Robert V. Dodd

Robert Vess Dodd was born on November 12th, 1945 in Shelby, NC to the late Waudell Barnett and Alice Opal Vess Dodd.

Bob’s mother died when he was 12, and he made his first profession of faith on her grave at the time.

Bob began his college studies at Gardner-Webb, and graduated from High Point University (1968). After studying at the Candler School of Theology, he was awarded the M.Div. from Duke Divinity School (1971). He was ordained a Deacon and admitted to the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church in 1969; in 1972, he was ordained Elder.

Bob was a pastor for 31 years, serving nine churches before multiple health issues too soon curtailed his active ministry. Even then, he continued to teach Sunday School at the Western North Carolina Annual Conference of the Methodist Church—a ministry he would continue for 21 years. In addition, he wrote the Sunday School column in the Christian Advocate, taught Sunday School classes at Hawthorne Lane, preached on occasion and published regularly through the Methodist Publishing House.

Bob was a gifted preacher and teacher, and a beloved husband, father, brother, uncle, and friend, as well as a prolific writer.

Bob’s name and wisdom appeared regularly and in multiple publications: The North Carolina Christian Advocate, Circuit Rider, Family Bible Studies, Daily Bible Studies, Adult Bible Studies and Mature Years, The Sanctuary for Lent, The Advent Calendar of Devotions and the Upper Room Disciplines.

In addition to lessons and devotionals, Bob published books and booklets. Among his many titles were: Helping Children Cope with Death (for which he won the Angel Award of Excellence at the 8th Annual Religion in Media Conference, 1985), Faith is for Sharing, The Work of the Holy Spirit, Speck of Sawdust in My Eye: Loving Your Enemies, Your Church’s Ministry of Prayer, Praying the Name of Jesus, When Someone You Love Dies: An Explanation of Death for Children, Out of the Depths: A Christian Understanding of Grief, When They All Go Home: What To Do After the Funeral, and When You Are Terminally Ill: Preparing to Face Death.

Bob wrote as he talked, in an easy-to-understand way that linked Biblical scholarship and everyday life. He responded to hundreds of emails and letters from his readers, answering their questions and respecting their points of view. When he left us, hundreds of unpublished and unfinished manuscripts remained behind, including You Can Talk to God, a book for children.

If Bob was an accomplished writer, he was a more accomplished, avid and proactive pray-er. He kept a prayer list of hundreds of people—and managed it by assigning people to different days of the week. He believed in the power of prayer, and often followed-up with the persons for whom he prayed. His email address was “Prayingfriend.”

In his active ministry, he was always interested in the people he served, their contexts and circumstances. And he was always on the lookout for ways to minister beyond the walls of the church. In 1999, while serving at Belmont: Park Street, he facilitated the sponsorship of three Kosovo refugee families through the Belmont Ministerial Association—and in the process became a life-long father figure and mentor to a family of five teenagers and young adults, who continue to call him Dad. At a time when the world was caving in to xenophobic fears, Bob chose active love and acceptance.

Even as he weakened physically, he continued to smile, to pray, to write “out of the depths.” One of his sons asked him, “How do you do it, Dad?” And Bob responded, “Through the power and the glory of Christ, son. Through the power and glory of Christ”

It is easy, now, to imagine that Bob remains our “praying friend,” and even more beautifully and powerfully than ever before, now that he is fully in the presence of his Praying Friend—who is Jesus, of course. And as he wrote in his poem “The Lost Road” while a senior in high school, “I’ve hewn a lane through the universe, Up to the home of God.”