Off the beaten path: It’s where to find some of the best faith stories
MIDVALE, IDAHO — My reporting journeys have taken me to…
Warning: Baptisms, funerals and giant fish can be hazardous to preachers’ health
'It was a brutal two weeks after I got swallowed by the fish,' one minister says.
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EDMOND, OKLA. — A glitch washing away a tall man’s sins.
A mishap at a military veteran’s graveside service.
An accident inside the huge fish — an inflatable one anyway — that swallowed Jonah.
On lists of most dangerous jobs, professions such as logger, roofer and lineman rank high.
Preacher? Not so much.
But serving the Lord can be — at least occasionally — hard on one’s physical health, as my friends David Duncan, Randy Roper and Trey Morgan discovered.
An illustration of the biblical account of a big fish swallowing Jonah.
“I like to jokingly quote Galatians 6:17 out of the New Living Translation,” said Duncan, who hurt himself while baptizing a new believer. “It says, ‘For I bear on my body the scars that show I belong to Jesus.’”
“I wouldn’t compare it to martyrs of old or even in today’s world,” Roper quipped concerning his injury while lifting a casket at a military funeral.
“It was a brutal two weeks after I got swallowed by the fish,” suggested Morgan, who regretted taking the role of Jonah in a Vacation Bible School production.
‘Well, it’s a silly story’
In nearly four decades of full-time ministry, Duncan — who preaches for the Memorial Church of Christ in Houston — has brought hundreds of souls to new life in Jesus.
Not until just recently, though, did a baptism result in Duncan filing a workers’ comp claim.
“A woman called and said, ‘I’ve been studying the Bible with my brother and my niece, and they would like to be baptized,’” he recalled. “She said, ‘Can I bring them up to the church building? Can you baptize them?’ I said, ‘Sure, that would be great.’”
He baptized the niece without incident (which is a phrase I haven’t typed before).
Then Duncan, who is about 5 feet, 10 inches, turned to the 6-foot-2-inch brother.
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“I had asked him to put his hand on his nose,” the preacher remembered. “His arm would be like a handle for me, and then I would take him backwards and immerse him.
“Well, when I said, ‘I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’ — at that point he just went straight backwards. Most people kind of go back slowly. They’re a little worried about it. He just fell backwards. And I tried to grab his arm, but I missed because it was happening so quickly.”
The man’s full weight fell on Duncan’s right arm. The minister said he felt his arm “ripping.”
Despite the pain, he used both his arms to push the man back up.
Outside the baptistry, the minister forced a smile during photos with the family.
Then he talked for 10 minutes with someone else who asked to see him.
Finally, Duncan told the person, “I’m sorry. I’m going to pray for you now. But I have to go to urgent care.”
The urgent care referred him to an orthopedist. A lady at that office asked him what had happened.
“Well, it’s a silly story,” he replied.
She didn’t laugh.
“We can’t talk to you because this is workers’ comp,” she told him.
Minister David Duncan and his journalist friend Bobby Ross Jr. in 2023.
“What?” he replied.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’ll have to file this with workers’ comp.”
Thus began a multi-week bureaucratic process of scheduling a doctor visit, an MRI and physical therapy.
He eventually learned he wouldn’t need surgery, which was a major relief.
For a few weeks, he returned to the pulpit with a sling on his right arm.
He chuckled at the restrictions on one doctor’s report, which recommended “no baptism, no pushing and pulling with right shoulder pending MRI.”
A doctor’s note concerning David Duncan’s injury.
Duncan told the doctor he’d do his best to follow the instructions.
“I said, ‘If someone really needs to be baptized, and there is absolutely no one who will do it, I’m still going to do it,’” he said. “‘But I feel confident I will be able to find someone who could do it for me.’”
David Duncan preaches with a sling on his arm after the baptism injury.
‘Sir, could you help me?’
In Roper’s case, a funeral home director asked a few years ago if he’d speak at a military veteran’s graveside service.
Roper — who preaches for the Edmond Church of Christ, my home congregation north of Oklahoma City — said he would.
“There weren’t a ton of people there — probably 20 or 25,” Roper said. “I finished my part, and a color guard came up to present the flag.”
A man in uniform reached for the stars and stripes draped over the casket.
The only problem: Part of the flag was caught under the casket — the corner closest to Roper.
An illustration of a U.S. flag draped over a casket.
“I’m standing there … not knowing what I should do or if I should do anything,” Roper said. “It’s this solemn moment, and you don’t want to interfere with the military doing all their thing.”
But then the military representative whispered, “Sir, could you help me?”
Still holding his Bible in his left hand, Roper reached under the casket with his right hand.
“As I’m lifting it up, I feel something explode in my arm. I feel it pop,” he said. “Thankfully, at that moment, I just got the casket lifted enough for him to pull the corner of the flag out. … I did find out later that the guy in the casket weighed over 300 pounds. He was a large fellow.”
Writhing in pain, Roper said the final prayer, greeted the family on the front row and stressed, “I need to go now.”
He saw an orthopedic physician assistant who attends our church and underwent surgery within two days.
Like Duncan, Roper wore a sling the next time he preached.
“What’s funny is that we both injured the same part — bicep tendon,” Roper said in a text message, referring to Duncan and himself. “And we were both burying someone!!”
Death can lead to injury, it seems.
Randy Roper preaches with a sling on his arm after the injury.
In case anyone needs a theological refresher to understand Roper’s quip, Christians view baptism as a reenactment of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.
Roper also tore the patellar tendon in his knee one time playing basketball during a church fellowship.
That required him to preach while sitting on a stool wearing a knee brace — not that anyone noticed because that occurred during the COVID-19 era of livestream worship.
The video only showed him from the waist up.
“It was timely on that part,” Roper said of the knee injury.
‘And Jonah got spit out’
It seemed like a terrific Vacation Bible School idea: Turn an inflatable bounce house into the big fish that swallowed Jonah.
For a few nights, the prop worked just fine.
“We would tell the story, and then after the story, we would all go walk through the big whale,” said Morgan, who then preached for the Childress Church of Christ, a rural congregation in the Texas Panhandle. “And the kids would play in there, which was a lot of fun.”
Morgan’s wife, Lea, narrated the skit, while he performed as Jonah.
Stairs led the way into the fish’s mouth.
Trey Morgan with his wife, Lea. No picture was available of the fish-swallowing incident.
“You had to climb up into his mouth, and you’d go over to the side,” Morgan said. “And every night I’d be swallowed, and I’d go in. Then after less than a minute, she’d mention, ‘And the great fish spit Jonah out on the beach,’ and I’d come falling out of there.”
But the last night, Morgan stumbled going over the side and fell with his elbow underneath his ribs.
“I knew immediately I had done something that was not good,” said Morgan, now the lead minister for the Sunset Church of Christ in Lubbock, Texas.
While he was inside the bounce house, hurting and unable to get up, Lea repeated for the fourth time, “And Jonah got spit out by the great fish.”
Except this time, the fish failed to spit out Jonah.
With two ribs suddenly cracked, Morgan didn’t appear.
“Finally, I kind of stuck my head up over there and kind of waved that Jonah’s tapping out on this one,” he said. “And I think I crawled over.”
Two doctors in the church assessed him and determined he didn’t need surgery.
“They said, ‘If you want, we’ll go take an X-ray. But even if we take an X-ray, there’s nothing we can do about it,’” he recalled.
He just needed a few weeks to deal with the pain and — eventually — heal.
Morgan sure wasn’t laughing then.
But he is now — along with the rest of us.
Baptisms, funerals and giant fish can be hazardous to preachers’ health.
‘The funny thing is …’
While researching this piece, I enjoyed hearing from a few other folks who work in ministry about their on-the-job mishaps.
I’ll share a few anecdotes quickly since I’ve taken up so much space already.
In his time as the preacher for the Exchange Street Church of Christ in Union City, Tenn., Dan Huggins did a sermon illustration at a summer youth camp. One guy was supposed to stand behind him and grab him under his arms, while another held him by his ankles.
But the guy behind him was not paying attention when the ankles guy pulled his feet out from under him.
“When I hit the cement floor, it almost knocked me out,” said Huggins, now the pastor of Refuge Mission, a church plant in Union City. “When I stood up, everybody gasped because I was bleeding profusely from both elbows.”
He required a hospital visit and made a workers’ comp claim.
“The funny thing is that all the kids thought it was just part of the act,” he said.
A yellow jacket stung Justin Simmons on the back of his neck while he preached one Sunday.
“No major injury, just a whelp with a stinger that my wife removed after the service,” said Simmons, who preaches for the Glenmora Church of Christ in Louisiana.
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While he didn’t require medical treatment, the church did call an exterminator.
Finally, Jason Moon rear-ended a police car during a funeral procession.
“Cop car was leading,” said Moon, who preaches for the Boone Church of Christ in North Carolina. “I was in front of the hearse. Cop car stopped. I did not.”
“Cop car was leading. I was in front of the hearse. Cop car stopped. I did not.”
The collision caused his radiator to burst, so he had to catch a ride with the officer whose vehicle he struck.
Was Moon injured?
“My pride, that’s all,” he told me. “Did the graveside after it happened.”
BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. Reach him at [email protected].
