Episode 40: Cancer and Ministry

Rural Church Podcast 2.0

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Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom

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I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

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You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

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The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

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Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

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Jesus in a local, visible congregation. Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast.

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A special episode. Normally, you hear Quatro's voice to begin these episodes, but he's not going to be with me today.

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But here I am. I am Eddie Ragsdale, your host, pastor of Marshall First Baptist Church.

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And I have with me today my brother in Christ, Brandon Sauchet. Brandon is a former member of our church and actually was on staff here at one time.

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And now he is one of the pastors at Southside Baptist Church in South Bend, Indiana.

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And we might talk just a little bit about the difference between being in Searcy County and Marshall and South Bend.

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South Bend's not quite as rural as Marshall. No, not quite. But me and Brandon are going to just talk a little bit today about kind of the things that have been going on in his life in the last year.

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And I'm going to let him tell you about that. He has faced cancer over the course of the last year, and we'll talk about how the

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Lord has been with him through that process. I want him to kind of tell his story. But we really want to talk about the issue of facing illness in the midst of ministry.

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So, Brandon, if you would, just kind of share with us your story of what the

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Lord has done in your life and with your family over these last several months.

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Yeah. Hey, everyone. Yeah, like you said,

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I am one of the pastors here, worship and discipleship pastor here at Southside Baptist in South Bend.

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And mid -September last year, I was diagnosed with diffuse large

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B cell lymphoma, which is a fairly aggressive form of non -Hodgkin's lymphoma.

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It's a cancer that forms in your lymph nodes. We had initially thought it was in stage two because there was a large lump on my neck, and that's kind of how

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I became aware of it. My lymph node was quite enlarged on my neck, and they found several other nodules in my chest area after doing a

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CT scan. And it was quite the blow.

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I'm only 35 years old. I've got four tiny kids, nine, seven, four, and one.

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And cancer is one of those things that you think either old people have it or somebody else has it.

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And you never really anticipate it coming on you and your family. But by the end,

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I got diagnosed on a Monday. Just to give you a sense of how urgently the doctors were treating it,

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I got diagnosed on a Monday. By that Thursday, I had a port -a -cath installed in my chest to be able to receive chemotherapy.

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And then on Friday, I received my first dose of chemotherapy all in a week.

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And then I had chemotherapy. I had four different treatments.

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They were about three weeks apart. And the first three rounds were followed by a follow -up scan.

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And then they did one last round in mid -late

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December of that year. And then came back in January, had a scan, and I appear to be cancer -free.

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And now we're going on April of this year. I have another scan in August to see if the cancer is still gone or not.

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And we'll see what it is. But praise God, he brought me through it.

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It was a scary season, at least initially.

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With the unknowns, it was a very difficult season because as a young man and a father and a pastor and a husband, you like to think of yourself as strong and capable and independent.

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And when you're on chemotherapy, you're none of those things. You're very weak and sickly and dependent on people and lost all my hair.

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My precious beard fell out. It was a very interesting season.

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But I will say just initially of how God was with my family through it is

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I believe my faith and my family's faith is stronger than ever was before.

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And even in the midst of it when there were unknowns, we just felt the sovereign hand of God just holding us and protecting us and guiding us.

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And I still believe that God ordains all things that come to pass from the foundation of the earth.

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And he decided in eternity past that this was the best thing for his glory and for my good.

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And walking through that, knowing that was one of the greatest comforts, one of the coolest abilities to walk and be an example of that faith.

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Wow. One of the coolest things I've ever been able to walk through. Yeah, yeah. Praise the Lord. Praise the

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Lord. That's awesome. I am a bit remiss that I didn't mention

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Marianne and the kids to start out with. Brandon is married to his lovely wife, Marianne.

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And like he said, they have four children. And how old are they now? Asher's what?

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Asher's nine. Asher's nine. And Ella is seven.

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She actually will be eight on Monday. We have a sleepover tonight for her birthday.

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And one of her friends is coming to stay the night. And Gideon is four, and little

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JL is one. And, yeah, Marianne has her hands full homeschooling

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Asher and Ella and trying to keep Gideon and JL alive.

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So maybe speak a little bit more to that. How did this diagnosis affect, you know, before we even get into ministry aspects, how did it affect your relationship with Marianne and just the weight on your family?

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I mean, like you said, you have a house full of small children. So maybe just speak to how it affected you guys.

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Yeah. You know, I said it was kind of a scary season. I can honestly say, and I know it maybe sounds cliche or overly spiritualized or something, but I never really was afraid of me dying for me because I trust the

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Lord, and I know I'll be with him. That'd be fantastic for me. But I was afraid of me dying for the sake of my wife and my four kids because I'm needed.

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And I have many responsibilities, and I have a very serious job to do in my household.

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And so it was a scary thing to think about that. It was amazing what—it was kind of a difficult thing because in the midst of it,

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God had just given me so much peace. And Marianne was really shaken initially because she was thinking, you know,

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I could lose my husband, and I was able to even more be a rock for her, which helped her but also made things a little bit harder even still because she's going, you're my rock, and what if I lose my rock, you know?

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So there was kind of this—it really deepened our relationship and our intimacy to be able to walk through that together.

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And I was able to share with my older kids what was going on, and they—I think they take their cues from us, and they never seemed overly worried because I wasn't overly worried.

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And my oldest son, Asher, did pray a lot when we would do family worship.

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He would pray for my cancer, and he would pray that God would heal me. And I think he was a little concerned, but he was trusting

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God through that. But if anything, it just made us all a lot closer and a lot more dependent on each other, if anything.

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But I will say it changed family dynamics when I would be—the first week after chemotherapy, they gave me really big doses.

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The oncologist told me, since you're young and healthy, we're going to hit it really aggressively. And so they were giving me a whole lot of poison, basically.

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And that first week afterwards, I was just—I couldn't hardly—I was just tired, and I was nauseous all the time.

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And Marianne joked that it was like I was pregnant. I was just nauseous all the time. I would get up and walk down the hall and just be winded.

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And so our kids had to really step up some to help out around the house and do some things that I would normally do.

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And I think that was good for them, honestly, to be challenged to do more things and take some responsibility around the house.

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And I will say, you would think having a—let's see,

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J .L. was nine months old when I got my diagnosis. And you would think that would be a big burden or a hard thing having such a young baby.

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But really, she was like a shining light in our house.

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She was just a ball of sunshine. She was so happy and smiley and made everybody feel at ease.

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And it was really a blessing to have that little angel in our house helping everybody not take life so serious because she was just babbling and being a little baby.

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Right, right. What a blessing. She started walking around that time. And so we were all focused on, look at her walking instead of, look at daddy throwing up.

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Yeah, so that was nice. You know, it's interesting.

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You were talking about how that, you know, you were confident in the

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Lord and you knew that the Lord had given you these responsibilities as a husband in the ministry, all these different things.

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And yet, even as I'm listening to you say that, I'm just struck by it had to be also humbling that you see these responsibilities, these things you want to do for God's glory out of a right motive for your family and for God's glory.

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And yet, at the same time, humbled by just what the treatment was doing to you.

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Oh yeah, very, it was a very humbling in the, you know, the root of humble being or the humble being at the root of humiliate, you know, it was at times humiliating to, you know, there were things that needed to be done around the house to get ready for winter.

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That I just couldn't do. I had to ask for help, which is something I absolutely abominate asking for help.

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And I had to ask for help. And I had to ask for people to come and help me break our leaves.

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I had to, because, yeah, I just couldn't do things. And even asking my kids,

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Hey, can you go get me a drink from the kitchen? Because I'm just, you know, yeah.

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So household responsibilities and ministry responsibilities, you know, it was a lot more difficult to do things.

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I had to depend on a lot of people, which was very humbling.

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But I think, like we were kind of talking about before the podcast started, though, it is good to know that you have people around you, that the people around you are healthy.

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And it's good to know that you can depend on people and that, you know, you're not an island who can't function if things get weird.

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And I know, yeah, my biggest concern was for my family if I were to be gone, you know, and but it was humbling to have to step back from a lot of my responsibilities.

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But it was encouraging to see people really step up to help.

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And I'll just say, you know, our church, I can't speak highly enough,

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I'll cry if I try to even talk too much about it. But the way our church family gathered around us was amazing.

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And it was one of the most beautiful pictures of Christ's love that I've ever seen.

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People coming, like volunteering to come and watch our kids while I'd go to appointments or volunteering to come and help clean the house or coming and volunteering to help clean up my leaves or whatever, like people just took care of us, bringing us food.

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And it was, and people were assuring me all the time that they were praying for us.

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And it was a beautiful, it was a beautiful just time to receive the love of God.

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You know, as a minister, so often,

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I'm trying really hard to show God's love to other people and to reach out and care for people, but to be humbled to receive that love instead was really quite an experience.

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Yeah, yeah. So on that note, so what did ministry look like during that season?

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Because obviously there were probably weeks where you, I mean, even on the

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Lord's Day where you were just, it was very difficult for you to do your normal tasks.

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And then, so maybe take us into kind of during that, the hardest part of the season, what did that look like for you?

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Yeah, yeah, it was interesting because for whatever reason, for God's providence,

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He decided that I would be on the schedule to have my chemo treatments on Fridays.

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And so about my lowest point was

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Sunday. Sunday, Monday were the lowest points when

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I felt the worst. And a lot of times the

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Sunday following, you know, there's four times, I guess it happens. And so, yeah, usually that Sunday, I had to have somebody lead worship for me because I just wasn't strong enough to get up and sing and play guitar and teach

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Sunday school and all the things I normally do. And that was humbling to be able to accept that help, but it gave others a chance to step into leadership and do things that they wouldn't normally get the opportunity to do.

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But my mindset through it with ministry was similar to my mindset at home was, you know, it doesn't take a strong body to do ministry, right?

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I can sit in a chair and counsel people. I can sit in a chair and proclaim the word of God.

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I can sit on a stool and sing God's praises and lead the congregation to sing.

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And so I did a lot of that. I did a lot of, we got a stool on stage for me to lead worship from and I sat on my stool and I, about halfway through chemo treatments, one of the side effects is sometimes you can lose some feeling in your fingers, in your extremities.

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And there were times I couldn't play my guitar because I couldn't feel the strings well enough or my fingers would tingle and kind of hurt.

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And so I would just sit and lead God's people in singing and depend on my dad to play an acoustic guitar for us.

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And, but my mindset was, if I can get up and sit in a chair,

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I can minister to God's people. And, you know, if I was, if my job was digging ditches,

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I probably couldn't do that. But my job is to spiritually minister to people so I can keep doing that.

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Right, right. But it just meant a lot of prayer and a lot of time dependent on the

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Lord, because I pray before God gives me strength to get through this circumstance, get through this service today.

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One thing that several people commented on is, you know, I lead worship every week at our church.

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I lead the music portion and several people were commenting to me, it's like, and your voice almost seems stronger.

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It was something about, we would sing, you know, singing to the

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Lord praises for who he is and what he's done. And it's like he just gave me this extra boost where my voice never faltered and I was able to just keep singing to the

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Lord and keep teaching my Bible study and doing those things.

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It's a slower pace, but. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. That's, that's amazing.

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So, so what have you learned about suffering that you didn't understand before, before facing this illness?

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I think I learned,

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I had a brother share this with me. In fact, ironically,

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I didn't mention this before, but in the middle of, in October, so I'd had two treatments by this time,

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I was completely bald. And in October, we had our

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Indiana State Baptist Convention. And earlier in the year,

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I had been asked for our worship team to lead the music for the state meeting.

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And we did that still, I had to sit through the whole thing, but I led worship for two days for that meeting.

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But a brother there during that meeting came up to me and shared an insight from the story of Abraham and his sacrificing

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Isaac about how the Lord said to Abraham, now

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I know that you fear me. And his brother told me, he said, but God, you already knew that.

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What do you mean, now you know? Why did he say that? Why didn't he say, you know, I've heard the interpretation, some people say, well,

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God was saying, well, now Abraham knew what he could do or whatever. But he said, that's, that's not what

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God said. God said, now I know that you fear God. And he said, I think what, as he was looking through the scripture, looking at this word know in Hebrew, he said, what he thought

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God meant there was now I've experienced your faithfulness firsthand,

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Abraham. God was saying, now I have known and seen and experienced that you really do fear me.

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I knew it. God knew it intellectually. But now he had experienced

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Abraham's faithfulness. And I think there's something that I think if there's anything that I learned, it would be that it would be both this beautiful idea that God is seeing.

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He saw me there. And he gave me the faith. And now he got to experience.

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Look what my boy's doing. Look how good he's doing. Yeah. And then also

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I got to experience and know firsthand God's comfort and grace in the midst of suffering.

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I've always been a bookish guy who's studied lots of things. And I would encourage all your listeners, dig into the word and prepare for suffering before it happens.

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That's right. Dig into the word and have that solid foundation of God's sovereign hand over your life before you get into it.

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Because I didn't have any questions about, is God good?

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Did God allow this or did God not have any idea what was going on with this? But those questions were settled.

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And so I got to live it, experience it firsthand.

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And I will say, man, the experience is different from the knowledge. The head knowledge is one thing.

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But when you experience God strengthening you and giving you faith and giving you hope in the midst of your suffering, it's different.

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I can't really explain it. You can read about it. You can listen to sermons about it.

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But until you experience it firsthand, it's kind of ethereal.

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It's kind of abstract. So how would you advise or encourage a brother who just got the diagnosis?

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If one of us called you up, we'd been to the doctor this morning, what would you tell us?

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I think I would tell you, man, God has a good and glorious purpose in this sickness.

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It is not a mistake. It's not pointless evil that's wreaking havoc on your life.

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Your good father, your heavenly father, that Jesus says won't give you a scorpion, right?

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If you ask for bread, he will. He gives good gifts. Your good father has put this into your life for a good purpose.

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As Ephesians 1 says, he works all things according to his good counsel and his good purpose.

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And I think that's the first thing, is to rest in God's good purpose.

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And second, humble yourself and lean into him.

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Lean into him, lean into the people of the church, because God is sovereign over all things, but he has ordained that he will work primarily through his people.

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And man, allowing God to work, showing you his love and compassion through his people is humbling, but it's a beautiful thing.

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So don't be afraid to be just transparent with your church, with your family.

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Be vulnerable and be humble and say, you know, I need help and I need your support through this and be humble enough to receive it.

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Yeah, yeah, that's good. So we're kind of running short on time. I want to ask you one last question, brother.

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What have you learned about gratitude and thankfulness as a consequence of having this struggle, this illness that you didn't maybe understand before?

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I think one insight I've had is just how at the core of human existence, gratitude is supposed to be.

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One of the things Paul says in Romans 1 is that that is one of the maybe catalysts or starting points that leads people to, for God to hand them over to a darkened mind or for them to exchange.

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It says there's an exchange. They did not acknowledge God or give thanks to him as creator.

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And I think at the heart of being a human is being grateful to the

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Lord for everything he gives us and so much more so at the heart of a Christian to know that God is for us and God is, he has shown his love for us by sending his son when we were yet sinners.

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And man, when you experience a close shave with death, when you recognize all of the stuff

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I've been living through, all the experiences I've been having could go away, right? I could die. But then you're saved from that.

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Man, you don't want to take anything for granted anymore. And you want to give, you give God thanks for every breath, you know, every breath.

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When you feel weak and you're on chemotherapy, when you realize the one day like,

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I don't feel so sick right now. And thank you God that I don't feel as sick. You know, it's like everything is a blessing.

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When you go down in the bottom, when you start to come up, everything feels great, you know, and just being grateful.

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It's like it should be like breathing for us. Just breathe in God's grace.

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It's a Matt Redman song. I'm breathing in your grace and I'm breathing out your praise. We just have been just more and more affirmed in that.

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God is worthy of our thanks every single moment.

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Yeah. Brother, I'm so thankful that the Lord did grant you healing.

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You know, we were all praying for you together as a church and praying for you and Mary Ann and the kids.

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I'm reminded of Paul's words in Philippians chapter two, talking about Epaphroditus.

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He says, I have thought it necessary to send you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, and your messenger and minister to my need.

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He has been longing for you all and has been distressed because you heard of his illness. And then

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Paul says, Indeed, he was ill, near to death. But God has had mercy on him and not only on him, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow.

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And so, brother, I'm just going to tell you from all of us here in Marshall, it would have been sorrow upon sorrow if the

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Lord had not brought you healing. And so we're so thankful that the Lord is gracious to you, gracious to the brothers and sisters at Southside, to Mary Ann and the kids.

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And so, brother, thank you for coming on and for just having this conversation with me. We'll get you on some other time.

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There's a lot of things that you would have to share that I think our audience, maybe next time, Quatro can be on here and we can just have a discussion.

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But brother, thanks a lot for sharing this with us. I think this is going to be really helpful. Yeah, I hope so.

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Thanks for asking me on. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll see you guys next week. If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

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God's doing. This is His work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the hoemas, the masterpiece of God.