Bishop Robert H. Spain

Date of Death: September 09, 2022

At an age when many would step back into retirement, Bishop Robert Hitchcock Spain stepped up to provide pastoral care to more than a thousand people as the United Methodist Publishing House’s full-time chaplain.

He led regular worship, visited the sick, comforted the grieving, celebrated graduations and guided countless people in their Christian walk well into his 90s.

“He did all of that AFTER what mere mortals call a robust span of inspirational and sacrificial ministry as pastor, teacher, healer, builder of churches and people, and bishop,” wrote the Rev. Brian Milford, the Publishing House’s president and publisher.

Spain, who went by Bob, died Sept. 9 at age 96.

Friends and fellow United Methodist clergy remember him as someone who kept ministry going and going — like the Energizer Bunny of bishops.

“Bishop Bob Spain was one of the most Christ-like men I’ve ever known. He was a pastor par excellence,” said the Rev. Davis Chappell, senior pastor of Brentwood United Methodist Church in the Nashville suburb of Brentwood, Tennessee.

“At age 96, he was still guiding, studying, praying and encouraging us in our faith. Even in his last days, he was writing letters assuring others of his prayers and love.”

Chappell and retired Bishop Joe E. Pennel Jr. will co-officiate at Spain’s memorial service Sept. 16 at Brentwood United Methodist Church. Both Pennel and Spain made the Brentwood congregation their church home.

“Bob Spain was a servant of the servants of God,” said Pennel, who also teaches at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville. “He had a pastor’s heart that guided him to many people in need.”

Spain was senior pastor of Brentwood United Methodist Church, a megachurch with some 3,200 members, when the Southeastern Jurisdiction elected him to the episcopacy.

After decades of serving as a pastor and district superintendent in and around Nashville, he was consecrated bishop at age 62.

He led the Louisville Area, comprising what was then the Kentucky, Louisville and Red Bird Missionary conferences, from 1988 to 1992 — the year he reached a bishop’s mandatory retirement age.

Upon this first retirement, Spain joined the staff of the United Methodist Publishing House in Nashville to lead a series of seminars called “Focus on Ministry” for laity and clergy across the United States.

When Bishop Joseph B. Bethea died in 1995 after a sudden illness, fellow Southeastern Jurisdiction bishops called on Spain to serve as the South Carolina Conference’s interim bishop until new elections in 1996.

Spain still wasn’t ready to hang up the clerical collar. He returned to work with the Publishing House.

Neil Alexander, then the agency’s president and publisher, said he saw a need for a trusted elder who could devote to serving as the agency’s chaplain full time, and naturally turned to the bishop.

Spain enthusiastically took on his new role in 1997 at The United Methodist Church’s oldest and, at the time, largest agency with more than 1,000 people working for the Publishing House and at Cokesbury bookstores across the U.S.

“Bob was beloved by the staff, who often sought him out for conversation about personal challenges and for spiritual counsel,” said Alexander, now emeritus president and publisher.