The Jack Miller Archive

WTS Missions Conference Honoring Miller

"As a boy I enjoyed reading the Reader’s Digest’s column, “My Most Unforgettable Character.” If I could write this column about a Christian, it would be about Jack Miller.

I first met Jack when I was a young seminary student. I came to seminary because I wanted more knowledge; I believed that I could help people change by skillfully reasoning with them. So I signed up for one of Jack’s classes thinking he would help me with that project. Instead, he spoke on repentance and humility in the life of the believer, and I felt completely exposed in my pride and arrogance. But I knew that this was just what I needed to hear, and I went home and told my wife Valerie that I was going to get in this man’s shadow and learn everything I could from him.

I did get in his shadow, and I found out that what Jack preached he also lived. He preached that the gospel of Jesus Christ is powerful enough to change the hardest heart and then he took that gospel everywhere . . . . and I and other students went right along with him. He taught us to pray and repent as we took the gospel to the world, and then modeled that for us by stopping often to pray and repent himself.

Jack was “my most unforgettable Christian,” but he wanted everything he did to point away from himself and toward the risen Christ whom he worshipped with all his heart. Jack would say that any shadow he cast came from being in the presence of the crucified, resurrected Savior."