After three ministers had served the Highland Church of Christ in Louisville following Jorgenson’s resignation in 1923, fourteen years later he was called back to his old pulpit. Thomas Wolfe’s opinion in Look Homeward, Angel that “You can’t go home again” was, happily, not applicable to ELJ’s second tenure in the Highland pulpit. In addition to his editorial and publishing work, the job entailed numerous meetings each week, pastoral calls and a regular series of radio sermons. Besides these, he conducted regular weekly singing classes at Borden and Sellersburg, Indiana, held several revival meetings each year, and devoted a month each summer to the song rallies in the West He was active as Highland leader during the difficult days of World War II, ministering to families with men in the military service, coping with the usual shortages (including gasoline and tires), and holding up the hopes of a people during a time of death and fear.
Beginning the last year of the war, an article he prepared for the January issue of the Missionary Messenger addresses many fears of the future:
“… We may be sure that this current year holds much of pain and sorrow. O yes, there will be songs and happy meetings, and sweet associations, with new and lasting friendships. But there will be tears and partings, more blue stars and some gold stars. “Daddy, did God have a Son in the service?” said the boy as they gazed on the low-hanging evening star. “Yes,” said the father, “and he made the supreme sacrifice.”
Then the article’s author turns to the letter R. H. Boll had written to him upon the death of his child nearly twenty years earlier. He quotes: “For yet a little while, how short! how short! He that cometh will come, and will not delay.” (Heb. 10:37, Greek)
Again, after ten years of pulpit service, and after the war was finished, Jorgenson felt it was time to relinquish his “full-time job” as the Highland preacher, and upon his second resignation was named the Church “Minister Emeritus.” In 1946 he was turning sixty years old, and seems to have become depressed about his health and his own life expectancy. It is rather clear that he looked at the life-span of the men of his own family and drew unwarranted conclusions. He resigned as regular minister and returned to the weekend preaching appointments in the country churches. In his depressed moment, he turned once again to his old friend, R. H. Boll. His letter to Boll is not extant, but the answer from the old prayer warrior is!
“My very dear, beloved friend and brother-it must have been a mournful day and you must have been away down in the dumps when you wrote that note. But anyway, I’m glad you wrote it, for it gives me a good chance to express again my love and esteem and perfect confidence in you.”
Boll dismisses the law’ of averages and human conclusions about genetic determinism. He tells of his own father’s death at age fifty- three, his mother’s, of heart trouble, in her fifties, his younger sister’s death at age twenty of tuberculosis, his older sister in her forties.
“But R, Η. B. is still here by the will of God–at age 72 1/2 now; and so will you be at like age, as I devoutly hope and trust. So, forget it-your span of life is not determined by the family history but “in Thy book they are all written, even the days that are ordained for me” (Ps. 139:16)…. The Lord isn’t through with you yet…”
That was an accurate prediction. In the January, 1947 Word and Work, ELJ provides a “Report of Stewardship” for “those who are curious to know how a minister may occupy his time when he ‘retires’ from the located pulpit.” The impressive statistics for his stewardship of 1946 in preaching in various churches, song services, long-distance travel to conduct preaching and singing meetings throughout the country’, his work with the Missionary Messenger and Word and Work, to say nothing of ongoing business responsibilities with Great Songs and the Janes missionary trust, leave the reader a bit breathless over the man’s sheer energy. And yet, one may wonder whether he is, to some extent, recording the activity for his own reassurance of continued usefulness after that dreaded age of sixty.
At the conclusion of World War II in 1945, in response to an increasing militancy shown by many preachers and editors in the Church of Christ in their efforts to “disfellowship” brothers and sisters who held views opposing theirs about the second coming of Christ, the millennium, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and even unity within the Church, Elmer Jorgenson began a series of “Precious Reprints” in the Word and Work. These were drawn from the early church fathers, the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, and, most of all, from the leaders of the “Restoration Movement” regarding fellowship around those issues. He explained in the “Preamble.”
“The question is not primarily who is right and what is right, doctrinally, on the millennial question and the Second Coming; but whether the plain unity ground of the New Testament (Eph. 4 :1-3), together with the sane, established unity practices of the faithful fathers, is to be thrown overboard in our day, in favor of a new system of creeds and super-rulers, in a kind of miniature Romanism.”
The installments continued through No. 84 in 1952. and then were bound into a book through the agency of trust funds given to advance Christian unity. They may well have contributed in some way to the encouraging report Alex Wilson was able to give in the September, 1994 Word and Work’.
“In many places God’s breath of fresh air is blowing away toxic fumes in this movement. I for one am encouraged by magazines such as Wineskins, Image, and One Body. And by great gatherings such as Restoration Forums and especially the Nashville Jubilee.”
In August of 1958, E. L. Jorgenson experienced a severe coronary attack which damaged his heart. The medical consultants predicted that it could not heal; in this they were proved to be correct Following medical advice, he and Irene chose to live in California during the winter months, from where he still carried on a great deal of writing and, occasionally, some speaking.
On July 14, 1963, the Highland Church of Christ celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Jorgenson’s first sermon at the Church. Although he was forced by his physical condition to speak from a sitting position, he delivered a brief sermon with both reminiscences and a challenge to the congregation. There were numerous visitors that day. Stanford Chambers, J. F. Stinnette, and J. K. Scoggan spoke in appreciation of his multi-faceted and long ministry.
Ever age-conscious, but with more confidence than he had felt twenty years earlier, ELJ marked his eightieth birthday with an article for his lifelong love, the Word and Work:
“On the date that this is written (December 9, 1960) I have reached the mark that Moses mentioned on the measure of a long, strong life: “Three score years and ten, or even by reason of strength four score years” (Ps. 90:10). Yet, in my case it was not by reason of strength, but by reason of the measureless mercy of God to His unworthy servant.”
Two years later, on December 14, 1968, after enduring a great deal of pain for ten years, he died at Claremont, California. Ernest Lyon, minister of the Highland Church of Christ and long-time colleague of ELJ in both the Kingdom of God and their mutual musical interests, spoke at the funeral service in Louisville, December 18. Burial was in the Cave Hill Cemetery, near the grave site of Martha Jane who had died forty-two years earlier.
Irene Doty Jorgenson continued an active role in the Church, with her home life and friends, and in the business affairs of Great Songs until her death on January 12, 1981 in Louisville. She is buried beside her husband and daughter.