Joe McKeever

Three Cartoons about Stewardship

"We need your help," the caller said. "Our church is having a financial crisis."

As a veteran pastor, I've heard that a few times and said it more than once. In the caller's case, his church is relocating and trying to find millions of dollars, they have a pretty hefty ongoing budget, and his church gives generously to missions.

"How can I help?"

The answer was surprising.

"We would like a cartoon on the subject."

"What do you want it to say?"

"Something about giving to the Lord over the summer."

I said I would see what I could do.

The result turned out better than I expected. What we ended up with a couple of days later--I have a day job so it's not like I could drop everything to get to this--was three cartoons.

We e-mailed the toons to the church administrator who had asked for them, alongwith a couple of suggestions.

Christian Fellowship III: The Greatest Church Growth Principle

Forget the gimmicks. What builds great churches, the kind that endure and influence the world for Jesus Christ and leave a lasting impression on their generation, is fellowship. The living work of the Holy Spirit within the lives of the members--bonding them with one another in worship, energizing their labors together, deepening their love for each other--authentic Christian fellowship makes the difference.

Being non-observant, we pastors tend to see Christian fellowship as the product of a great church. We bring in a super pastor with excellent preaching skills, work up a powerful and balanced program of ministries for all age groups, erect an impressive building on the ideal location with lots of parking and plenty of publicity--and bingo! The community comes to see, many stay to join, and because you're doing some things right, the fellowship in the congregation--that is, the spirit, the joy, the love--prospers. And you think that fellowship resulted from the great building with good location, your powerful preaching and the attractive programs. That's how we think.

Being impatient, we pastors prefer to skip the preliminaries such as building a great fellowship among the members and go straight to the gimmicks. Here's a program that worked for a California church, a plan that built a mega-church in Georgia, a book that promises to put your church on the map if you follow its principles. Two years later, with an exhausted congregation, a busted bank account, and a pastor who has used up all his credits with the leadership, we have little to show for our efforts.

One wonders how long it will be before pastors and other church members figure out that the church-growth method the Lord has ordained calls on us first of all to build up the inner life of the congregation and make it healthy. A healthy church will reach into its community, will send out missionaries, will grow and do so without the aid of gimmicks and trick programs. But before we initiate programs to reach into the town, mobilize missionaries, and grow, before any of that, we need to work on the foundation.

Build the fellowship.

Now, all we need here is twelve easy steps to do that and we would have the latest gimmick for church growth. Doubtless, I would also have a best-seller on my hands.

Alas, it doesn't work that way.

Anyone Seen Courage Lately?

First, the Scott McClellan book.

Am I the only person on the planet who has never, ever thought the press secretary--any of them--had the first inkling of what he was talking about? Listen to these guys at their daily press briefings. They hem and haw, fill the air with words of little or no meaning, promise to "get back to you on that," and justify whatever it was the administration has just done, no matter how asinine.

I think of Ron Zeigler, Nixon's mouthpiece. Was there ever a worse press secretary? Then, run through the dozen others to hold the position since. You might come up with two or three who seemed to have had some integrity of his own, who brought credibility to the position--Tony Snow comes to mind--but they didn't hold the job long.

The other thing I wonder is didn't they know when they took the job the nature of the beast was that they were hired as window dressing, sent to prettify what the president does?

I wonder if there has ever been a press secretary who stood up to the president and threatened to "go out there and tell the truth," instead of meekly caving in to the occupier of the Oval Office.

And the book. Which I haven't read and don't intend to.

There is no way on earth to know whether McClellan is lying now to sell a book or was lying back then to keep his job. Why is the administration surprised by what he has written? Did he not have the integrity to tell them of his concerns, of his disagreements, of his plans at any point in the past? Did they not know this man?

I realize the loyalty bit can be overdone. The mafia don stresses loyalty to his henchmen, the heads of Enron and World.com no doubt emphasized loyalty to their underlings, and a dictator makes a big deal of loyalty to his party hacks. But that does not negate the importance of the genuine article.

A church staff member exercises loyalty when he stands up to the pastor in private to resist a wrong direction the minister is taking or a faulty doctrine he is promoting. If it costs him his job, then he is free to tell others what happened. He leaves with his integrity intact and the higher good being served.

If he keeps quiet to hold his job, then you have found the price he places on his own soul.

What to Keep, What to Free

My mom, soon to hit 92 years, says in old age you forget what you ought to remember and recall what you ought to turn loose of.

Remembering has always been a problem for God's people. "When you come into the Promised Land," Moses warned the children of Israel, "and move into houses you did not build, take over crops you did not plant, and eat victuals you did not grow, then beware lest you forget the Lord." (Deuteronomy 6:12)

The theme of half the sermons from Old Testament prophets was the same: "Remember, O Israel." A classmate of mine at the seminary wrote his doctoral paper on the Hebrew word "Zakar," "remember."

But there is a lot to be said for forgetting, too. Much in our lives does not need to be retained.

Now comes the story of 42-year-old Jill Price, a California woman who remembers everything. Not that she wants to. Ever since she was 8 years old, beginning in 1974, her mind appears to have switched on some feature the rest of us do not have and wouldn't want in a thousand years. From 1980 forward, she has "near perfect" recall on everything.

By "everything," we mean what she had for dinner, what she watched on television, the news that night, the temperature, conversations, everything.

Jill Price's story is told in a new book--Newsweek of May 19, 2008, calls it "the weirdest book of the year"--by the title "The Woman Who Can't Forget."

A professor of neurobiology at the University of California, Irvine, James L. McGaugh, has studied Jill Price for five years, giving her every kind of scientific test imaginable, and coined the name for her condition: "hyperthymestic syndrome." It means her memory is over-developed. Which is like saying the Eiffel Tower is tall. Is it ever!

Over these years, Professor McGaugh has found two other persons afflicted with the same inability to turn loose of yesterday. One of them, Brad Williams, 51, a radio announcer, remembers everything back to age 4, and like the other two, is a compulsive collector of memorabilia (beanie babies, "Flintstone" junk, etc).

Jill Price admits she was a pain to grow up with. "I was always correcting my parents about things they claimed I had said, or that they had said to me, which, as you can imagine, didn't go over very well."

Newsweek reporter Jerry Adler writes, "But the sobering thing about Price's book is how banal most of her memories are. The days go by, lunch follows breakfast, 10th grade turns inexorably into 11th and a lot of the time, as McGaugh says, you just hang out."

My hunch is not a single soul reading this has given thanks lately for the ability to forget. I know I haven't. But I will from now on.

For Storytelling Preachers and Those Who Appreciate Them

Austin Tucker ran into some guys at a prayer breakfast who didn't care for their storytelling pastor. "He doesn't preach the Bible enough," said one. "I want preaching, not stories."

Austin, ever the teacher, pointed out to them that in the ministry of Jesus, the one thing that stood out above everything else in his sermons was His use of parables. "Jesus was the quintessential storyteller."

He says at least one of the men began to rethink the issue.

"The Preacher as Storyteller" is the title of Austin Tucker's latest book. Several months ago, he sent an early draft this way for me to read. I was most impressed. It's not necessary to have heard me preach to know how much I value a well-placed story in the sermon. Instead of just bragging on the practice and inserting some of his own tales--which is probably how I would have approached the subject--Austin really opens up the subject and deals with it from all sides.

Prediction here: seminaries are going to use this as a text, and the next generation of preachers is going to be greatly indebted to this dear brother.

Years ago, when Austin Tucker was a seminary student, he wrote the pre-eminent Bible teaching pastor of that generation, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones of London's Westminster Chapel, asking for his opinion on sermon illustrations. "He responded graciously with a note about his 'strong views on the subject.' He reminded me that he had always been a critic of a man like W. E. Sangster, who used to carry a little notebook in his pocket to take down any stories he heard and who had a 'card-index of illustrations appropriate to various subjects.' Lloyd-Jones said, 'I always described that as the prostitution of preaching!'"

Lloyd-Jones has company in his dislike for sermon illustrations and stories. John MacArthur is quoted as saying, "I am not into storytelling.... Stories tend to shut down the level of intensity that I prefer people to maintain."

But on the other hand.

Christian Fellowship II (Where Everybody Knows Your Name)

Recently, in the article "Why We Came Today," I shared on the subject of Fellowship inside the congregation, suggesting it draws 90 percent of first-time visitors to your church. They're looking to worship God, yes, and they want to learn the Bible and have a safe place for their children to grow, all of that. But if you stripped away all the other considerations, all the secondary concerns, what you would be left with is that most are looking for friends, people who are genuine and Christlike and loving, the kind of family they would choose for themselves.

They're looking for fellowship.

1) They probably have never articulated it in so many words. They're likely to say, "We're looking for a church home." And how will you know when you find it? "It's something you just know in your heart. It's like being in love. You can't explain it, but you know it when it hits you."

How many churches have you visited before ours? "This one is the fourth." Or fifth or tenth.

And you've not found what you were looking for? "Some were unfriendly. In two, no one spoke to us. And not a single one has contacted us since. That shows they don't want us, and if they don't want us, we certainly don't want them."

Is that too harsh a judgement? "Maybe for you."

They're looking for fellowship.

2) The members of your church do not know that's what the newcomers are looking for. Consequently, in our desire to woo them in, we provide all the wrong programs.

They want ministries and activities for their kids, so we hire a college boy to come in and get them going. They want children's programs, so we provide them. They want a nursery for their little ones and a gymnasium for the family. They want a great music program and impressive sermons.

We buy robes and organs and drums and carpets and cushions. We do all these things and still they do not come. And we get angry at them. "The people today just aren't spiritual like they used to be."

One pastor told me, "If we could just get carpets on the floor, I know the community would come." He did, but they didn't.

Memorial Day Weekend

Drove to North Alabama on Friday, attended the every-two-year-cousins-reunion on Saturday, preached at New Prospect Baptist Church in Jasper on Sunday, and drove home on Monday. How did your weekend go?

Our "cousins" reunion never really took off until we decided to bite the bullet on the Saturday before Memorial Day in 1994 and stage the event at the old home place, 5 miles out in the country from Nauvoo, Alabama. Until then, we had moved around--one year at a park in Birmingham, another year at a cousin's lake place out from Jasper, that sort of thing--but with varying degrees of success. The year we held it at the old home place, it felt so right, everyone agreed this is the way, and here is the place.

Reunions are easy for the family members who live "away," such as I do. Our family has a rule that out-of-staters don't have to bring anything but themselves, in appreciation for their long drive and the high cost of gasoline. So, thanks to the hard work of the locals, we distance-cousins walk in and it's all laid out there: a long table loaded with eats, coolers filled with iced-down-drinks, and the night's bonfire ready for a match, circled by folding chairs from the church 3 miles down the road.

We call it a "cousins" reunion. One hundred and five years ago John Wesley "Virge" Kilgore and wife Sarah Noles Kilgore moved to this section of land. He laid off the buildings and erected them with his bare hands. The house still stands, where all his nine children were born. Across the yard lies the blacksmith shop. A little further down stands the barn. The newest building, constructed for his 1948 Packard, is the little garage.

Grandpa died in 1949 and Granny passed on in 1963. No one has lived here since. But everything still stands.

"All the buildings are unpainted. Wonder why that is?" someone said. My mother, born inside that house on July 14, 1916, said, "I don't know. But what color would you call the house now?" After several suggestions, she decided, "Motor oil." She was right.

Trying to Do Better

Recently, I wrote here about the wonders of the internet. But there's a downside too, and I had a reminder this week.

Wednesday morning, on my drive into the office, I found a message on the cell phone that had been left the night before. A man who left no number where I could return his call said, "Take my name off your website and quit writing about me. You are ruining my life." Everytime a prospective employer googled his name, he said, it came up on my website where I had written some slanderous thing about him. "I want it stopped."

I felt like replying, "How can I be writing about you when I don't even know who you are?" But without a number, I couldn't return his call.

Then, I hit the wrong number on the phone. Instead of saving the message, I deleted it. And promptly forgot his name. This was not going well.

Later, I called the phone company to see if there is any way to retrieve a deleted phone message. Not after that transaction has been closed; the message is gone forever.

Thursday morning, I called Marty, my son who is a genius about a lot of things, especially involving the internet. Could he find the article in question? I told him what I remembered about the man's name.

An hour later, Marty e-mailed. "I found it." The article had been posted on this website on October 13, 2006. I had referred to a newspaper item in which this guy--no way am I printing his name!--was arrested for molesting his juvenile sister, and the article dealt with a judge lowering his bail so that he walked free. That's all it was, except that in the comments which followed, some over several months time, I was lambasted by friends of the accused for slandering him. If they had left contact information, I would probably have said, "Take it up with the editor. I was just quoting the paper."

But still, it's no big deal to remove his name from that article.

Anyway, we took it off. Marty says it takes Google a week or so to drop the link to our website, but he'll see if they can speed it up.

A sobering thought: type a guy's name on your website and the world's most popular search machine directs everyone there to see what you wrote on him.

Taking gossip to new heights. Taking slander to new lows. The power of the printed word at warp speed.

Okay, change the subject. The most bizarre accident occurred in New Orleans this week.

Christian Fellowship I: Why We Came Today

Veteran pastor Bob Anderson tells this one on himself. A Sunday School class was having a backyard cookout and they wanted the preacher there. However, Pastor Bob had an earlier engagement--a wedding, a committee meeting, something--and would be late in arriving. Finally, he finished whatever he was doing and drove across Baton Rouge to the cookout.

He found the neighborhood, then located the street. He knew the couple hosting the cookout and was fairly certain he knew which house they lived in. Fairly certain.

Since everyone would be in the back yard, Bob did not bother to knock, but opened the front door and let himself in. He made his way through the foyer and living area and walked into the kitchen where an unfamiliar woman stood at the sink. He stared at her and she at him. Through the window behind her, Bob could see there was no one in the back yard. He was in the wrong house. This was not good.

What do you say in a moment like this? Nothing has prepared you for such a moment, and the words erupt from your throat in a kind of spasm. Pastor Bob Anderson blurted out, "I've come for fellowship!"

He told this story in chapel at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary one day maybe three years ago. When the laughter subsided, he told the students, "You will be interested in knowing that that lady and her family started coming to my church and became wonderful members." A tribute to the woman's courage and to the pastor's recovery, if you ask me.

I've come for fellowship.

We might as well write that out and hang it around the necks of every visitor to your church next Sunday. No matter all the reasons they think brought them there, the people who enter your worship center have come for fellowship, believe me.

Leadership Lesson No.55--"Vision: Don't Leave Home Without It"

If you plan to lead, it might be a good idea to know where you're going. The folks coming along behind you would like to know where you plan to take them. That concept, that goal, that's your vision. Your vision is the answer to the question: when you get where you are going, what will it look like?

"Some men see things as they are and ask why; I see things that never were and ask why not."

That memorable line, often attributed to Robert F. Kennedy, actually belongs to the playwright, George Bernard Shaw from his "Back to Methuselah." The mixup resulted from Senator Ted Kennedy's quoting it about Robert at his funeral in 1968.

It's a great line. It's reminiscent of something from the famous 11th chapter of Hebrews. "By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible." (11:3)

There is among us a breed of humanity who see things no one else sees, who hear music unheard by the human ear, who know things not revealed in the physical world. These are people of a faith-vision.

The writer of Hebrews gives numerous instances of people with faith-vision which enabled them to see what God wanted them to do, where He wanted them to go, how He wished them to live. By faith, Abraham went out "not knowing where he was going." (11:8) "By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land...for he was looking for a city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God." (11:9-10)

"All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance...." (11:13)

"By faith (Moses) left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured, as seeing Him who is unseen." (11:27)

People of faith see things otherwise unseen. Faith vision.

One Group That Came to New Orleans

Candlewyck Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, sent a group of volunteers to our city recently to work on rebuilding in cooperation with Operation NOAH Rebuild, the local arm of the North American Mission Board. David Reese was the team leader. On their return, he wrote a report to Dr. Bob Lowman, the director of missions for the Metrolina Baptist Association.

It's very special, and may encourage some of our readers to mobilize a church team to head this way.

"Bob, I wanted to take a moment and fill you in on Candlewyck's experience being a part of Operation NOAH Rebuild. The accommodations were really unique in that we stayed at a flooded out church that has been converted into dormitory style housing. The rooms were small, but they were intended for sleeping in and that was fine. The food was absolutely the best, we honestly didn't have one bad meal and there was always plenty. The volunteer cooking team was really great, especially after a hard day of work. They just shared themselves with us and encouraged us tremendously."

"The mission itself was very life-affecting to all of us. Some on the team had been to South Africa and we felt like we were back walking in the squatter camps only with paved roads. The houses are still in extremely bad conditions and in many cases the spirit of joy seems to have been drained from the people there. It was hard to drive through the communities and to still see the markings on the buildings that represented the inspections for bodies after the storm. I think the one that got to most of us was a church where 18 people died. It is hard to imagine that the people of New Orleans have to see these reminders every day."

Rearranging the Furniture (Really, Really Extreme Makeover)

Recently at a gathering of ministers and spouses in our denomination, one of the couples related an incident that broke the group up. I did not ask their permission, so will tell it as I recall it and use fictitious names.

Hank and Trish were visiting overnight in the home of friends. Sometime that evening, the hosts mentioned how unsatisfied they were with the arrangement of the living room. Since Hank and Trish know many things, home decor among them, they looked at each other and proceeded to rearrange the furniture in that room--without so much as "by your leave" from the hosts, who sat there dumbfounded. "There!" they said when finished.

"Apparently," Hank laughs, "they didn't like what we did because the next time we visited them, the room had been put back exactly the way it was before."

Trish adds, "By the way, anytime we come to visit you, you'll want to have a large furniture dolly handy."

Funny story.

Now, being both a Christian and a Baptist preacher--they're not mutually exclusive--I have learned that a story that connects inside me is a sure sign the Holy Spirit is sending one my way. Here's the application of that little tale.

Kneeling at Their Work

An Update from New Orleans
By David E. Crosby, Pastor
First Baptist New Orleans

A former president in his mid-80s is entitled to do whatever he wishes with his time. So it wrinkled my brow to see President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalyn, on their knees affixing boards to a porch in the Upper Ninth Ward this week.

I decided, watching them work, that this presidential couple really believe they are changing the world with these small acts of kindness. Looking around, I saw many of the hundreds of volunteers who graced our city this week pausing in their own work to observe this famous man and woman accomplishing their humble service. These young faces, eyes shining, are portraits and symbols of faith and hope. They come to our city with the express purpose of lifting our spirits, holding up our arms, and joining us in the grunt work that moves our community forward.

Former presidents in their 80s seem empowered to say whatever they wish, as President Carter has demonstrated over high-level objections. They also appear empowered to do whatever they wish. And driving nails to build decent and safe houses for working people is just what this president wants to do.

He and Rosalyn are all smiles as they greet people, grab their tools, and hit the deck with gusto. They request routinely that admirers not interrupt their construction time so that they can get something done.

The Undiscovered Gem

I submit that the most wonderful "undiscovered" Scripture verse is Psalm 17:15. It is the final word of a psalm in which the writer is bemoaning enemies who torment his existence, disregard God altogether, and run their lives by gutter ethics. These men, he says, want only what this life can offer. He calls them "men of this world whose portion is in this life," and says they are satisfied too easily. They are content "with children and leave their abundance to their babes."

Now, notice the next sentence, and be struck by the contrast of what will satisfy him.

"But as for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness;
I will be satisfied with your likeness when I awake."

I remind our readers--a diverse group if ever one existed--that this is the Word of God, a wonderful insight found in the inspired Scripture, and therefore to be valued as something far beyond the ravings of a beseiged yet hopeful individual. Psalm 17:15 contains a three-fold promise (at least three) of what we may expect after we close our eyes for the last time and thus end our earthly pilgrimage, as the old-timers used to put it.

Last night I drove to the funeral home and stood by the casket of 80-year-old Catherine, a forty-year member of the church I belong to and pastored for nearly 14 years. She was as fine a Christian lady as I have ever met. The mortician and his staff had done well by her, she looked as lovely in death as she had in life, and the family was pleased. But she was lifeless. Today, Catherine's family and friends shall gather and pay tribute to her life, and remind ourselves of the hope that she held in Christ and we will shed our tears. Because she is gone.

Gone from here, yes, but not "gone."

Standing at the little podium in that funeral parlor, I might do as I have done before and point to the exit signs above the doors. "It's an exit from here, but an entrance into the next life."

I love the line one of our internet friends left on this website this week. When her nearly-one-hundred-year-old uncle died, his wife, a youthful 92, said of him, "He's in heaven right now. If he isn't, they might as well plant it over with johnson grass." (Ask any Alabama farm boy. The most useless vegetation on the planet.)

I Do Love This Internet Thing

Here's what happened today. That would be Thursday, May 15, 2008.

Dean McKinley Dacus emailed. She started by saying that she came to know the Lord in a youth revival at our church in May of 1968--precisely forty years ago--and that I had baptized her. She was 14 and the only member of her family in church. Her father went to Heaven in August of that year and I did his funeral. So, she's reminding me of this. As though she needed to.

I said to her (via e-mail of course), "Dean, over these years, I have thought of you so often." I gave her a couple of reasons that I'll not put here, then added, "I asked you once, 'Do you have someone to talk with about these things that are worrying you?' You gave me an answer I've never forgotten. 'I didn't before. But now that Jesus Christ is in my life, I do now.'"

Now, put yourself in this pastor's place and imagine a kid from 40 years ago reconnecting with you. How good do you think that feels? A little foretaste of Heaven.

Dean mentioned that after I left at the end of 1970, Hugh Martin came as pastor of the church (that would be Emmanuel Baptist in Greenville, Mississippi) and how blessed she feels to have had two such terrific pastors in her life at such a young age. I passed that on to my dear brother Hugh Martin up in Philadelphia, Mississippi, so he can connect with her too. (more about Hugh below)

Isn't the internet wonderful! This generation is the first to be able to do this.

I am constantly being amazed and surprised by someone from the past discovering our website and reaching in to the present and making a connection.

I had an e-mail a few weeks ago from a church secretary in Florida who had found this website. She said, "You might not remember me, but you'll never forget my husband." When she told me why, I agreed that she was right about that. Here's the story.

Allowing for A Certain Amount of Waste

Last night as I was unloading groceries, my wife threw out two overripe bananas and put in their place the bunch I had just brought in.

Several years ago, Margaret and I decided that in order to keep fresh fruit in the house--at this moment, we have strawberries, blueberries, oranges, and bananas--we would occasionally have to throw out some that had spoiled. Rather than berate ourselves over letting it go bad and wasting money, we agreed to accept this as a necessary result of our determination to eat fresh fruit. We would allow for a certain amount of waste, you might say.

Waste allowance; a spiritual concept.

Not far from where I live, a church has built a fence around the vacant lot next door to the sanctuary. It's a lovely green expanse, set right in the middle of a neighborhood of middle-class homes in every direction, and now it might as well be located in the next parish. I have not asked anyone why they fenced in the lot but I think I know.

My guess is the neighborhood children were playing there and leaving trash behind them. Kids do that.

The leaders of the church spent several thousand dollars protecting their lawn. In doing so, they shut out the children.

Present at the Creation

When Truman's Secretary of State Dean Acheson wrote his memoirs of those crucial years following the Second World War, he titled them, "Present at the Creation." Little did he know how true that was, for so much of the political world you and I are still dealing with was brought into being back in those days of the late 1940s.

This morning, I did as I usually do and called my mother on the cell phone. I was in New Orleans and she was on the farm, nearly 60 miles out in the countryside northwest of Birmingham. We greeted each other, exchanged pleasantries, and finally told each other "I love you" and that we would talk tomorrow.

As I ended the call, I found myself thinking what a miracle cell phone technology is. I am a child of 1940, and our family did not even get a telephone until I was in college. A long distance phone call 40 or 50 years ago was a cumbersome, expensive deal.

As a freshman at Berry College--that would be the fall of 1958--the student body was brought into the auditorium one Thursday night for an amazing demonstration. President John Bertrand introduced some gentlemen from the phone company who brought out heavy boxes of equipment and hooked them up. Then, they selected the student from farthest away and brought the girl from Alaska to the stage.

The men asked for her home phone number and---are you ready for this?---they direct-dialed it. They had bypassed the telephone operator. We were enthralled. The student spoke to her mother while we all listened in. We walked out into the night awestruck, knowing we had just visited the future.

Horse and buggy stuff, right? It is compared to this morning's cell phone call. Long distance has evaporated, and with unlimited minutes, the cost of each call is negligible.

Two hours after the call to my mother, the May 12 issue of The New Yorker arrived. The article titled "In the Air" by Malcolm Gladwell (he wrote "The Tipping Point") has been on my mind ever since. You'll find it fascinating, but what I want to share here is only secondarily related to the subject he was discussing.

Get Ready, Heaven!

F. W. Myers, author of a famous poem called "Saint Paul," once asked a woman whose daughter had died what she thought happened to her soul. The woman said, "Oh, I suppose she's enjoying eternal bliss--but I wish you wouldn't speak to me of such unpleasant subjects."

In A.D. 125, a Greek by the name of Aristides spoke of "a new religion called Christianity." In a letter to a friend, he described this unusual faith. "If any righteous man among these Christians passes from this world, they rejoice and offer thanks to God; and they escort the body with songs of thanksgiving, as if he were setting out from one place to another nearby."

As a result of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Peter wrote, believers have been reborn to "a living hope." (I Pet.1:3) Our hope for the future involves a resurrection of our own, followed by an eternity in heaven.

We who follow Jesus are limited by no small ambitions.

The biblical concept of hope includes two elements: desire and expectation. You want it to happen and you have every reason to expect it. God made us for Himself, so in our innermost being we want to live with Him. Jesus promised us that we would, so we expect to do so.

Dottie Rambo was killed Sunday when her bus went off the highway in Missouri. I seriously doubt if any gospel song writer has ever thought as much and written as much and sung as much about Heaven as this wonderful lady. And now she gets to find out for herself. She's doing a duet with Vestal Goodman along about now, I surmise.

Today, after getting the news, I went to www.youtube.com and typed in "dottie rambo." Over the next half-hour, I heard her singing of "Mama teaching the angels to sing" and "Build my mansion next door to Jesus" and the like. I was glad no one walked in on me. Heaven is a powerful and emotional subject, particularly since I have a father and a brother there now and anticipate moving there myself one day before long.

I had already been thinking about Heaven, thanks to running across some quotes from C. S. Lewis a couple of days ago.

Four Churches in St. Bernard Parish

Sunday morning, I sampled the worship services of our four Southern Baptist churches still operating in Katrina-devastated St. Bernard Parish, just downriver from New Orleans. I started with Celebration-St. Bernard where Craig Ratliff is pastor, then worshiped with the two congregations meeting at Chalmette High School (St. Bernard BC and FBC-Chalmette where Paul Gregoire & John Jeffries pastor), then on to Delacroix-Hope Church down at the jumping off place, James "Boogie" Melerine, pastor, and ended up at Poydras BC where John Galey is the man.

I felt like the fellow who attended the tasting luncheon put on by the various restaurants around town. He sampled a little of this and a little of that, and when he got home he was full but he didn't know what of.

It was Mother's Day, and all the churches were honoring these special ladies. At Celebration, Craig had them come to the altar and the leaders crowded around them and prayed. At Delacroix, Boogie gave them gifts. Not sure if the other churches did anything specific for them.

Boogie preached from Matthew 15:21-28 "The Woman of Great Faith," John Galey preached on Godly Women from I Timothy 2 (more about that later), and Craig's sermon was "Don't Throw Momma From the Train", based on Proverbs 31. Intriguing title. The bulletin from Chalmette High School did not list sermon subjects.

Only one of the four churches is meeting in its original building. That would be Poydras, although they took great damage and extensive renovations were done. Before Katrina, there was no Celebration Church, St. Bernard Campus. In its place stood the FBC of Arabi. The floodwaters ruined the building and scattered the congregation, so they went out of business, bulldozed the structures, and gave the insurance money to Celebration Church of Metairie to begin a new work there. Previously, Craig Ratliff was the student minister.

The two congregations meeting at the high school--St. Bernard Baptist Church and FBC of Chalmette--saw their buildings ruined in Katrina. A new structure is being erected on the site of First Baptist, but St. Bernard's building was gutted and seems to be standing wide open.

The Delacroix Hope building was completely blown away by Katrina, with nothing left standing except the concrete block pilings. They're now worshiping in what used to be Creedmore Presbyterian Church on Bayou Road in the community of St. Bernard. Presently, they're still in the fellowship hall, and it appears there is still much work yet to be done in the sanctuary.

Hopeview Church where Jeffery Friend was pastor has been converted in the volunteer village for church teams coming in to work with Operation NOAH Rebuild. Further downriver, River's Edge Church is no more.

Our friends (readers) from outside this area who are unfamiliar with New Orleans should be reminded that St. Bernard Parish took the full brunt of the hurricane and almost no structure in the parish was left whole. You can drive down either of the two major east-west thoroughfares--St. Bernard Highway and Judge Perez Drive--and see entire strip malls still boarded up. Most neighborhoods are only sparsely settled.

All of these churches have lost members and all have gained new members who moved here since the storm. Three of the four I attended this morning had from 45 to 60 in attendance. Oddly, the smallest of the four prior to Katrina--Delacroix--now has the largest attendance, perhaps 60 to 70 this morning.

Couple of funnies....

An Important Word to A Very Few

A fanatic, they say, is someone who loves the Lord more than you do. Fanaticism is a charge frequently thrown at those of us on the conservative end of the religious spectrum in America today. We defend ourselves from such slander with assurances of our patriotism, our love for everyone friend or foe, and our dead-set ambition to practice the teachings of the Man of Nazareth. In fact, we sometimes say, we wish we were more fanatical about following Jesus than we are.

By that we mean, we wish we loved Him more, took His words more seriously, and were bringing every area of our existence into subjection to Him.

Enter any Southern Baptist church next Sunday--they're the only kind I have a close familiarity with, so we shall spare all the other brand names here--and you would be hard-pressed to find more than a half-dozen church members over-zealous in their Christianity. Most are like the rest of us, in a never-ending struggle to find the balance between this present world and the next, the physical and the spiritual.

Almost everything we write on this website about basic Christianity--loving, praying, studying the Bible, tithing, etc--is directed toward the great hordes of church members who, on a scale of one to ten, would rate themselves five or under in their dedication to Christ.

The following, however, we direct toward that small group of church members who, on a dedication scale of one to ten, come in at about eleven or twelve.

From the intriguing Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, today's lesson, boys and girls--you A students, you valedictorians, Phi Beta Kappas, over-achievers and perfectionists--has your name all over it.

1) Ecclesiastes 7:16 "Do not be overly righteous and do not be overly wise. Why should you ruin yourself?"

Hey, that's in the Bible. I didn't make it up.

Control Issues

According to the news reports from every direction, perhaps 100,000 residents of the small Southeast Asian country of Myanmar, formerly Burma, were killed by the recent Cyclone Nargis. It pushed into the lowest, most vulnerable section of the country with a storm surge that left only death and devastation in its wake. Over 2 million are said to be homeless. Meanwhile, the military junta ruling the country is blocking aid.

Those who know Myanmar say the ruling army is under the control of a group of poorly educated generals who are dead-set on keeping tight controls on the country lest the nations coming to help end up putting ideas in the minds of the people. Presumably, that would be ideas like liberty and free enterprise. Self-determination. Responsibility. Compassion.

Compassion seems to be in short supply with that bunch. Their only concern appears to be for themselves and their control over this nation that rivals Haiti in our hemisphere for the title of poorest-nation-on-the-planet.

We're told that so far--this is being written on Friday evening, six days after the cyclone hit--only a tenth of the neediest people have been reached with supplies necessary for life.

I appreciate the patience and perseverance of outside governments and agencies like the Red Cross that are trying to comply with the red tape and regulations being imposed by the generals before being approved to help their people. One wonders if the governments of the world could not simply rise up and say "enough of this foolishness" and land a few hundred planes at once and dare anyone to try to stop them as they fan out into the needy areas with food and supplies.

I mean, do we just let people die because the leaders who stole the country are unfriendly to outside help and unwelcoming to strangers?

On a different scale, every veteran pastor of any denomination knows this frustration. It's not just us Baptists, although it is most definitely us. It's a human problem, not just a religious one, although it is that, too.

Someone or a small group of someones have seized control of a church and insist on calling the shots. The fact that their congregation is needy and others want to come in and help matters little to them, particularly if the cost for receiving help is that they would lose control. They turn a cold shoulder to offers of assistance and prefer to let the church struggle and die rather than losing authority.

What I Learned at the 50th Reunion of My High School Class

We graduated in May of 1958 from the Winston County High School in Double Springs, Alabama. We were all so glad for that long-anticipated event to arrive, once it was over we quickly scattered in our own directions without a thought to the fact that we were seeing some of our classmates for the last time. We had no way of knowing that in a few short years our school would burn down or that by the 50th anniversary of our graduation, over one third of our members would no longer be living.

There is a reason only older people attend class reunions. They know.

The recent graduates are still in college somewhere or serving Uncle Sam or trying to get established in low-paying jobs and can't afford the trip back home. But mostly they don't come to reunions because they haven't figured it out yet.

They think they have forever. They think of the rest of us as oldsters, like ancient relics of a previous civilization that has no bearing on the world they live in today. They have no idea that the time between now and their fiftieth will seem like weeks. They will still be looking upon themselves as the younger generation when suddenly their twentieth reunion will be announced in the newspapers.

If they're like me, the twentieth will be the first reunion they attend. And if they're really like me, they will open the door and look in that room, taking in all the bald heads and unfamiliar faces, and decide this can't be my class and walk on down the hall looking for the real class. They will soon realize there is no one else in the building and that this is their class.

That's the moment when they start to grow up.

Their real education begins then. Everything up to that moment has been prep school. Today is the first day of class. This school does not let out for the rest of their lives.

As I see it, here are the lessons they begin to learn and the lessons that were firmly entrenched by the time of our fiftieth last Saturday afternoon in Double Springs.

1) Old friendships are pure gold.

Lynn Pope and I shared one of those old-fashioned double desks at Poplar Springs Elementary in the school term of 1951-52. A two-room affair run by a husband and wife, three grades in each room, this school had changed very little from the days my mother attended its predecessor a mile down the highway. Next year, Lynn and I moved on to Double Springs for junior high. He is the sole classmate with whom I shared seven years of schooling.

We thought of Double Springs as "town." We were rural and most of the others in the class were "town," as though of another species. The truth is most of our class members were bused in from outlying areas of the county the same way we were. There were 100 of us at the start of the seventh grade. Six years later, we were just over 50 strong, the 50th graduating class of that school.

If you can imagine having fifty or more brothers and sisters, that was us. We did just exactly what siblings do, too--we fought and argued, we laughed and went on trips and played games, we teased and cried and worked alongside each other. Over the years, we came to learn that these are the dearest people on the earth.

2) People are precious.

What to Expect When We Open the Word

My friend Marilyn called the other day. Her adult son is scheduled to be interviewed for a church staff position and she had been prepping him. "It takes place at a lunch," she said, "and that may not be the best venue for showing off Robert's talents."

She explained that Robert could stand some improvement in his eating habits. "I told him to eat slowly, to cut his meat into small portions, and not to talk with food in his mouth. Basic stuff like that." Then she said, "It's important that he not go there hungry and overeat, so I urged him to eat a little snack in advance. After all, this is one dining experience that is not about eating."

I said, "That's in the Bible. The part about not overeating at an important meal."

"You're kidding." I assured her I wasn't, although I could not recall the exact proverb that made the case.

Later that day, she texted me that she had located the verse. Proverbs 23:1-2 reads, "When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee. And put a knife to thy throat if thou be a man given to appetite."

I can't find anything in God's Word cautioning us against parking our chewing gum underneath the dinner plate, but I've known at least one candidate for a church staff position who could have used the advice.

Anyone who spends regular time in God's Word is constantly being surprised at what he finds there, how current is its counsel, and how practical its advice.

Take Luke chapter 17. I sat in church last Sunday prior to the sermon--someone else was to preach, so my mind was unencumbered--and was struck by how the various incidents in this chapter connect with each other, giving us a number of excellent insights on Christian living.

(Note: what follows works only if you first look up Luke 17, then read through verse 21.)

On the surface, that passage seems to be made up of unrelated bits of teaching: Jesus advises the disciples on how to treat a stumbling brother, He informs them that even mustard-seed faith can do wonders, He delivers a parable on how they should look upon themselves at the end of the day, and so forth.

A quick reading fails to see their inter-connectedness.

Then it occurred to me that this passage, all of it, is about expectations.

I. "What you may expect." Luke 17:1-6

The Hardest Funeral I Ever Held

Sometimes you pity the preacher. When everyone has been shocked into silence and stillness by a death of tragic or untimely proportions, he's the one who has to stand up and voice the grief and try to put the life of the deceased into focus. While they're grieving, he goes to work.

Charlie Dale pastors the Grace Baptist Church in the Bywater section of New Orleans. This weekend, two men in our city were walking on sidewalks and were killed by motorists. One took place 5 blocks from Charlie's church, the only in the central business district. Charlie will be holding the funeral of the latter one Wednesday morning.

If Charlie and other pastors are like me, even while they are in the midst of the mourning and grieving, when they are struggling to find just the right words, and while their hearts are being torn in two, they will feel a surge of inner joy that few others would understand. That joy is the evidence that God has called that pastor into this ministry, that he is doing the very thing for which God created him.

How many funerals have I conducted over 46 years of ministry? I made no attempt to keep records on such. But if you conservatively figure just one funeral a month, the number exceeds 500. Most were normal and fairly indistinguishable from the others. A few stand out.

The strangest funeral I ever held was for a 64 year old man and his 32 year old grandson. Now, stop and do the math on that. How could a 64 year old man have a grandson that age? The answer was that the old man (ahem; I'm 68) had died 10 years previously and the family had kept his ashes, but there had never been a funeral. Now that the grandson was dead and would receive a funeral service, the family included grandpa.

Purely N'Awlins

Early Monday morning, when I wish I could have slept, I went through the newspapers that had accumulated in my absence. Most of the news was old by then, but here are a few items readers might find of interest.

Steve Scalise, Republican, won election to Congress Saturday. He replaces Bobby Jindal, our new governor. Scalise won 3/4ths of the vote, easily defeating the Democrat, college professor Dr. Gilda Reed.

On the other hand, a Democrat has won the 6th District for Congress, for the first time since 1974. Now the problem for Congress will be learning how to pronounce Don Cazayoux's name. (Cazzah-you, I suppose)

New Orleans mayor C. Ray Nagin has become a superdelegate to the Democratic convention scheduled for later this summer. Okay, mayor, Hillary and Barack are calling.

The resident curmudgeon of the Times-Picayune, James Gill, has been writing for this paper for the past couple of centuries it seems. Locals are still talking--and the paper is still going on--about how FBI Special Agent in Charge James Bernazzani was sacked by the big man in Washington, D.C., for even talking out loud about running for mayor of this city. James Gill writes that Bernazzani is one ignorant fellow for losing his job over a position he cannot qualify for. Turns out that to run for mayor, one must have lived her for five years, something the G-man misses by a few months.

Someone wrote to the paper rather unhappy with Gill and the way he put down Bernazzani, calling him clueless. "We need ten more just like Bernazzani," he said, "while the one James Gill we have is one too many."

Ryan Perrilloux has been kicked off the LSU football team. He's a local boy and three years ago ranked as one of the nation's premier high school talents. When he signed at LSU, he beamed, "I'm going to win the Heisman all four years." Now, look at him. Coach Les Miles isn't talking, but those who do say he's immature, does not follow through on commitments he makes to the coach, and tested positive for drugs recently. Sad. He seems to be his own worst enemy, a not uncommon problem.

Everyone waits to see what will happen at the Hornets-Spurs basketball playoff game tonight. Saturday night, at the break between the first and second quarters, the Hornets' mascot, SuperHugo, tried a stunt that backfired. He ran, jumped onto a small trampoline and vaulted through a burning hoop to dunk the ball. That worked fine. Then the people helping him could not extinguish the fire. The plan called for them to smother the flames, but when the fire did not cooperate, arena officials grabbed fire extinguishers and began spraying furiously. That put the fire out, but coated the arena floor with something like fine sand. A delay of some twenty minutes followed as workers labored to clean the mess and make the floor safe for the players. During halftime, workers came back out onto the court and tried to finish their job.

Such foolishness. I guarantee that stunt will never be performed here again, and it will be interesting to see if SuperHugo still has a job. Just play ball, I say.

Watching Saturday night's game from Nauvoo, you couldn't help but notice all the fans wearing gold t-shirts. Turns out the Hornets laid 18,000 of them across every seat in the New Orleans Arena. Neat.

One more sports thing. In Saturday's Kentucky Derby, one of our true "characters," Ronnie Lamarque--car dealer, singer, showman--had his horse, Recapturetheglory, come in fifth. Lamarque is the subject of a front-page article in Thursday's Times-Picayune. Underneath his photo, get this: "Vivacious car dealer has found God, quit drinking."

Wednesday through Sunday of this Week

Wednesday, I drove to Alpharetta, Georgia, the headquarters of our denomination's North American Mission Board. My first time to see this wonderful new building in the midst of a pristine environment. One block from Andy Stanley's Northpoint Community Church. Living in an old city, New Orleans, and one that tends to be rustic and rather dirty and these days, in great need, I find myself wondering how one gets up in the morning in his neatly manicured world and goes to work in a shiny new building where everything shines and everything works that is supposed to.

Thursday noon through Friday noon, six of us from New Orleans joined with Dr. David Hankins (Executive Director of the Louisiana Baptist Convention) and his right-hand man Mike Canady, as we conferred with Dr. Geoffrey Hammond (Executive Director of NAMB) and all of his senior staffers on the subject of a longterm partnership directed toward the rebuilding of the city, the church, and the ministries of New Orleans. My choice here is to write almost nothing about this meeting or take two hours to tell everything. I've just returned home, it's late Sunday night, and I'm tired beyond belief, so I'll tell the story later.

Friday, I drove to my folks' home at Nauvoo, Alabama, taking the cross-country route from Alpharetta through Marietta, Cedartown, over to Piedmont, Alabama, then to Gadsden, Cullman, Double Springs, and home.

Saturday was the alumni meeting for Winston County High School at Double Springs, where my siblings and I attended from 7th through 12th grades. (Ron graduated in '54, Glenn in '55, Patricia in '56, I in '58, Carolyn in '60, and Charlie in '62) Over the 50 years since my graduation, I think I've attended three or four of these school-wide alumni gatherings, but have been to quite a few of my class's reunions. The class of '58 will tell anyone who pauses to listen that ours is the best class ever.

The class of '58 had maybe 55 or so graduates. Over these years 18 have died. We had 24 there Saturday afternoon, including Quinton Daniels who drove in from Kalamazoo, Michigan, the day before, and--how about this one--Harold Brownlow who flew in from Indonesia.

Couple of reflections here....