Disciples Divinity House

Charles Harvey Lord, pastor of University Church from 1970 to 1989 and an alumnus of the Disciples Divinity House, died on April 3, 2015. The following is adapted from University Church's remembrance. A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, he received his BA from Phillips University in 1945, and was ordained into the ministry in 1947. He received his BD from Union Theological Seminary in 1952. He entered the University of Chicago as a Disciples Divinity House Scholar, and received an MA from the Divinity School in 1965 and, later, a PhD.

After graduating from Phillips University, he married May Sweet (she was also a Phillips graduate). They raised three children, Timothy, Stephen, and Marilyn, and would share 63 years of marriage before her death in 2011. Three months after they were married, Harvey and May Sweet Lord began serving through the Disciples' Overseas Ministries in the Philippines. According to the DOM website, the Lords "desired to serve in one of the places that had suffered under occupation during WWII." They served from 1947-51, first at Northern Christian College (Laoag, Ilocas Norte) and next at the Christian Training School in Vigan. Finally, they went to Kabugao Apayao to work with the Apayao mountain tribe, where Harvey Lord founded and directed the Apayao High School which is still thriving today. He served as pastor of First Christian Church in Edmond, Oklahoma, as the founding pastor of the Christian Church in Villa Park, Illinois, and as Dean of Students at the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. He began his ministry at University Church in 1970, serving as co-minister with Charles Bayer until 1973 and with Peg Stern from 1973 to 1982. Long-time University Church member Madeleine Hamblin recalls, "Harvey was dynamic and not afraid to try new things, including a co-ministry with a female pastor and inviting folks to form a dance ministry at the church. He was instrumental and visionary when University Church combined with a mostly African American church and when he led the church in becoming a nuclear-free zone, a sanctuary church, and an open and affirming church when such things were quite daring."

After their retirements, Harvey and May Sweet Lord continued their witness for justice in many ways, among them, by becoming the cofounders of the Disciples Justice Action Network (DJAN). Late in his life, Mr. Lord lived with Parkinson's disease. Julian DeShazier, Senior Minister of University Church and a DDH Trustee, commended him as "a courageous example of the force of life."

Harvey Lord died on Good Friday. The words of his own 1983 Easter prayer seem apt: "Surprising God, Why do you startle us by turning up now in our midst?// Have we not learned your regular behavior? Recorded your ways in a book? Studied your coming and going in our schools? Explained your habits to the young?// Why, then, do you act in ways we do not expect? Hiding from us, then arriving unannounced?// And even now you surprise us, peeking at us from the crocus bud, dancing in the sparkle of a child’s eye, joining in where ordinary people talk of justice, standing on the stand with that witness there who will not deign to lie...." A memorial service is planned for Saturday, May 2, 2015, 1:00pm, at University Church.