Hilton Head First Baptist is a great example of how a church should show appreciation for its pastor by taking care of one of his family members who is facing a serious health crisis.
Pastor Brett Myers’ wife, Kristin, was diagnosed in early 2021 with MGUS (monoclonal gammopathy of unknown significance), a precancerous condition that can rapidly progress to myeloma. By December, she needed chemotherapy treatments for cancer of her plasma cells, and a bone marrow transplant was imminent — in the summer of 2022.
“If I just needed to go without pay to be with her, then that was what I was hoping to do,” Myers recalled. But when he told the church’s personnel committee his plan, they responded, “We’re going to step up and do all we can.”
Agreeing to take a team approach in leading the church’s ministry while their pastor was away, they urged him to go with her. “We want you to be with Kristin every day she’s there. Don’t come back during that time. Don’t check email. … You are to be a husband and not a pastor during this time,’ ” Myers recalled.
The personnel committee quickly went into action, helping resolve insurance coverage issues so Kristin could receive aggressive treatment at an out-of-state hospital: the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla. The church even took care of the insurance deductible, and the ministerial staff and deacons arranged to fill the pulpit and assumed other pastoral responsibilities while he was away.
The transplant procedure typically requires about a six- to eight-week hospital stay, and then the patient must stay within a 30-minute drive for an additional two to three weeks, Myers explained. Hilton Head First even paid for his hotel accommodations then, he said.
“Our church was just incredible!” Myers exclaimed. “Our church embraced it wholeheartedly. We didn’t hear one complaint from anybody about me being out. … They just loved us very well.”
Looking back now, Myers is overwhelmed and deeply appreciative. “I think the guilt that I would have — had I not been there with her during those two months and just been here working while she’s going through it — that would have been really hard to move beyond,” he said. “The fact that our church family gifted me with the opportunity to be a husband and not a pastor, … it’s hard to put into words how much that meant.
“That’s something, I mean, I never would have gotten that time back,” he said, noting that at the time, they didn’t know if she may have only a two- to three-year life expectancy. “It was just an incredible gift — the greatest gift that any church just has ever given me — to be present with her through her hardest moments.”
Undergoing a bone marrow transplant is a hugely emotional experience, Myers said, explaining that the procedure wrecks a patient’s immune system and multiple revaccinations must be taken. “It’s been a long journey,” he added, “but she’s stronger now than she’s been in a while.”
A chemistry teacher and faculty chair of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at Hilton Head Preparatory School, Kristin now has returned to the classroom. “Her stamina is not what it was before, and she gets tired a lot easier,” Myers noted, “but she’s doing a whole lot better.
“Myeloma is not something you ever kick. So, she is on maintenance chemo and will be for the rest of her life, barring some miraculous healing,” Myers added.
Even so, he and their four daughters are grateful to have their mother home and to be part of a church that loves them well.