John Worrell:RIP, Priest and Chaplain, and all around good and wonderful person. (revised)

Word is out that John is in crisis time and near death has died. He died Saturday.  He is an amazing person and his end will be as everything else in his life, an occasion for knowing what a gift he has been to us all. Pray for John and for his family, and pray for the church that has nurtured him and for whom he gave so much.

There are beginning to be obituaries and stories about John.  As an old college chaplain I appreciate particularly this note by Tom Woodward, also now an old college chaplain, about John's abiding love for that ministry.

"John Worrell was a giant among college and university chaplains through the sixties, seventies and eighties. I don't think there was a single chaplain during those times who was not influenced by John's wisdom, his love for the Episcopal Church and its Lord, his gentle humor and his fatherly presence among us.

There were many giants of the church serving in campus ministry during those years - men and women who challenged the faculties, administrations and students they served - and our church and our country as well. They were the force behind the General Convention's Special Youth Program that transformed much of our work with young people inside and outside the church. They were often working closely with the nation's leaders of the civil rights movement, with anti-war protesters, and with those creating the anti-poverty groups which made and continue to make such a difference. What held us all together in that tumultuous time was a common commitment to joining the prophetic vision of Hebrew Scriptures to a deep love for the well-being of the university and our country -- and John Worrell's constant recalling us to our roots in the transforming love of Jesus Christ. He would chide. He would embrace us with his wonderful arms -- and he would appreciate us as a loving father embraces and appreciates his children.

Those in our church who were influenced for good by our college and university chaplains have a good bit of John Worrell's blood in them."