Most of us can remember events in our lifetimes that were so profound in their effect on us that we’ll always remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when the events occurred. That day in 1963 when President Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley all died within hours of each other is an example of that phenomenon for me—and the day in 2001 when terrorists attacked the United States.

Likewise, that morning in early January of 2017, when I learned that Rev. Boyce Wallace had died suddenly while he and his wife, Beth, were visiting their daughter in Florida… I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing. But more so, I remember my reaction at the news: the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, in Colombia and indeed throughout its presence in the world, had lost a giant of a man, and a servant of God and neighbor with few, if any peers.

One thing I don’t remember is the first time I ever met Boyce, though I know it was a long time ago. In fact, as I was only about ten years old when he and Beth first entered the mission field, I have trouble remembering a time when I wasn’t at least aware of the Wallace’s work in Colombia. I was, after all, the child of a man who was both a Cumberland Presbyterian minister and a denominational employee. Throughout the foundational years of my faith-formation, the name “Boyce Wallace” seemed almost as familiar to me as “Samuel McAdow” or “McAdow Gam” or any of a host of other leaders who, to my young mind, were “famous” in the denomination at some point in its history.

As a young man employed by Frontier Press, the now-defunct publishing house of the denomination for many years, and later by our Resource Center, I’m sure I must have run across the Wallace name quite often. Books, magazines, pamphlets, promotional materials—all were products I handled regularly as a pressman’s assistant and a bookstore shipping clerk, but as an avid reader, they were also some of my earliest sources for in-depth Cumberland Presbyterian history-in-the-making.

Unlike many, I cannot claim that Boyce Wallace was a close personal friend. Not that an age difference mattered to him, but for one thing, I was barely two years old by the time he’d earned his first degrees and gotten married. And for another, well, Colombia has been “home” to the Wallaces for most of my life, and I’ve only visited there once—for a week in 2015 when it was the venue for our General Assembly. Like countless others, I will always cherish the memory of the hospitality I was shown in their Cali home on Carrera 101.

Thanks to the requirements of this calling, however, I did develop my own relationship with him and through that relationship, a deep appreciation for the man he was. We communicated regularly during his term as Moderator, and maybe four or five times a year over much of the rest of my tenure here, usually as the result of a prayer request he sent me on behalf of someone in the Colombian church. And he was particularly helpful in the run-up to that Assembly, arranging meetings for me with folks in Cali who would assist me by ensuring access to the infrastructure necessary for documenting the proceedings in both audio and video.

My memories of Boyce, then, are much more general in nature than they are for the people whose tributes to him appear in this issue of the magazine. With two notable exceptions…

The first took place a little more than a year ago, in November of 2015. Boyce had sent me a request, seeking prayer for the peoples of Colombia and Venezuela as they navigated a political crisis that he termed “an explosive situation.” Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was deporting desperately poor Colombian families who were living in towns on the border between his country and Colombia. They were being forced out “with just what they could carry, and some of their homes were bulldozed to the ground.”

In the prayer request that we sent out, Boyce lamented Maduro’s brutality toward those immigrants, comparing it to the style of a man who was at that time running for the U.S. presidency. That drew a sharp rebuke from one of our News of the Church subscribers, who complained that we should leave politics out of our prayers. As the words had been Boyce’s, reproduced verbatim, I relayed the complaint to him, and he replied, “When we’re confronted with evil, there is sometimes a mighty thin line between being Christian and being political.” It was a commentary on the mandates of our faith in civil society that I will never forget.

A second memorable personal encounter with Boyce occurred just a few months ago, not long before Christmas. The Wallaces had been invited to a reception in their honor, to be held at our denominational offices in Memphis. At one point during the gathering, Boyce was given an opportunity to speak. It was obvious to all who were there that he and Beth were still grieving deeply over the death of their son, Andrew, earlier in the year.

In very measured but obviously heartfelt words, Boyce gave one of the more powerful witnesses I have ever heard to the strength that those who grieve can draw from Christian community. Here, I remember realizing, is truly a man who through his own apparently boundless capacity for love and compassion, is healing before our very eyes because of the love and compassion he has found among the people called Cumberland Presbyterians. As Rev. Lynn Thomas notes in one of the tributes found in the February issue of The Cumberland Presbyterian magazine, it was all about relationship to Boyce. And so it should be for us.

The Cumberland Presbyterian Church lost an exemplar of its heritage as a frontier ministry when Boyce Wallace died. He was a natural in that role. From the jungle villages of the Antioquia Department to the poor and crowded inner city neighborhoods of Cali, the Colombian people have been beneficiaries of this humble man’s work. And as a denomination, so have we all. Well-done, Boyce Wallace; you were a good and faithful servant.