One of the most challenging parts of discipleship is not holding God to promises God never made. Intellectually, most Christians understand they are not exempt from suffering, illness, trials and unexpected loss. But at a gut level, suffering causes us to reckon with the gap between the way we thought God would show up and the way God actually shows up in our lives.
Pastor John Baker’s life has fallen into that gap over the past few years. In 2022, John — pastor of LifeSpring Community Church in Valley City, Ohio — started to experience stomach issues. Doctors first imagined he was suffering from a heart disease. But after a series of checks, Pastor John was sent for an endoscopy and a colonoscopy, which resulted in his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. 
“When I was coming out of anesthesia, the doctor came in and told me and my wife, ‘There’s a small tumor on the tail of your pancreas and a large tumor on the body and it is cancer. There’s nothing I can do for you. Do you understand what I’m telling you?’ ‘Yes, my husband is going to die,’ said his wife before the doctor briskly walked away,” Pastor John recalled.
Poor bedside manner aside, those words changed his life. Pastor John went home, determined to glorify God with the remainder of his life, and then started exploring alternative treatments that might allow him to walk a path toward healing. The Bakers connected with the Cleveland Clinic and then Mayo Clinic. After the clinics found the cancer had spread to a lymph node near his collarbone, they decided they had done all they could do for Pastor John and sent him home.
“It was pretty grim,” Pastor John confessed. “The doctors told me I had 6-10 months … we stopped at Wisconsin Dells (one of the first vacation spots we used to go to) and went into grieving, because I was thinking, ‘I’ll never see this again.’”
At a recent follow-up appointment, Pastor John’s blood work-up didn’t show he had cancer even though the PET scans clearly indicated cancerous activity and tumors. Reticent to believe his cancer had gone altogether, the result did open doors for trying another form of chemotherapy; however, the doctor offered a 20% possibility of improvement with this treatment.
“We had another PET scan right before Thanksgiving 2023. It turns out the chemo was working; the tumor in the lymph node was enlarged, but had reduced cancerous activity, and the same was true of the tumors in my pancreas. In fact, the size of the main tumor had shrunk.”
Pastor John’s current outlook is uncertain. “God keeps telling me, ‘Die or not, I will be with you.’” He reflected. “But I keep thinking I have another Christmas in me.”
Scripture about the “valley of the shadow of death” has felt more real to Pastor John; he confesses there are moments in this journey where he’s felt depressed, alone, scared and uncertain of God’s presence with him. And amid all the doubt, he’s also experienced God’s faithfulness through his local congregation’s kindness.
Early on in his illness, his board vice-chair sat down with the local board of administration and asked Pastor John how they could shoulder the burden of the church’s business administration. “‘What do you really want to do?’ they asked, ‘And what don’t you need to be doing that others may be able to help with?’”
Those questions gave Pastor John agency and choice in a season when many things were out of his control. They gave him the confidence he needed to keep serving with sustainable empathy, knowing others were bearing both his burdens and the load of his congregation.
Even through a season of hard questioning, uncertainty and physical limitation, Pastor John is convinced of the need for congregations to be a gravitational force for slowing down. “People fill their lives up with noise and activity so they can avoid facing the ultimate reality, which is that we die … we need (in our congregations) to help people know how to live, knowing their days are numbered.”
When asked how his own story can help reflect that reality, Pastor John said, “I hope God uses my life to help other people face their life, knowing it can be short.”
Pastor John uses social media to invite others into snapshots of his life; but he has also been interviewed for a podcast to share his story. For more stories of hope amidst challenge, visit wesleyan.org/hangingontohope.
Rev. Ethan Linder is the pastor of discipleship at College Wesleyan Church in Marion, Indiana, and contributing editor at The Wesleyan Church’s Education and Clergy Development Division.
