The Christ Church Stories Part One, Episode 9 - Lord, Teach Us to Pray

A story of Jimmy Reagan Micky Mantle, and the prayer that changed a church

The Story of Jimmy Regan

Most people who know me wouldn’t guess that I need a barber very often. And they’d be right. I haven’t had much hair to work with for years now. But back in the early days of Christ Church, I had a little more to offer the profession.

Which is how I met Jimmy Regan.

Fran had been going to Sue once a month—Sue was her stylist and Jimmy Regan’s wife. And that connection got me in the door, too. Sue cut my hair—all of them. My precious hairs.

Men often fall asleep during haircuts—at least I do. The rhythm, the gentle snippety snip of scissors, the buzz of clippers—it’s like a lullaby. That’s where I was one day, drifting off, until I heard Sue mutter, “Oops…”

I woke up right away.

“Sue,” I said, mock-scolding, “we don’t say ‘oops’ when we’re cutting the pastor’s hair.”

She laughed. So did I. She wasn’t talking about my hair—her mind was elsewhere.

Later that week, Fran came back from her appointment with a favor.

“Something’s Wrong. Something Serious”.

“Sue asked if you’d see her husband, Jimmy,” she said. “Something’s wrong. Something serious.”

Jimmy was also a hairstylist. He and Sue had started attending Christ Church. They didn’t make a splash or call attention to themselves—but they stood out.

Jimmy had long, flowing hair swept into a proper mullet. He looked like he might’ve stepped off the set of a biker show—leather, silver rings, boots, the works. Sue was gentle and gracious. Jimmy was warm, funny, kind to the core. And I liked him immediately.

I called him. We set an appointment. He cut my hair. And somewhere between the cape and the clippers, he shared his news.

“I’ve been feeling pretty awful,” he said, comb in hand. “And I just got some bad news. Real bad.” He stretched the words like they were heavier than usual. Reeel bayd.

Jimmy had a rare, fatal liver condition—a genetic deficiency. The only hope was a transplant.

“Do you have insurance?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said flatly. “None.”

I stood there, stunned. A $300,000 surgery. No coverage. A man I’d come to love. A friend of the church. And no clear way forward.

We prayed that day. And we agreed to meet every week from then on to pray.

But I also remember what came next—how the Spirit stirred something in us. I remember feeling like what I proposed was risky? I thought we should pray for Jimmy and assemble a team and figure out how to raise the money for the transplant.

It was a strange place to be. If we prayed and we raised the mountain of money in 1992 dollars, God would look really good! It could be good for business, so to speak.

But if we tried to raise it and fell short—even through prayer and whatever action we might take—God would look, well , not so good. The church might stall.

(I am not proud of my faithlessness, but I am honest about it. Remember, this is 1989. The church was new and I was 34 years old.)

We had to do it. I had to trust God for whatever the outcome.

We formed a prayer team. Not just to pray for Jimmy, but to pray for how we could help. And in those weeks, I began to understand something I had only preached in theory: prayer isn’t just a way to ask God for things.

It’s a way to invite God to reshape us.

I called in a few favors. I knew a bishop who sat on the board at St. Luke’s Hospital in Houston. We were hoping for a miracle—or at least a massive discount. And by God’s grace, they agreed to a reciprocal relationship with Baylor in Dallas. We still needed to pay, but they’d waive a significant portion of the cost.

At first, we thought small. We placed coffee cans around town to raise awareness and spare change. We hosted a golf tournament that raised $20,000–$25,000. A few generous individuals wrote checks. But we were still far short. The number we couldn’t reach hovered like a mountain: $60,000.

We were closer. But not there.

The Sixty Thousand Dollar Question

I wrote a letter to Betty. Betty was an early church member who had been wonderfully generous with our first capital campaign. But for reasons I didn’t quite understand, she and her husband left the church. They were gone. Done. Over it.

But I wrote the letter nevertheless. Mailed it on a Monday. Life went on.

One night—it was a Saturday—during dinner at our home, the phone rang. I answered, and heard a familiar voice: Betty.

“I got your letter about Jimmy,” she said. “And I’ve always wanted to do something like this. I understand you’re still $60,000 away?”

“Yes,” I said cautiously.

“I’d like to make up the difference,” she said. “I want to give the full amount.”

I blinked. “Betty… did you say six thousand or sixty thousand?”

“Sixty.”

I still couldn’t believe it. “Could you…spell that out for me? Slowly?”

She said, slowly and clearly: “Six-oh-oh-oh-oh.” I broke down and wept. We had what we needed.

The next morning, I stepped up to preach at Christ Church. I chose my text from Luke 11: Lord, teach us to pray.

At the end of the sermon, I recounted the whole story. I talked about Jimmy’s gift for styling hair, our friendship, the diagnosis, and the mountain we faced. I mentioned the prayer team, the coffee cans, the golfers, and the givers. And then I turned toward Jimmy, who was seated a few rows back.

“Jimmy, stand up,” I said.

He stood.

And I told him—told all of us—that the funds were complete. That he was going to get a new liver. I told the story about Betty and even repeated to the congregation what she had said to me: Six-oh-oh-oh-oh.

“Jimmy, you’re getting a new liver!”

The congregation erupted. Cheers. Applause. Hugs. High fives. Tears.

It was a moment unlike anything we had experienced before. The joy wasn’t just for Jimmy. It was for all of us. Because somehow, through prayer, we had all been drawn into something deeper. Something bigger. Something holy.

Waiting for Someone to Die

Then it was time to wait for a match. We had the money, now we needed the organ.

Under all our prayers—beneath every petition for Jimmy—there was this quiet, unsettling knowledge: for Jimmy to live, someone else had to die. We didn’t say it out loud, not at first. But it was there, like a shadow behind the candlelight. How do you pray for that? How do you ask for a miracle that, by its very nature, requires a tragedy? It was strange and sacred territory.

Even when I announced it in church, it felt funny. Wrong. “Jimmy, you’re getting a new liver!” sounded like something a game show host might say. What about the one who would be giving the liver?

It was unsettling.

We prayed for healing, but also for peace—for a family we didn’t know, who would grieve while we gave thanks. And somewhere in that mystery, trust was found. Not the shallow kind of trust that demands tidy answers, but the deeper kind—the trust that knows God is at work in ways we cannot fully see.

Jimmy’s condition worsened before it got better. But eventually, a liver was found. We prayed for the family of the donor—some unknown soul whose death became the miracle Jimmy needed.

The transplant was successful. Jimmy lived. And for a time, he was a living legend at Christ Church.

Eventually, he and Sue moved to another part of East Texas, and we lost touch. But I will never forget what happened in those weeks. It changed how we prayed. It deepened our sense of God’s providence. And it reminded us that every answered prayer carries a story far bigger than our own. And more importantly, what changed.

We had seen God move in real time. We had tasted the mystery of His provision. And we had discovered the kind of church we wanted to be: one that prays not just with words, but with action. And trust.

Epilogue

While Jimmy and Sue eventually moved to East Texas and got on with their lives, they’ve never been far from my mind—or my heart. For a while, Jimmy played in a band at one of our church plants in Allen. Later, they joined a Vineyard congregation and settled into work as postal carriers.

This week, I reached out to check in. Jimmy is a paid subscriber to this Substack and has been following along with these stories.

We Zoomed one afternoon. It was good. Tender. Familiar.

Jimmy and Sue are both retired now. He took medical retirement from the Post Office. As it turns out, the anti-rejection medications he’s had to take for years have taken a toll on other systems in his body. Sometimes there’s a cost to miracles that we don’t always see. But there he was—same warm smile, same gentle humor, same spark that made us love him all those years ago.

Micky Mantle? You Can’t Make This Up

And there’s one more part to this epilogue—one of those details you couldn’t make up if you tried.

Mickey Mantle died in the summer of 1995, five years after Jimmy received his liver. One afternoon, when Jimmy was in clinic for testing and treatment, his doctor came in carrying a brown paper bag. Jimmy and the baseball legend shared the same doctor.

Jimmy told me back then—and confirmed it again just a few days ago—that the doctor handed him a small paper bag of leftover prescription medications—the anti-rejection medication he took to help his body accept the new organ.

He thanked the doctor because the meds were expensive. He looked at the prescription bottle. They had belonged to Mickey Mantle. The labels bore his name.

Jimmy kept the bottles. He still has it.

A strange souvenir, maybe. But to Jimmy, it’s more than that. It’s a quiet reminder of a season when life and death, heaven and earth, prayer and providence all seemed to meet in one unfolding story. A time, as Paul wrote, when all things worked together for good—in ways only God could orchestrate.

Benediction

And that’s what prayer does.

It draws us into the mystery—where heaven brushes up against earth, where healing comes wrapped in sacrifice, and where the quiet faith of a few can carry the weight of a miracle.

It doesn’t promise tidy answers. It doesn’t always come with happy endings. But it does something deeper: it binds us together. It reminds us that every life matters. Every story counts. Every prayer is heard.

Jimmy’s life is a testimony to that. And so is yours.

May we all be people who pray like that—deeply, trustingly, even when the path ahead is hidden.

And may the God who works all things together for good continue to write His story through ours.

Amen.

⸻⸻

Coming Next in The Christ Church Stories:

This marks the end of Part One. So far, I’ve shared a dozen stories about the early years of Christ Church—those heady, hope-filled days leading up to the year 2000. The growth was remarkable. The momentum unstoppable. It felt like everything was moving up and to the right.

But storm clouds were gathering.

The wider Episcopal Church was in a season of deep conflict and theological drift. In the next set of stories, I’ll recount the tension, heartbreak, and spiritual turmoil that led us to make one of the hardest decisions of all: to leave our ecclesial family of origin and help form what would become the Anglican Church in North America.

These were painful years—but they were also defining ones.

And a quick note:

During the month of May, we’re hoping to welcome 70 new Paid Subscribers to The Anglican. If you’ve been walking with us through these stories, now is a great time to join and support the work.

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The Anglican is the Substack newsletter for LeaderWorks, where I share insights, encouragement, and practical tools for clergy and lay Christians. I’m also an author of over a dozen books available on Amazon.

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