Andy Miller spent 47 years in the Salvation Army, but never deemed it a job.
He considered his work a calling, one that he said he answered as a student at Asbury College, now Asbury University, in Wilmore, Ky. He recalled his personal transformation in a book: "The Brengle Treasury."
"I was seated in the freshman class in the second seat on the third row," he wrote. "One morning, I noted the little brass plate designation on the seat. I read it: ‘In memory of Commissioner Samuel Logan Brengle.' It was from that seat on March 2, 1942, that I accepted the blessing of the Holy Spirit."
Eventually, so would three of his children, all fifth-generation Salvation Army officers. Susan Swanson is a commissioner in London, England. Bill Miller is an envoy in Minneapolis and Maj. Andrew Miller Jr. is second-in-command at the Kansas/Western Missouri division.
"The call of God kept Dad moving and kept him focused all these years," said Maj. Miller of Kansas City. "It's like that for any of us who enter the ministry."
Andrew Stewart Miller was born the son of Salvation Army officers, the late Ralph and Martha Miller in Roselle Park, N.J. He served as the U.S. national commander, based near New York City, from 1986 to 1989.
In 1989, he and Joan Miller, a Salvation Army commissioner and his wife of 64 years, retired to Lawrenceville. He died on Jan. 19 at Sunrise at Webb Ginn, where he'd lived in the facility's "remembrance unit", which houses patients who suffer from dementia and Alzheimer's. He was 87.
A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. on Feb. 11 at The Salvation Army Atlanta Temple Corps.
Mr. Miller was a highly-regarded speaker and evangelist who spread the gospel in pulpits, campground meetings and other events across the United States. President Ronald Reagan invited him to the White House. He was an usher at the funeral of Robert Kennedy, the U.S. attorney general; they met while jogging in the streets of New York.
In retirement, he helped raise money to build the Salvation Army facility in Lawrenceville. Jones Webb, a local attorney who sat on the organization's advisory board, remembers the minister accompanying him on donor visits.
"He did the talking and the praying," Mr. Webb said. "Commissioner Miller was a man of God and was as strong and as out front with it as anybody. He was Mr. Salvation Army."
The commissioner served 30 years on the board of trustees at Asbury University, which in 1986 awarded him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. He belonged to rotary clubs wherever he lived, including Gwinnett. Henry Gariepy featured him in a book called "Andy Miller: A Legend and a Legacy."
Whatever the commissioner did, "he saw it as serving people in the name of Jesus Christ," Maj. Miller said. "He had such a great spirit. Everyone was important to him because he said everyone had divine nature in them."
Additional survivors include his wife, Commissioner Joan Miller of Lawrenceville; nine grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
About the Author
The Latest
Featured
