Harriet Peavy: A Servant of the Church

In 2002, Harriet Peavy got an unexpected phone call from Tom Gibbs, who had recently moved to San Antonio to explore the planting of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Harriet had recently been introduced to Tom by her son, Daniel Peavy, who had met Tom and Tara Gibbs while he was completing a master’s degree at Baylor University, where Tom served as campus minister with Reformed University Fellowship.

Tom was calling because he needed someone to sit in the newly-rented church office for one morning a week to answer the phone while he was out on appointments. When Harriet agreed to come in on Tuesday mornings until he could find someone else, Tom told her he was sure it would be a slow morning, so she should bring a magazine or a book to read.

“I read that magazine exactly one time,” she says today, laughing. “And I never picked it up again.”

Over the next 17 years, Harriet took on the management of Redeemer’s finances as bookkeeper, oversaw daily operations for a rapidly-growing staff as office manager, and served as assistant to the senior pastor. And those were just the official titles. Quietly, in the background, Harriet helped design banners for Redeemer’s many places of worship, maintained name tags for every member, created the first set of office policies, bought flowers for baptisms and cakes for church anniversary celebrations, lilies for Easter and poinsettias for Christmas, baked bread for communion, and hosted Redeemer women’s retreats and church-wide picnics at her family’s place in the Texas Hill Country.

Through all of those ordinary, unglamorous tasks, Harriet made space for many people to be welcomed into the extraordinary story of Gospel freedom she herself had longed to find for years of her Christian life before Redeemer was founded.

Raised in Dallas as a member of Highland Park Presbyterian Church, Harriet moved with her husband, Dr. Dan Peavy, to his hometown of San Antonio in 1966 and started a family. The Peavys were always regular church attenders, but as early as her children’s school years, Harriet began to feel that she wanted teaching of greater depth for her family.

“I tell people that I think I was praying for Tom by the time he was about three years old,” she says. “I wanted to learn what it means to live the Gospel in every day real life, not just on Sundays, and not just by working harder to be what God intended me to be.”

Praying for something and recognizing it when it starts to happen are two different things. When her son first called and asked her to go to breakfast with his RUF pastor who was considering planting a church in San Antonio, Harriet was busy with volunteer roles in the community and keeping a very full schedule. She had all but given up on the idea of finding what she hoped for in a church.

She went to the breakfast somewhat skeptically, but came away from it intrigued by the vision Tom presented for Redeemer. She agreed to host a dessert in her home for people interested in the church plant. It quickly became clear that in the unexpected, God was at work, both for the church and for Harriet personally. Harriet remembers a summer Bible study hosted in the Gibbs home as a turning point in her own understanding of the Bible.

“In that first Bible study, I remember Tom saying that Jesus was on every page of the Bible, and I thought ‘What? Every page?’ I had never heard anyone say that. But over the years Tom’s teaching of the Bible as one story and the meaning of God’s grace and mercy have blessed me immeasurably."

For his part, Tom recalls meeting Harriet as a pivotal moment in both the future of Redeemer and his own life.

“Harriet has been like a second mother to me, in the best sense of the word,” Tom says. “She has always helped me think ‘How do we do this well?’ There were a number of things that I know because Harriet was there we did them in a way that was the difference between good and better. Harriet has the gift of administration and service, and she was absolutely essential to the effectiveness of Redeemer’s mission, especially in the early days. And she has not just served, she has been a strategic partner in the ministry.”

When Tom mentors church planters, he talks about the importance of identifying gatekeepers — trusted people in the community who by their participation in a new church give others permission to trust the new work. Tom says while all Harriet’s practical work was enormously important, her most significant contribution was in enthusiastically inviting others to join her in imagining and building a new church.

“People immediately considered Redeemer not just a safe place, but a place of significance and merit because she was there,” he says. “But she is also very comfortable in that third or fourth chair. She doesn’t want to be who people are looking at, but she’s essential to everything you’re doing.”

Harriet does not see herself as essential, and is quick to point out that it takes a lot of people to launch a church plant. But what she and Tom agree on is that over the years of working closely together they have witnessed God's provision for Redeemer through good times and struggles. As bookkeeper, Harriet recalls a year early in Redeemer’s history when as the year closed and she recorded each contribution that came in it was clear the church might not take in enough money to cover budgeted expenses. It got down to the last day of December, but Redeemer ended the year in the black — by $100.

“I’ve never forgotten that,” she says. “If that isn’t the Lord, I don’t know what is. Sometimes I have felt like a fly on the wall watching what God is doing. I have learned that God is faithful. He knows and sees the work that his children are doing and fosters it and makes sure it keeps going and thriving. Even the purchase of this building, if God had not been in the middle of that, it would never have happened. And I think the Lord was walking in front of us every step as we moved from the Bright Shawl to McAllister to Edison, opening the way.”

With each new wave of growth, Harriet has seen the church change. While there were times of feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of tasks that need to be completed, the hardest change for her was when Redeemer grew so large that she could no longer possibly know every member. But Harriet says God has blessed even the painful work of letting go of an earlier, more intimate version of the church so that others could be welcomed in.

As Redeemer enters its 17^th year of worship and Harriet prepares to retire this summer, she says she still cannot believe everything that came of that first breakfast meeting. But she looks back with joy on what God did with those surprising, unexpected years she gave to the church.

“If you had told me then that I would be sitting here talking about the last 17 years, I would have laughed in your face,” she says. “It never in a million years entered my head that I would do all of these jobs. But I have never not loved what I was doing. God has generously blessed me to be able to do it, and God has given me joy in doing it.”

Join us on June 9^th after the second service as we host a cake reception to give thanks for Harriet and her years of faithful service!