This is a tribute to my friend Al Stewart who passed away last week. I wasn’t able to make it to his memorial service, but I was able to share some of my thoughts on our relationship and his ministry in downtown Toronto. I miss Al very much, but am glad he is home now.
“Dare to love and to be a real friend. The love you give and receive is a reality that will lead you closer and closer to God as well as those whom God has given you to love.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen
Al always talked about Henri Nouwen. I’m not certain enough to say that Nouwen was Al’s favourite author, but I’m confident that he was one of Al’s favourites. (Al read a lot and owned a pretty impressive library, especially for someone who disclosed to me that he had a learning impediment which he struggled with all his life.)
The Nouwen quote above characterizes a lot of how Al lived his life, as best as I knew him. Al dared to love people and to be a real friend with those whom it was convenient and inconvenient. He and I often talked about the difficulty of loving and befriending people who didn’t show a mutual feeling and investment. Although the love that seems lost on people is the most difficult to give, it was the kind of love that drove him to be a missionary, chaplain, good neighbor, mentor, and friend to many of us in downtown Toronto.
Al’s love for people was driven by his love for God, the message of the Gospel, and the discovery of his own identity in Christ. We often talked about Nouwen’s concept of “the Beloved” and the author’s struggle for self-acceptance, even in the midst of fruitful ministry. Al and I both related so well on this point. Nouwen’s message of being God’s Beloved and his transparency about his struggle with loneliness and self-approval was one that I think Al found comforting. The times when I saw Al’s eyes well up with tears and his heart filled with emotion–whether it was in a Starbucks on Church Street or our worship services in Jarvis CI–they were almost always prompted by a realization that God loved Al and was pleased with him in Christ. Al was truly God’s Beloved, and as someone who had given his best years to ministering to the people of downtown, it was the fuel that kept him going when many of us would’ve found it too difficult.
Although Al didn’t pastor a typical congregation, while I knew him, Church and Alexander was his parish and the people of The Village were his congregants. Throughout four years, we spent many mornings and afternoons prayer walking his streets, meeting his friends, and making new ones–as Al was so good at doing. I know that when he left his apartment last year, those streets were no longer the same without him. I think that was why it was so difficult for a small group of us to convince him to move into a residential care apartment, which he eventually agreed to do. He had grown accustomed to being God’s neighborhood chaplain and it was difficult to leave an assignment that he was so faithful in fulfilling.
But Al also ministered in so many more different ways. Whether it was through Scott Mission, YSM, MoveIn, Salvation Army, or his beloved church, Trinity Life, Al was Toronto’s missionary and all of our organizations and all of our communities were better because he was a part of them. There’s so much more to remember about him other than his ministry, but it’s so hard to know him without understanding his call and passion for the Lord’s work. Al loved well those whom God gave to him to love. The measure of his ministry will not be in an organization he leaves behind, but the number of friends that have gone before him into Jesus’ presence and the many of us whom he will welcome once we get there, too.
I know Al’s desire would be for all of us here today to be in a relationship with Jesus and to be known by God as His Beloved. This was the greatest discovery in Al’s life and if he could give it away as a gift today, I believe he’d walk around in this room and one by one impart it to each of us with a smile and a hug and with tears in his eyes.
It was a joy and privilege to be Al’s friend, a partner in ministry, and for a short while, one of his pastors. Thank you to all who loved him well at any point in his life, but especially to those when he struggled the most with his health. I expect from the Lord that none of your time was wasted and all of it will be translated into treasures in Heaven. Jesus is our prize, and the more we spend time loving people in His name the more we will understand why he is such a prize indeed.
