A Tribute To Montelle Hardwick
1930 –2006
From The People of Christ Church Nashville

On January 1, Montelle Hardwick, senior pastor’s wife of Christ Church died after her long struggle with kidney disease. Her family and the congregation she served are in deep mourning. For fifty-five years she gave herself to us in acts of extraordinary service and love. We have lost a spiritual mother and a friend.

Montelle loved the people of Nashville and Middle Tennessee. That’s why we thought it would be fitting to make her life and legacy known.

Her story began simply enough. Sixty years ago, Noble and Maggie Carson moved from Corinth, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee. Their daughter, Montelle was just a young teenager. She had no idea that destiny was placing her in the location where her life could touch so many people. She was just excited to be moving to a big city.

Her family soon began attending a little church pastored by a single young man, named L.H. Hardwick, Jr. His family called him “Barney.” When he asked Montelle to marry him she was not yet twenty years old. She could have scarcely imagined the commitment she was making. Early into their marriage, the new couple had two boys, Lawson III and Joseph Stephen. As if that were not enough responsibility for such a young lady, she was increasingly called to help her husband care for their growing congregation.

Looking back, who would have guessed from such an inauspicious beginning, that Montelle Hardwick was being molded into a leader whose life would deeply affect thousands of people in Nashville and Middle Tennessee?

There were some hints though.

One of these “hints” of greatness was the beautiful love that slowly developed between the young couple. For fifty-five years the people of Christ Church watched it unfold. It began as the common kind of love that attracts men and women to one another, generation after generation. Gradually that love grew to become what Christians call “agape,” the sort of grace-filled charity that creates and sustains families and communities.

Love stories such as theirs need to be told. How else, if not from such real-life examples, can people know where to find the path that gradually transforms ordinary human love into sacraments of creative and redemptive power?

Contrary to current ideas about love, the ordinary and mundane nature of their lives did not diminish L.H. and Montelle’s love for one another. On the contrary, their labor expanded their love. It grew until it engulfed first their congregation and then this city they both loved.

Our culture is not used to such love stories. The romance novels and movies of our times are nearly always about fiery encounters fueled by the forbidden, the impossible or the magical. The love of our pastor and his wife in contrast, has drawn its power from their ordinary lives, from their giving of themselves to the everyday chores of raising family and growing a church.

We are not trying to canonize Montelle. Both she and her husband have often warned us of the idolatry that comes from venerating human beings. So we know that they have been just people, not gloried saints. However, that is precisely why we have loved them. For if they have taught us anything it is that God uses normal human beings to be instruments of His love.

Montelle’s spirituality was not an ethereal, detached sort of thing. She never disdained normal, human joys. She loved sports. She was always plotting practical jokes. She attended countless weddings, funerals, wedding and baby showers, graduation parties – all the stuff of community life. She told funny stories, ate good food and showed compassion toward those who were hurting. Underneath all of that everyday life however, was a deep infrastructure of prayer and devotion. She believed that real spiritual life was not meant to make one weird or mysterious. Real spiritual life, she believed, ought to flow naturally from one’s prayer and devotion and mature into deeds of service to bless the world.

As Montelle struggled with the inevitable effects of long-term dialysis, she made a community with those who suffered. Elements that ordinarily divide human beings – race, economics, age and so forth – all disappeared. She turned her prayer and focus toward others who were going through similar pain and loss. She learned the names of her doctors and nurses and issues they were facing so she could pray for them. Slowly, she joined what Saint Paul called “the fellowship of suffering.”

The Hardwick family wants to express their gratitude to the medical staff of Vanderbilt Hospital and especially to Dr. Julia Lewis and Dr. Harry Jacobson. God’s mercy and compassion poured through them as they cared for our wife, mother, sister and grandmother.

In the last few months, as sickness diminished her capacity to reason and to articulate her thoughts, we watched her slowly slip away. First, she lost her ability to walk, then her ability to speak. But what she never lost was her ability to love. It was the last thing her lips were painstakingly forming, saying, “I love you” to all who visited her.

In the end, Saint Paul claimed, only three things will endure: faith, hope and love and the greatest of these is love. When all else fades, love endures.

Montelle Hardwick left us the enduring gift of love. She loved her God. She loved her husband. She loved her family. She loved her church. She loved this city.

We thought the people of Nashville might want to know that she lived and loved and that her life has been making a difference. Through those of us she loved, it will keep making a difference for years to come.