Max Grubb has been the Chamber’s “go-to pastor” for the last 17 years, giving the invocation at the McAllen Chamber of Commerce’s Good Day Luncheons. I enjoy the way Max prays, always lifting up and encouraging new businesses in McAllen and McAllen’s leadership. Max came to the ministry late in life. He started seminary at Texas Christian University when he was 5 and came to the Valley in 2001, after graduating from seminary.
Max has had numerous careers. He has run successful businesses and has worked as a financial manager and as a chamber executive. He told me, when he joined the McAllen Chamber of Commerce in 2001, it was a prerequisite for him taking the job as pastor at the two churches that the churches pay for his membership in the McAlen Chamber of Commerce. I always appreciate Max’s unwavering support of the Chamber and its role in the community.
Max was active with Habitat for Humanity and served as the non-profit’s board chairman for three years. He was also active and served on the board of Hope Family medical Clinic and as chairman of the Greater McAllen Ministerial Alliance. Max never just sat back and talked and preached theology; he lived it. He understood the greatest service is to live, work and be among people and to be in tune, as Max said, with “life on life’s terms.”
For you see, Max had experienced all the shortcomings of life and hurt. He understands human fraities and shortcomings in what we call “life.” Max found his greatest life calling in ministering to people. He has never forgotten the pain of divorce, addiction or separation from family. He realized the greatest gift any person could receive is compassion and grace and it is from those two key pillars he built his ministry toward people.
Two weeks ago, Max Grubb gave his final invocation at the Chamber’s Good Day Luncheon. Max has entered life’s final days and is now in hospice care. At the luncheon, Mayor Jim Darling paused for a minute, after Max had finished praying, to thank hims for his life and ministry. max, throughout this process, has demonstrated his faith and thankfulness to God for the opportunities and the blessings. Max’s courage and peace is a reminder to all of us that in each of our journeys, that we each have choices on how we think and act.
Max has lived a life of grace and compassion and as the end draws near, I think of the end of C.S. Lewis’ book, The Chronicles of Narnia, where the author writes.
“And as he spoke he no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all stories, and we can most truly say that they lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and their adventure had only been the cover and the title page; now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which each chapter is better than the one before.”
God’s peace, Max Grubb.
See you in McAllen!