By ANDREW BELL

Special to the Bulletin

 I thought about titling this article “My Life as a Sermon Illustration” because that’s what my father told me the title of my first book should be.

There was a period of time in my life when both myself and my sibling Nina would be given a dollar every time my father used us as sermon illustrations.

Growing up I hated it.

All of my business became church business.

Elders and deacons and members of the congregation all had (sometimes very misguided) opinions on how to raise me best.

My dad always joked that his parents got smarter the older he got. It turns out he was right and that my life as a sermon illustration watching his vulnerability and lessons about grace and love were some of the greatest gifts he could have given me before leaving this Earth last week on June 20.

Last Sunday, I spent the day watching all of the First Christian Church livestreams of my dad preaching because I just wanted to hear his voice again. In them I found messages he left for me in the form of sermon illustrations.

One of them was about a conversation we had when I was in high school where he asked me about shining my light. I had told him I was in such dark places that my light shone like a giant spotlight, much like the beam that my current City of Sacramento has become known for in the past year.

Another one of them was a story about how my childhood babysitter laughed about how I walked just like him; messages I will hold onto forever.

I became the Poet Laureate of Sacramento in 2020.

I am a writer, a speaker, an educator, and a community activist because of my father. Not only do I walk like him, I talk like him.

A few years ago I was nominated for Emerging Arts Leader by the Sacramento Arts and Business Council, a ceremony my mother and father attended proudly. When I won the award I read a speech I had prepared and the host of the awards show responded “What a beautiful poem.” I whispered to my parents afterward “That wasn’t a poem. I just talk like that.” My cadence, my voice, and my meter all come from decades of sitting and listening to my father deliver messages on Sunday mornings.

When I tell people about my parents I explain that my father is a minister of the word and my mother is a minister of music, and when they give me the look that people who have been harmed by those who would call themselves Christians do, I promptly explain, “40 years. No Cadillacs. No scandals.”

More than a good pastor, my father was the good and faithful servant the Lord was speaking of in Matthew 25:23.

My father taught me the value of community, the power of faith, the gift of grace, and the joy of doing unto others.

It was more than just my poetry that made me the youngest Poet Laureate in California capitol history. It was my service to my city and the safe, community spaces that I have created since coming to Sacramento in 2009, spaces I learned to create watching my parents.

In 2022 in the wake of the pandemic, I saw the need for community healing spaces. I sat with a young musician and singer by the name of Diamond Key who had also grown up in the church and we set out to create a new kind of event, The First Church of Poetry.

Our church takes place in a public park. Our praise and worship is to a Motown soundtrack, we receive messages of hope from local poets and activists, and we commune with each other before testifying on an open mic with our latest poems, stories, and revelations.

Each year we choose a different group to donate to. Last year, we donated to help feed and clothe our unhoused neighbors. This year we donated to help harm reduction services to support safety measures and assistance for our neighbors using substances.

I knew that I had to tell my parents I was planning on starting something called a church before it hit social media, so I had them come up for lunch.

After I nervously told them my idea and that I wanted to call it the First Church of Poetry, I waited for a response and immediately my father only half-jokingly said, “Can you give me the blueprint? Good music, reading poetry and feeding the homeless sounds like how I’d like to spend my Sundays when I’m not preaching.”

That was him.

In that awards speech I mentioned earlier, I told the audience I was honored to be named a leader, but I’d rather be called a servant.

Like my father. And my mother. Good and faithful servants. Today my most requested poems carry the same brand of vulnerability that my father showed me from the pulpit by using his own experience and our family as sermon illustrations.

My father taught a lot of lessons, but his favorite was about grace. Grace is something he believed we all deserved. He never hesitated to speak about his own imperfection and need for grace. He was still learning grace as he stepped into a country finally faced with the structural racism it was built on and the persecution of the LGBTQIA+ community.

My father was grace-fully learning to love the way Jesus called believers to, wholly and holy, an example to the very end of his life.

I held his hand for hours before he left, reminding him how loved he was and how many lives he had shone his light into promising that I would continue to shine into the dark places. I only let go of his hand when the hospice nurse arrived to administer some medicine. I went outside to write down a revelation I had about how these physical bodies of ours are like old, clunky cars; hard to get into and out of. In the time it took me to write that thought down my cousin came out to tell me that he was gone. My father waited until I could let go to let go himself. How’s that for poetic?

My father took the pulpit as Pastor at First Christian Church in Manteca for the last 25 years preaching God’s love, joy, and grace.

A teacher, a mentor, a healer, a confidant, and a friend. Not to mention a great poet. My father is my hero and he knew that.

I will miss hearing about how I was this week’s sermon illustration from the members of his congregation, but now he gets to be one of mine.

Thank you for being such a good dad and showing me community, love, and grace in all of the ways you did. Well done Christ’s good and faithful servant.

Love you forever.

Pastor (and Dadden) Mark Bell

April 20, 1958 - June 20th, 2023.

Funeral services for Pastor Mark will be held at First Christian Church, 1125 Union Road, Manteca at 2 p.m. on Saturday, July 1.