The funeral of a youth pastor, his wife and two teenage sons was “the hardest thing I have ever done as the pastor of this church,” Justin Mason of Rosebower Baptist Church in Paducah, Ky., said Oct. 8.
Michael Cruce, the church’s youth pastor for more than 10 years, along with his wife Monica and teenage sons Joshua and Caleb were killed Oct. 3 in a six-car pileup near Nashville while traveling to Gatlinburg for a family getaway.
“The church and the youth group are standing on their faith,” Mason said prior to the funeral. “This is what Mike and Monica had taught them.”
Mason said Cruce now is “praising the Lord in heaven. Here he used to always use the word, ‘awesome.’ He would say, ‘We serve an awesome God.’ No doubt he is saying that now.”
Cruce also served as associate pastor, preaching as a substitute for Mason. Church spokesperson and deacon Chris Skates said Cruce often was one of the first at the hospital if a church member was ill or injured and, after an ice storm in 2009, for example, he and his sons cleared tree limbs from people’s yards. Cruce also was pursuing a master of divinity degree through Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville.
But it wasn’t just the youth pastor who was vital to the church. His wife led the girls in the youth group, and the whole family went on mission trips including one to Haiti.
“When you pull that away, four integral people,” Skates said, “there’s just going to be a huge hole in a church our size.”
Mason, in his funeral message to the grieving congregation, said Cruce “was one of those people that made you a better person.”
“This family served God with a passion — not just to be good before Him. They pointed you to Jesus,” Mason said. Rosebower Baptist’s former pastor, Kenneth Puckett, also officiated at the service.
Click here for more.
SOURCE: Baptist Press
Whitney Jones & Stephen Douglas Wilson
BCNN1 WP 