, energized not only by Scripture, but by the saints of the centuries. He worked at practicing the presence of God. Even so, I believe he might be astonished that he, without advanced formal education, would be the person after whom a seminary would be named. It will honor him if the excellent devotional literature of the centuries is included as an important course in the curriculum of the Seminary.
In this context, Tozer, in his own way, became a Paul to a few Timothys – to those who made effort to relate to him. He tended to wait for them to seek him out. He was not aggressive towards others. That is not surprising, and may offer clues to patterns of mentoring. It gave inspiration to me to serve in something of the same manner, wherever I might be sought out, and accepted by another. Considerations of seeking and modeling belong to those aspiring to anything. One catches the pattern in reading the pastoral epistles of the Apostle Paul. He began them with allusions to spiritual and practical fatherhood. Tozer was a similar type of specific mentor. He seemed almost radical in using his time for spiritual purpose, so gave minimal time to even the practical requirements of daily physical life. His family and others had to adapt to that large commitment to devotion and ministry to God that seemed to encompass him. There were others through church history leaving indelible marks of the spiritual context of mankind. They set aside the call of the physical for the call of the spiritual. It is a special identity. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020