A Tribute to Mike and Diane Cope

Today, 12 July 2009, Mike Cope preaches his last sermon at Highland "officially" as pulpit minister. Lynn Anderson was pulpit minister at Highland 19 years, and Mike Cope concludes 18 years in this capacity. The Highland spiritual family has grown by leaps and bounds over this past four decades. We are abundantly blessed. Praise God for giving us families such as these.

There is no way that Evelyn and I could begin giving Mike and Diane Cope a tribute for all they have done in the name of God through Jesus Christ. This is exceedingly brief, but expresses a few of our deep feelings of appreciation for this Christ-centered couple. We couch this as a prayerful address to Mike and Diane.

God bless you for spending thirteen years of sleepless days and nights incessantly for loving, nurturing, caring for, and launching into Heaven your precious daughter Megan. Megan has blessed all of us richly and will never forget this. You have greatly improved our hearts and lives.

God bless you for being people of character and integrity. Inferior traits "win the day" for a brief time, but your integrity and dignity are permanent.

God bless you for being courageous for truth and vision and change when malicious, unkind, insensitive, destructive individuals and groups criticized you, maligned you, and sometimes tried to remove you from your function in God's family. God bless you with us together for loving our enemies and our adversaries.

God bless you for lifting your voices and your spirits and your actions above the paralytical denominational bias threatening every local church by participating with our spiritual family with a wide variety of individuals and churches of all faiths here in Abilene and abroad.

God bless you for sharing with the diverse gifts of all of our family, young and old, male and female in corporate worship and in ministries and services throughout Abilene and the world.

God bless you for spending endless hours and energy for your sons, Matt and Chris, to be the kind of people the world needs.

God bless you for cooperating with our spiritual family to continue to grow and serve and share in order to allow God to transform us into the image of God through Jesus Christ.

God bless you for many years in the future as you aspire to expand the horizons of people around the world in conjunction with the efforts of Landon Saunders, our co-worker and dear brother for over 40 years.

God bless you eternally when this life is over. As God blesses people, we all receive his marvelous gifts.

John Willis