A Review by Walter B. Shurden
Job’s Choir: Essays From the Intersection of Grief and Hope by Charles Eugene Poole (Macon, GA: Nurturing Faith, Inc., 2023). 47 pages.
In this book, the shortest and smallest volume I ever remember reviewing, are 47 pages. They leak with that “from the depths” life that the troubled writer of Psalm 130 described. My underlinings are on every page but two, indicating interest, enthusiasm or a question to chase.
“Chuck” Poole, as he is known by his part of the Baptist family, spent 45 years in the daily work of pastoral ministry in Baptist churches. The First Baptist Church of Christ in Macon, GA, my home church for 40 years, is among them. He also served the First Baptist Church of Washington, DC, and the Northminster Baptist Church in Jackson, MS, retiring recently from the latter. The Washington Post once rightly referred to him as “The Poet Preacher.” This Baptist preacher, a lover of poetry, is both poet and hymn writer. A connoisseur of words and the well-turned phrase, he often demonstrates the spiritual discipline of “careful speech” in his preaching and writing. Chuck Poole is a spirit person—deeply so. Fortunately for us, he is a spirit person who uses wise and wonderful words.
The first two sentences set the table for this tiny banquet of a book: “There is a long list of ways things can go wrong in this life. None of us will go through all of them, but all of us will go through some of them.” Imitating the creative African-American pulpit of North America, the pulpit that has taught us the indispensable value of repetition, this white Baptist preacher, born and reared in Macon, GA, unapologetically repeats his lines and thoughts again and again within these sparse pages. For example, on page 11 he extends the opening sentences, adding a bit of theology, easily overlooked. “There is a long list of ways things can go wrong in this life. While none of us will go through all of them, all of us will go through some of them, not because God is that way but because life is that way.”
Poole identifies not only those in Job’s choir who have endured life’s hideous sores and innocent suffering but who have nonetheless lived deeply, he also reveals “Chuck’s Friends.” On these 47 pages are 33 quotations or allusions from varied and rich voices: musicians such as the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Jimmy Buffet; mystics such as 14th century Julian of Norwich; modern ministers such as William Sloane Coffin and Barbara Brown Taylor; and poets such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry. Just as Job sat with Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, Chuck Poole has sat with Anne Lamott, Frederick Buechner, Parker Palmer, C. S. Lewis, and Marilynne Robinson. Read the pastor’s references and you know the pastor’s soul.
Theology born in the crosshairs of the happiness and hurt of daily living slips itself unostentatiously upon these pages. Here is a doctrine of God, cautious of human pronouns, a searing critique of theological transactionalism that, like the Bible, questions the Bible itself; a view of church that requires helping one another make it to dinner; a repudiation of “only-ism” or exclusivism in religion; and a universalism that will make the orthodox squirm and the aardvarks vark or however aardvarks cheer.
Chuck Poole and the late, influential John R. Claypool had much in common. Both had a “pool” in their names. Both were pastors throughout most of their ministerial careers. Both wrote extensively and preached every time Sunday rolled around. Both spoke slowly, southernly, mostly with quiet, almost monotone, voices. Claypool wrote 12 twelve books. Poole has written nine to date, but he is not finished. Both served the same church, Northminster Baptist Church in Jackson, MS, Claypool for six years, from 1976 to 1981 and Poole for 23 years on two different occasions, 1997-2003 and 2007-2022. And both wrote small, helpful books on grief. Ministers and counselors who keep multiple copies of John Claypool’s golden Mending the Heart to distribute to the grieving certainly will want to have extra copies of Job’s Choir on nearby shelves to hand to the despairing.
Often upon hearing John Claypool or Chuck Poole preach or when I have read one of their books, I have thought of Roberta Flack and her popular 1970s hit, “Killing Me Softly with His Song.”
Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly with his song.
“Telling my whole life with his words.” Chuck Poole, like John Claypool before him, excels at this priceless pulpit art. These two snoop our mail. They preach and pen our pain. They “sing” our lives. But rather than killing us with their words, they lift us up from the depths, teach us to hold on till dawn breaks, and supply courage for the hazardous journey.
Poole’s petite essays are much briefer than Claypool’s. You can read one of Poole’s in minutes. You can then ponder for several days what the good people at the First Baptist Church of Christ in Macon, GA, years ago dubbed as “Chuckology.” Job’s Choir contains lyrical lines to memorize, important ideas to write in one’s journal, and critical paragraphs to post on the fridge.
They tried to teach us in seminary how to write ”critical book reviews.” “Critical” is no synonym for “nasty,” they explained. And they insisted that we must help our readers know who specifically should read the book. “Don’t ever write in your review,” they punishingly forewarned, that “Everyone should read this book.” Away with the generalizations! They demanded specificity. I try.
If life ever doubled you up and bent you over and if you had no idea how you could keep going, this little book is for you. If you ever asked, “If God cares, and if God can, then why doesn’t God step in more often to spare, heal, shield and protect?” this little book is for you. If you know that “the work of God gets done in the world both because of, and in spite of, the church” (Barbara Brown Taylor), but you still wonder how people make it without friends like those found at church, this little book is for you. If you have ever wondered about the dizzying, some argue dubious, relationship of prayer to pain, this little book is for you. If you have ever sobbed over the death of the dearest and deepest dream you ever had, this little book is for you. If you, or someone you love, is letting the life you cannot have keep you from the only life you can have, this little book is for you. If you have ever noticed that our pleasures and our pains often converge and overlap, that we often celebrate the baby’s birth on the same day that we mourn Grandmother’s death, and that in this life we have no choice but to learn to “dance on broken legs and laugh with broken hearts,” this little book is for you.
If it is not obvious by now, I should fully disclose that I am an unapologetic, enthusiastic member of “Chuck’s Choir.” So is Dr. Kirby Godsey, revered and now retired president and chancellor of Mercer University. He and I listened to Chuck Poole preach for nine years at the First Baptist Church of Christ in Macon, GA. In his early 30s, Poole was stellar beyond his years at the preaching craft. Dr. Godsey spoke for me in his endorsement on the back cover of the book when he called Job’s Choir “this precious gem of a book.” Incredibly, only 47 very small pages! But it really is “a precious gem of a book.”
— Walter B. Shurden is Emeritus Professor at Mercer University. He is a friend and mentor to many readers of Christian Ethics Today.
