In Memory of My Dad – Happy Father’s Day:
Roy Walden was not just my natural father – he was my spiritual father. He was a man with a profound anointing and an impeccable testimony of faithfulness to God. He grew up in the Great Depression and by his own account was a street urchin from the age of seven. He witnessed his mother die of cobalt poisoning from a brutal cancer treatment in the early 40s. He remembered her prayers while dying in agony “God I won’t die till you promise me my children will live for you…” Life gave Dad every reason to be an embittered failure but he felt a call to preach when he was very young. He would take the neighbor kids into the woodshed and preach to them while the adults looked on and smiled, but many of the conversions of those young children became lifelong commitments to Christ under the preaching of a little boy with a fire in his heart for Jesus.
Dad was influenced at the age of 12 by a paroled mobster who pastored the church the family attended called the “Old Red Barn Church” because it held services in an old red barn. The pastor was a trained opera singer as well and taught my father to sing which he used lifelong to glorify God even though on multiple occasions he was offered a music career on the Nashville stage which he refused. He married my mother who suffered with a debilitating respiratory ailment. She was committed to a tubercular asylum and expected to die there leaving Dad with two young children, my brothers. Dad carried Mom out in his arms against the doctor’s advice with the words “she’s my wife, we need her at home.” Mom rallied and went on to have a third son, that was me.
Dad began life in the business world with great success and an elite clientele in the Kansas City area. He was offered positions in industry, entertainment, and the academic world but he turned it all down for the expediency of serving the Lord. He pastored for 38 years in various churches in Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. He went into strife-torn churches and brought peace and growth. He called himself “God’s Trouble-Shooter.” He was vilified, maligned and slandered but he stayed sweet in his soul. The churches he pastored were often very troubled but he took them on with a commitment to bring revival and repentance. His sacrifice often went unappreciated and from time to time faced great opposition. Once a deacon leveled a 30/30 rifle at him and he refused to duck. He told the Lord “if that man can kill me then he is bigger than God.” While others cowered Dad stood his ground and the man pulled the trigger. The muzzle roared and the bullet left the barrel but never touched my father.
In one church the deacon board lied to him that he would have enough to support his family and I remember one-month long stint that all we had to eat for a month came from a gallon jar of pinto beans. There was a hermit across the way who lived in filth and squalor but she loved my family and would bring us food while the deacons and their families ate in luxury believing that a pastor needed to be poor to be godly. In another church in the deep south, the deacon board was controlled by the mafia. The district superintendent and denominational officials laughed and scorned my dad as “God’s chaplain to the Cosa Nostra,” but my father poured his life out like a drink offering in that place to great effect seeing many souls saved. He was a man of unequaled integrity and passion for Christ. That is the man my father was.
Dad also taught me to follow the pillar of cloud by day and the fire by night of the move of God. My parents immersed themselves in the Healing revivals of the 1950s and the early Charismatic Renewal in the 60s. The early years of their marriage found them at ground zero of the Latter Rain Revival in Kansas City. When the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship launched Dad opened a similar chapter in his hometown. When the Jesus Movement emerged Dad founded a Christian (Jesus Freak) Coffee House and saw many young people come to Christ. Dad’s life was attended by signs, miracles, and wonders. As they raised their three boys we were infused with a deep passion for God and for the move of God. We could never “march in place” till Jesus comes.
Dad never backslid. He never took the easy way out. He never pandered to his flesh. To pray with Dad was to offer up coals of white-hot intercession before the throne. It is the greatest honor of my life to be reared at his side and to drink from his spirit. Happy Father’s Day, Pop
