The Rev. Conley Astor McMullen's best sermon had nothing to do with what he said.

"The subject of his sermons was usually life's lessons. But it wasn't the spoken word. It was his example of how to live that meant so much to me. He taught me a lot by the way he lived," said James E. Hedrick of Glen Allen, who was among Mr. McMullen's flock at Lakeside United Methodist Church in Henrico County from 1974 to 1980.

"Conley believed in the Bible and what he was doing and he lived it. If the Bible said something should be done, then it would be done that way, with no second-guessing. But he was a very soft person and had a huge heart. You could sit down and talk to him and what he said was honest and true."

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Mr. McMullen, who died of heart problems June 29 in a Hartville, Ohio, hospice at age 91, never fully understood how his life affected people until he was 90. For his birthday that year, his daughter, Cynthia H. McMullen of Richmond, wrote letters to congregations he had served and suggested that people who remembered him might want to drop him a line.

"He got about 90 cards," said McMullen, a former staff writer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch. "There was one from a teenager he ministered to who became a United Methodist minister. There was one from a state policeman who will be one of his pallbearers. A couple wrote that the Sunday school of his church was where they really learned about God."

A funeral for the Bath County native, who always considered himself a mountain man, will be held today at 10 a.m. at Three Oaks Fellowship United Methodist Church in Vinton. Burial with military honors will follow at 4 p.m. in Saumsville Cemetery, not far from his primitive cabin near Woodstock, where he loved to gather his family.

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The youngest of five children, he was 2 years old when his mother died in the worldwide influenza epidemic in 1919. The children were "farmed out to relatives for several years until his father remarried and brought them home," McMullen said.

He began his ministry after returning from serving in Europe with the 29th Division during World War II.

He served with the Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church in the Churchville Charge, Fishersville Church in Fishersville, Greene Memorial Church in Roanoke, Woodstock Church in Woodstock, Fairview Church in Roanoke, First Church-Fox Hill in Hampton and Marquis Memorial Church in Staunton, where he retired at 66.

Coaxed out of retirement, he served at Fairfield Church in Fairfield and Mount Olivet Church in Buchanan, where he retired at 80 because of glaucoma and macular degeneration.

Survivors, in addition to his daughter, include his wife of 55 years, Helen Kirby McMullen; two sons, Conley K. McMullen of Keezletown and Matthew R. McMullen of Uniontown, Ohio; two brothers, Clarence McMullen of Salem and Arthur McMullen of Hot Springs; a sister, Estaline Bower of Hot Springs; and three grandchildren.