Grouchy. Grumpy. Cynical. He was an attorney, a trial lawyer who lived in a hit-first-or-be-hit world. The pursuit of being an enthusiastic prosecutor had sharpened his personality to a razor’s edge and skewed his world view toward the hand basket on its way to hell.

I first met John when he started coming to our little church. I think it was back in 2010. He was 68 years old.

“Pleasure to meet you,” he said.

But I didn’t find much pleasurable about the man.

I have no idea why he started coming to church. His wife was one of our pianists at the time. She was sweet. Faithful. A happy person. I reckon she had some influence on his decision.

I also know that he finished his legal career teaching law at the local university. I can only guess that after he retired, he was looking for somewhere to connect with people. To my knowledge, he hadn’t been inside a church building more than a handful of times his entire life.

I can just hear him saying, “Honey, I think I’ll go to church with you to see what all the fuss is about. It’s probably a bunch of BS, but what the heck.”

John had no filter. What he thought, he spoke.

I’ll give him this much. He didn’t take a half-hearted swing at it. He came to church every week. He dug out an old KJV, laid it in his lap, and when the preacher gave out a text he was about to read, John was on it.

About a year went by and John was still in church. I’d see him in the back after the service was over talking with the preacher. And it wasn’t a “nice sermon” kind of conversation. It was more of a deposition about all the things he found difficult to process.

I heard him say many times, right there in the foyer, “That just doesn’t make any damn sense to me.”

For the longest time I thought John was being overly confrontational and argumentative. He challenged everything he heard about the Bible and about the faith. He took nothing at face value. He seemed to thrive on the adrenaline of a well-played debate. He couldn’t let go of the lawyer inside him.

At 70, John decided he wanted to be baptized. He figured out on his own that “this fella, Jesus, seems to be the main character.” That’s the way he put it. And if Jesus, being God’s son got baptized, then he figured he didn’t have much choice other than to follow his example.

He talked to the preacher about it. I’m told that they had their differences about a few things, but it was evident that John wasn’t going to be put off by that. Once he got locked in on something, he was like a pit bull.

But John was a private man. He didn’t want to be baptized in front of the church crowd on a Sunday. “It ain’t none of their damn business,” he said. No immediate arrangements were made.

The next Sunday, the sermon was on the story of the lame man lowered through the roof before Jesus. There was a huge crowd who witnessed the whole thing. That story spoke to John and without notice he stepped out at the invitation and walked forward to be baptized.

“What changed your mind?” the preacher asked him.

“Well, I figure if that fella could let himself be embarrassed like that in front of all those people just to get to Jesus, who am I to sit back and make excuses.”

I heard the preacher say, “It was one of the most genuine baptisms I’ve ever been a part of.”

Not long after that Sunday, one of the men in our church launched a Tuesday night men’s study group. We’d never done a strictly men’s thing before, but there were 10 or 15 of us who were willing to give it a try. To our surprise, John was one of us.

He came every week with his KJV in hand. He was locked in on what he called the “red-letter” sections of the Gospels. No matter what subject was on the table, John always found a way to bring it back to something Jesus said. He was relentless about it to the point that he didn’t want to hear anything from Paul, or Peter, or James. Anything that wasn’t written in red was just fluff that he didn’t need or trust.

The thing is, he knew the red-letter sections better than most of us. He was a voracious reader. He might not be able to quote the book and chapter on where to find it, but he knew what Jesus said.

I’m not saying he was sweet about it. He was still as aggressive as ever. He could derail the entire study with his questions. He would ask about things that had been on his mind the prior week. If his posturing shocked us, it seemed the better he liked it. The more he dug at us, the more we squirmmed.

I got so exasperated one night, I remember slamming my fist down on the table to stop him in mid-rant. I called him on his outrageous temperament and told him he might want to slow his roll and listen once in a while.

He looked at me through those big glasses of his, eyes wide-open at me, and said, “Okay.”

That was probably close to 12 years ago. John continued to come to those sessions. It was the one place in church where he could be himself and ask the hard questions that challenged him. Some guys didn’t know how to take him, but we all hung in there with him. More importantly, he hung with us.

What I eventually came to know was that all the hard questions that John asked were honest questions. He wasn’t trying to start a quarrel. He was just looking for answers in the only way he knew how to look.

I recall another lawyer who came to Jesus asking what he thought was a tough question. He didn’t exactly get the answer he was looking for and walked away from that meeting a sad man.

John never walked away. He remained true to his prosecutorial search for truth, and it changed him. He started out wanting a legal format for getting his life right with God but ended up finding grace. He wanted answers to all the BS he saw in the world and wound up with a faith that looked far beyond this life.

Mr. Grumpy became one of the gentlest and kindest souls I’ve ever known.

I went to see John last week in his last days with cancer. I wanted to relive this story with him. I wanted to remind him about how we met and the journey I’d witnessed in his life. I told him he was my hero and my friend.

“Save me a seat,” I told him. “When I get there, I want to sit next to you at the table.”

He didn’t open his eyes. He just smiled. “I’d like that,” he said.

In memory of John Hoft
1942-2025