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Thursday evening, I was waiting in the local CVS for my prescription and took a seat. Two chairs over sat a young woman who looked beyond tired. I said, "Hard day?" She answered, "Stress."
I probably should have left it there, but said, "Stress at work or Gustav stress?" She said, "Gustav. It's all everyone at work is thinking about and no one has a clue what it's going to do or what we need to do."
The very definition of stress for my money.
We don't know where the hurricane is going, we don't know how big or how strong it will be, we don't know whether we should leave or stay, and if we leave, we aren't decided on where we should go or what to take with us.
If that's where I am, I guarantee it's where a half-million of us are.
By David E. Crosby, Pastor
First Baptist New Orleans
The cancelations are rolling in. Formal Katrina remembrances are being replaced by an unstoppable barrage of unwanted, terrifying memories. Productive work is now on hold. All eyes are on the Gulf of Mexico and the unseeing, unfeeling specter of Hurricane Gustav.
He has me churning already. His powerful winds and deadly aim at New Orleans are dredging up suppressed memories of midnight runs, stranded plans, and emotional partings.
An emergency meeting to batten down the hatches turned into a torrent of tormented remembrances. Pets are a problem. The elderly need help. Temporary office accommodations are available in Montgomery, Alabama.
The post-Katrina newcomers are staring at me, maybe a little mystified. I am waving my arms too much. My voice is strained, and my animation seems bigger than the situation calls for.
Someone voices the "no evacuation" sentiment. A Katrina survivor who fished his loved ones out of the flood jumps back in his chair, shaking his head violently. "No, sir! I'm not staying." No one knows how to escape this gaping fissure running through our collective lives.
Lunch is now the hour of dark speculation and ominous prediction. "If we flood again, that's the end for New Orleans. No one will come to help us."
Everything in me resists. I don't want to do this, not even think this.
1) Borrow.
In the secular world, this is called plagiarism. But we pastors know "God richly gives us all good things to share" or something like that. Fortunately, your people don't read other preachers' sermon books anyway, so they'll never know. (Disadvantage: if the written sermon bombed, chances are yours will, too.)
2) Repeat.
Everyone knows repetition is a proven learning technique. Warning: do not call these sermons 'repeats' or 're-runs.' "Previously preached' is also verboten. If you have to put a label on them, try 'Back by popular demand.' It sounds better.(Disadvantage: some little sister in the church writes in the margins of her Bible every time you have preached a particular text, so you'll need to vary your Scripture even if it's the same sermon.)
3) Confess.
Tell a story out of your childhood and turn it into a microcosm of the universe, or at least of the gospel. Didn't Phillips Brooks call preaching 'truth through personality'? The advantages are that you are the authority on yourself, no one can contradict you, and very little study time is required. (Disadvantage: if nothing dramatic has happened to you, this can get boring quickly.)
4) Obvious.
The internet news headline says the people of New Orleans are "nervous" about Hurricane Gustav which at this moment is battering Haiti, but is headed toward Jamaica and the Caymans and then into the Gulf. After that, who knows?
Well sir, all the prognosticators we check with show the storm coming this way. They'll say that, then turn right around and say, "But no one knows; it's too early."
Local radio talk shows today are dealing with 90 percent Gustav and 10 percent the Democratic convention. They "take you live" to a briefing by the city, the parish, the highway patrol, this emergency board or that one, and they all say the same thing: "Too early to say where Gustav is coming, but it's not too early for citizens to begin preparing to leave. Better start planning your exit and your destination."
A friend in Jackson, Mississippi, has invited us to come to their place. My son Neil contacted his aunt Carolyn in Jasper, Alabama, to see if her guest rooms were available. Hotels up and down the interstates are working overtime taking reservations for the weekend.
Governor Bobby Jindal has indicated that if Gustav does come toward Louisiana, he will begin the contraflow on Saturday. For you highlanders, a contraflow is when all lanes of a highway become one way and that way is "out of here."
I had lunch with a pastor today, Wednesday, who tells me his church is ready, that they have all the contact information on his church members in case they evacuate, and that they are fine financially if they have to miss a Sunday or two.
Lynn Gehrmann, our office's administrative assistant, canceled a scheduled medical procedure set for tomorrow, Thursday, in order to handle some office financial things we need to have with us in case of evacuation and shutdown.
We think the city is safer than it has ever been, thanks to the steady work of the Corps of Engineers and FEMA over these three years, but the question no one can answer is, "Is it enough?"
Over the last three years since Katrina did her work on our part of the world, I have wondered if I've been too hard in this blog on our city leaders for their failure to provide the visionary leadership the rebuilding effort has needed but not received.
Apparently not.
In Monday's Times-Picayune, the front page features a far harsher assessment of the poor leadership of New Orleans than anything I've ever given. The speaker is General Douglas O'Dell, Federal Recovery Coordinator and the personal representative of President Bush down here. He succeeded Donald Powell in this position last April, after a long career in the Marines. As the Recovery Coordinator, O'Dell "troubleshoots recovery efforts among federal, state and local officials in New Orleans and across the Gulf Coast."
Evidently the general is a fast read. He has wasted little time in getting to the heart of matters. Here's the gist of his statements.
About Mayor C. Ray Nagin and his administration:
There is a growing frustration in the nation's capital over the slow pace, inefficiency, and incompetence of City Hall's efforts to manage the recovery of this city after the hurricane of August, 2005.
New Orleans' recovery efforts are "convoluted" and "bewildering." The gears do not "mesh at any level." When O'Dell met with key leaders several months ago, he found them "as bewildered as I was."
About the city's recovery czar, Dr. Ed Blakely:
Blakeley is often absent, unavailable, and does not return phone calls. He produces "ethereal visions" of great recovery plans that are unrealistic and cannot be financed with federal dollars. O'Dell said, "I'm basically asking Blakely, who's probably getting paid a whole hell of a lot more money than I am, to do his damn job." (Excuse me, Mom.)
My eight grandchildren have been buying school clothes and getting ready for new adventures. Their situations are all different, with the three local children (Grant, 14, and Abby & Erin, 11) going to a Catholic school which started classes last week, the two North Carolinians (Darilyn, 11, and Jack, 6) being home-schooled, and the three in New Hampshire (Leah, 18, Jessica, 17, and JoAnne, 10) going to a public school. Leah will be starting at the local community college this winter.
When Leah turned 13, we were chatting on the phone. "I'm growing up on you," she said. I've never forgotten that line and the sadness that washed over my soul. It's so true. Much too fast for grandpa.
I wasn't through enjoying their childhood and now they're leaving it behind so swiftly you'd think they didn't know how precious it was and how nothing will ever be like it was.
I still remember the day I was pushing Grant on the swing in his front yard. I said, "Grant, in two weeks, you will be three years old. And then what's going to happen?" His folks were planning a birthday party and I knew he would be excited.
"Gum!"
I said, "What?"
He said, "When I turn three, Daddy's going to let me chew gum." He was excited about that.
Each generation seems to get a little finer, grow a little taller (Grant is an inch over me, we noticed last night), and be a little smarter. And we wouldn't have it any other way.
The kids call my Mom "Granny," which has always seemed strange to me because that's what we called her mom, who died in February of 1963. I still call her "Mom."
She keeps asking, "Have you thanked the people on your blog for sending me all those birthday cards?" I keep meaning to. At last count, she'd received around 75. (I guarantee she still has every one of them, in a basket somewhere in the dining room.)
So, I thank you on her behalf. I'm not promising we won't do the same thing again next year, understand. With her numbers now entering the stratosphere, each birthday becomes more rare and more precious than all the others before it.
This morning I was lying in bed pondering why mom still goes to church. She hurts all over and has trouble walking. The walker sits near the front door for use when she leaves the house. Getting ready for church takes longer and longer.
Most of the people I know would have quit going a year or two ago. If you're looking for an excuse to get out of church, she has the best one: she's just not able. Yet she goes.
Back when Margaret and I were in seminary, the major cost was just living. Tuition and books were so inexpensive as to be neglible, if you can believe that. These days, like everything else in our world, nothing comes cheap.
I recall we ran up a big bill at McCune's drug store around the corner from the seminary. Forty dollars. Seems funny now, but it wasn't at the time. These days, my one prescription for lipitor costs three times that every month.
Back then, we would periodically receive a check from one of Margaret's aunts, Winona Franklin of Eutaw, Alabama. It might be five dollars and it might be fifty. Down in the lefthand corner, she would write, "For love."
I told that story at her funeral a couple of years ago and suggested we could engrave those two words on her tombstone, for everything she did in life was love-driven.
A Sunday School class at Central Baptist Church in Tarrant, Alabama, where I had been on staff for six months prior to seminary sent us monthly checks for a few dollars over the first year until I became pastor of a church near New Orleans. They didn't write "for love" on them, but they might as well have. We knew.
David grew up in one of my pastorates and he says I led him to Christ, although I have no memory of that. I do recall performing his marriage to Tammy. They later went off to seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, where he got a masters degree and they began serving churches. Recently, they moved back to campus after a difficult three years in a church they served.
"This is a good time to get a little more education," David said, and told me the area he would be studying. They have had a hard time finding jobs, so I contacted the church he grew up in, and the pastor sent some financial help. Today, as I write, David e-mailed that he is working part-time in Best Buy and loving it. Tammy is still looking.
Oddly, before turning on the computer this morning, I had them on my heart and had decided the Lord wanted me to forward to them a little of the financial blessings He has sent my way. Then I received Dave's e-mail note and followed through.
Down in the lower left corner of the check, I wrote "For love." Aunt Winona would be pleased.
Saturday, when Barack Obama introduced Joe Biden at a rally in Springfield, they each made slips-of-the-tongue that had to have been embarrassing.
In presenting Biden, Senator Obama said, "Let me present to you, the next president of the United States---er, the next Vice-President of the United States, Joe Biden."
Then, when Biden was concluding his remarks, he really blew it. "Let me pay tribute to the next President of the United States--Barack America."
That's what he said. Ew. How embarrassing was that.
Reminds me of the time Senator Ted Kennedy was trying to get Obama's name out--back when it was unfamiliar to all of us--and he called him Osama Bin Laden or something. Hard to live down, I betcha.
Preachers understand. We've been there and done that.
I once called the groom by the best man's name in the middle of a wedding.
I've stood at the front door at the end of the worship service, greeting people and calling them by name, and gotten more than a few names wrong. I once called a young woman up to the podium to give a testimony on a mission trip she had made and called her the wrong name.
My pastor friend Larry went to the wrong Mrs. Sullivan's house to inform her that her husband had been killed that day. She refused to believe him, thankfully, because it turned out she was right. The secretary who sent the pastor to that house was in hot water, however.
Two or three people have forwarded to me the "youtube" video of Barack Obama addressing a crowd without a teleprompter and losing his fabled eloquence. In the clip, he stumbles verbally, has trouble expressing himself, can't find the word he's looking for, and begins again several times before finally giving up on the point he was trying to make.
I didn't laugh. As Molly used to tell Fibber in the old radio show, "Tain't funny, McGee."
I'd appreciate your prayers that I'll be effective, used of God to exalt Christ and to stand people on their feet. Thank you.
THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER
2 Tuesday - Gulf Coast Baptist Association pastors in Gulfport, MS that morning
7-10 Sunday thru Wednesday - Revival at FBC Fulton, MS. Andy Vaughn is pastor.
13 Saturday - "Ridgecrest on the River" at NOBTS - I'm leading two conferences for church leaders
14 Sunday - (evening service) FBC Lafayette, LA
21-23 Sunday thru Tuesday -- meeting at FBC Long Beach, MS
These are mostly unrelated, but are matters you might be interested in.
10) Do other states have this problem?
Just inside Metairie, 30 feet from New Orleans on a tiny spit of land jutting out into Lake Pontchartrain, stood SidMar's restaurant for as long as I've been in New Orleans. It was a place for fresh fish and great po-boys and was mostly a tavern, I suppose. I ate there once but it wasn't my style. Katrina put them out of business with damage to the building, then the state came in and took over all that land so the Corps of Engineers could construct the most massive floodgates you've ever seen right where the lake and the 17th Street Canal intersect. I've heard one billion dollars mentioned as the cost of that one project.
Anyway, the owner of SidMar's was in the news this week saying the state does not want to reimburse him for his property. Turns out the property was never his, the state says, due to an old law that established all the land along the lake and certain other places as belonging to the state. "Then why," the owner asks, "have I been paying state taxes on that restaurant all these years if it wasn't mine?"
In the last session of the state legislature, lawmakers addressed this and many wanted to do the right thing and give the man the money due him, but a majority felt it would open the state up to similar claims throughout the southern portion of the state where the same situation prevails.
In Jefferson Parish, if you drive River Road (which borders the Mississippi River) down to where you enter Orleans Parish, you'll find a small driveway that crosses the levee. Signs warn you not to enter, but if you do, you find a half dozen ancient fishing camps alongside and even over the river. I've been told these were grandfathered in many years ago and that the people who live there do not officially live in Louisiana, but only in the United States.
If they are ever washed away, the residents can forget about the government paying for the property.
9) The vacant city?
In the days following Hurricane Katrina's devastation to our part of the world, I began calling on pastors and churches to see who was still in business and who needed our immediate help. At the First Baptist Church of Luling, Pastor Todd Hallman gave a brief tour of his fellowship hall which they had turned into a distribution center, supplying necessities for storm victims. Boxes and boxes of clothing and supplies sent from all over the nation were stacked along three walls. In the hallway, small refrigerators lined one wall, gifts from a California hotel that was being renovated. Volunteers were everywhere and a constant stream of people flowed in and out of the buildings, entering empty-handed and leaving heavily laden.
Todd said, "One of our leaders returned from evacuation and saw all this and became indignant. He wanted to know who gave me the authority to turn the church into a distribution center."
He smiled. "I told him it was a no-brainer."
That's as good an answer as any, and probably all the man needed. Some things do not need explaining, discussing, or being voted on. You just do it.
Over the past three years since the August 29, 2005, hurricane, we have found ourselves confronted by a number of no-brainers.
Among them are these....
1) This city and its businesses need strong visionary leadership if we are to make a comeback.
Some sectors of the city have been led capably; others not at all. For the most part, what we have received from our elected leadership has been promises, pronouncements, controversy, and blame, but very little in the way of courageous leadership.
2) We need outside help in extreme measures to recover from an emergency of this size.
Josh is 24 years old, midway through his masters degree at the seminary, and this is his first pastorate. For 90 minutes tonight, he met with an ordination council made up of eight ministers. We heard his testimony and asked questions on his beliefs and probed his understanding of the work God has thrust him into.
I was impressed by his maturity and the depth of understanding of concepts it took me decades to grasp.
As the group discussed Josh's work in the small church he is leading and offered advice for future ministry, I searched my memory for some story to leave with him, something he will remember, an insight to latch onto during some future crisis.
Then I remembered.
Joe Cothen is retired now after a long ministry of pastoring churches, teaching seminary students, and lastly, serving as academic dean at our local seminary. His distinguished brother Grady served as president of a Baptist college, of Lifeway Christian Resources, and of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. A third brother was also a Baptist minister, as was their father before them.
Dr. Cothen remembers the day his father sat his three young preacher boys down in the back yard and gave them advice on the Lord's work they would remember the rest of their lives.
"Boys," he said, "the Lord has put a delicate balance in the church. He has put just enough headstrong, ornery church members to keep you the pastor humble. And He has put just enough sweet godly saints to keep you from quitting."
Joe would tell that, let it soak in, then add, "Every church I ever pastored, I found both groups."
I looked across the room at Josh and said, "Now, if a pastor focuses on the negative group--the critics, the naysayers--he will become discouraged and want to quit."
"And if he focuses only on the positive, supportive group--the ones who adore him and think he can do no wrong--he will become too enamored with himself and become puffed up."
"Either way, he will be unusable to the Lord."
"The key is to keep your focus on the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone."
Saturday night, stuck in the checkout line at the local Rite-Aid, I became involved in a little scene.
The checker was ringing up the purchases of a man about 40 years old who had a small child with him. On the other side of the checker, near the front door, stood an older man, perhaps 75 or 80, who was trying to get her attention. "Ma'am," he kept saying, "Is it all right if I take this out to the car to show my wife?" He was holding up some item from the store. The checker was giving her attention to the man and child in front of her.
Finally, the customer at the checkout snapped at the older gentleman, "No! It is not all right to take that outside!" The old man was flustered and said, "She's in the car. I just want to see if this is what she wants. I'll be right back."
"No, sir!" said the younger man. "You're not allowed to take things outside you haven't paid for!"
The old man said, "Well, what if I leave my umbrella? I'll be right back."
"No!" the young man said. "Leave your drivers license."
While this was going on, those of us in the checkout line were silently watching this scenario and fascinated at the attitude of the customer who was bullying the old guy.
The old man said to him, "Are you a manager of this store or something?"
The younger fellow said, "No, I'm not. But I know how these things are done!"
I'd taken about all of this I could. From the back of the checkout line, I called out to the old man, "Sir! You may ignore the customer. Do what you have to do!"
The younger man stared at me contemptuously, took his child by the hand, and left.
As he exited the door, the manager came over and took care of the older gentleman. The woman in front of me turned and said, "Who in blue blazes did that fellow think he was, talking to that old man that way?" I laughed and agreed that he was definitely a buttinsky.
When I got home and told me wife this little tale, she--filling the role of a wife so neatly--said, "And who did you think you were, rebuking him like that?"
My Scripture reading that very morning from the first chapters of Mark's Gospel had been on this same subject: authority. That little word deals with who we think we are, who we really are, and what gives us the right to do what we do.
Consider these instances from the first days of Jesus' ministry....
Watch her on the diving board in that moment just before she springs. I cannot tell you exactly what is going through the mind of this world-class champion diver, but I can guarantee what she is NOT thinking.
"I can't do this. I have no right to be here. I am unworthy. Who do I think I am standing before millions of people representing the United States of America? There are so many others worthier and better divers than I. Oh, Lord, help me get through this."
Not if she wants to do well, she doesn't think that way.
And yet, untold numbers of God's people approach the tasks of their days in just this way. The odd thing is we call it humility and somehow think God approves of such an attitude. Not so.
"Oh, why was I chosen to sing the solo in this year's pageant? So many others sing better than I do. I am unworthy. O God, use this worthless servant. May my poor effort be a worthy offering to Thee."
"I have no right to be sitting in your living room witnessing to you about Jesus Christ. I'm a failure in so many ways. If I got what I deserved, I'd be in hell. But, I'll go ahead and do my best."
"I know I'm the poorest Sunday School teacher in the church. My class is infinitely patient with me. I hope the pastor finds someone more capable who is willing to teach this class. Maybe it will grow if someone else were in charge."
Sound familiar?
10. Don't glide, but stroke to the finish.
Mike Cavic was gliding to the finish in Friday night's 100 meter free-style. Just behind him, Michael Phelps was still pumping, stroking. That final half-stroke propelled Phelps forward to touch the electronic pad one-hundredth of a second before Cavic. Along with a billion other viewers, I could see that Cavic had won. We were all knocked out to see Phelps' name flashed on the screen as the winner. Turns out his mother was surprised, too. The television cameras showed her deflated reaction to what appeared to be a loss, then relief and elation flooding over her as she realized he had won the race and his seventh gold medal.
Stroking made the difference.
Over the past few days, being on vacation allowed me to watch more of the Olympics than would have normally been the case, and I had wondered about this. Why do swimmers go all-out during the race, then glide to the finish? It's definitely slower than stroking. You know it couldn't be so, but it appears they decided to give themselves a little break at the end.
I once knew a pastor who served his church faithfully for over a quarter of a century. He was a good man in a hundred ways. But those who worked alongside him said, "He retired five years before he quit."
He was gliding home.
9. It's getting harder and harder to tell what's real.
Turns out that the opening ceremony fireworks, watched by a billion people around the globe by television, was computer enhanced. Officials said they did not want to risk fires by exploding all the fireworks the occasion called for, so they did the next best thing: simulated much of them.
Nearly 30 years ago, I spent a few minutes in the studio of a professional photographer in Grenada, Mississippi, and watched him move the moon around on a photograph to get just the effect he wanted. Once he had it where he liked it, he printed the photo and no one was the wiser. I remember that now and think, "That was a generation ago. No telling what they can do now."
My wife and I were combing through antique stores in Jackson, Mississippi, some years back and noticed workers hammering away in a back room. "What are they doing?" I asked the owner. "Building antiques," she said. They were tearing apart ancient pieces of furniture no longer of use to anyone and using the wood to fashion new items which would then be marketed as antique.
The more we are surrounded by the fake, the "virtual," and the computer-generated, the more need there will be for God's people to be genuine and demonstrate to the world what the real article looks like.
8. If you want to win, build your team.
I saw a man jogging on the levee beside the Mississippi River this morning. As he approached, he seemed to be tilted slightly, running just a tad off balance. Then I realized one sleeve was hanging limply at his side. The absence of his left arm threw his body off balance.
Veteran Bible teacher Warren Wiersbe says there ought to be one more beatitude: "Blessed are the balanced."
When Rick Warren of Saddleback Church said the key issue of the 21st century church would be not church growth but church health, someone asked for his secret of church health. "In a word, balance," he said.
Rick Warren explained, "Your body has nine different systems (circulatory, respiratory, digestive, skeletal, etc). When these systems are all in balance, it produces health. But when your body gets out of balance, we call that 'disease.'"
He added, "Likewise when the body of Christ becomes unbalanced, disease occurs. Health and growth can only occur when everything is brought into balance."
In Matthew 6, our Lord showed His concern that the disciples find proper balance in their spiritual lives. On the one hand, they should not follow the example of religious hypocrites and theological play-actors who pray and give and fast in order to impress other people. On the other hand, they should avoid the practice of the pagans who pray for hours using chants and meaningless repetition in an attempt to impress God. Both are ditches to be avoided. In between these two extremes lies the "road," the path of balance.
In what we call "The Lord's Prayer" and our Catholic friends refer to as "The Our Father," Jesus gives a wonderful pattern for balance in the prayers of His people.
1. A balance between intimacy and community. "Our Father."
"Something about that champion swimmer doesn't look right," I thought, as the world watched America's Michael Phelps take another gold medal in Beijing. "It's something about his proportions."
Then, Thursday night, August 14, I found out what it is. Turns out I was right.
NBC's Bob Costas pointed out that Michael Phelps was "engineered" for swimming. He's 6 feet 4 inches tall, his feet are size 14 (like flippers, Costas said), and his huge hands work like scoops. However, his legs are short, just right for the body of a six-foot-tall man. His torso is V-shaped, with these massive shoulders tapering down to a 32-inch waist.
The rest of the field is beat before they enter the water. Michael Phelps was built for championships. Add to these natural gifts a talent for self-discipline and hard work, and it's all over. The sweet spirit and killer smile are icing on the cake.
In an Associated Press story, reporter Paul Newberry quotes a Russian swimmer who had come in second to Phelps. "He is just a normal person, but maybe from a different planet." An official who overheard that added, "The problem is, we have an extraterrestrial. No one else can win."
Sure glad he's on our side. At this point, he has won 6 gold medals, about half of all the USA has taken, and more than all but three or four nations of the world. He is a phenomenon. The best ever.
I imagine my sister and her family--that would be the PHELPS clan from Nauvoo, Alabama--are popping buttons right now. I would.
As a minister, I've encountered a few "Michael Phelpses" in the ministerial world over the years, people who seem to have been programmed for great success in the preaching and church-leadership world. They work hard, they love the Lord and do things right, but sitting there in the audience listening to them, you get the impression that they had a head start on the rest of us from the time they were born.
1) Turns out the mayor of Mandeville, whose antics and frantics have made him a rival to New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin for negative press, now saw that his relatives were awarded no-bid contracts in violation of state law. I suggest Hizzoner Eddie Price start looking for other work, 'cause he ain't long for City Hall.
2) A Katrina transplant to Texas, who narrowly escaped conviction for murder in 1999 when a local jury could not agree on a guilty verdict, later moved to Dallas and offed someone. The Texans who formed the jury took care of business and convicted him for first degree murder. Rondel Allen will be a resident of the state pen for the rest of his life. Sorry, Texas friends. If our people had done their job, a man would still be alive today.
3) Our fair state today becomes the last of all fifty to ban cockfighting. What took us so long?
4) In Greeley, Colorado, the body of a 25-year-old suicide victim has been found in the Pawnee National Grasslands. Standing guard beside the decomposing body of Jake Baysinger for the past six weeks was Cash, his German shepherd. The dog had been surviving on mice and rabbits, authorities say, but was thin and dehydrated. The very definition of faithfulness.
5) Critics of China are having fun with a little Milli-Vanilli trick that government played at the opening ceremony a few days ago. A wonderful 7-year-old, Yang Peiyi, sang "Ode to the Motherland" but because she has a chubby face and crooked teeth, a 9-year-old child actor was recruited to lip sync the words. It's all about the government's need to present a perfect image to the world, we're told. If they're serious about wanting to improve their image, they ought to end religous oppression and take a stand for human rights.
6) A Covington woman who served on the board of "Wishing Well Foundation USA, Inc.," a Metairie nonprofit set up to grant last wishes to seriously ill children, has been accused of embezzling $17,300 from the organization. She was the accountant and had been trusted. A German shepherd is more faithful.
I recognize that "small" is relative. In Texas, land of vast distances and megachurches, a congregation of 200 souls may rank as tiny indeed. In Nevada and Montana, a church of that number would be seen as one of the larger congregations.
One thing we know, small congregations fight a never-ending battle for money to pay the pastor a living wage, money to cover the regular bills plus invest in missions, and money to maintain a decent program. Leaders of small churches are forever looking for ways to be more effective with limited resources.
Decision-makers of such congregations might want to take a lesson from the owner of a major league baseball team situated in one of the smaller markets in this country.
Stu Sternberg is principal owner of the Tampa Bay Rays, Florida's American League baseball team. In the June 30, 2008, issue of "ESPN Magazine," Sternberg shares "8 things you should know about running a small-market baseball team."
In his article, we can find clues and insights here for a business or church being dwarfed by the big guys and having to get creative to stay competitive or effective.
1) Timing is everything.
Sternberg says there is no point in his team paying big bucks for a player he cannot afford to keep. So, what he does is watch for windows of opportunity, a moment when a quality player might be available for fewer dollars due to circumstances.
A small church may scrounge enough money to fund an ambitious program one time, but then what will it do? Better to prayerfully find the kinds of ministry suitable to their church, their mission field, their resources. Nothing is more important than seeking in prayer the will of the One who is the Sole Owner of your church.
2) Follow those Marlins.
Being a pastor since 1962, I've not had to do something most of my friends have accomplished numerous times over these decades: look for a church home. Until last week.
On vacation, I spent a long weekend--Thursday night until Monday morning--with our daughter and her three girls in a lovely town in New Hampshire. One reason for staying through the weekend was to help them find a church. It is not necessary to go into all the reasons why they had not done this on their own, but the granddaughters in particular were ready and willing to attend church and I know how fleeting these moments can be and felt the need to act now. Before making the journey northward, I enlisted the prayer support of a number of friends.
Immediately, I found myself facing the same question as many another church-seeker: how can we quickly find a church, the one suited for our needs, without taking the atheist approach?
Not that an atheist would be looking for a church, but if he/she did so, they would most likely do it on the basis of location, appearance, program, the various services it offers, the compatibility of its membership, and so forth. In other words, exactly the approach 90 percent of church seekers use.
I had no time for this. In town for one Sunday only, I would have one chance to get this right. That reason more than any other drove me to serious prayer.
Several choices appeared to hold possibilities. My oldest granddaughter, now almost 19, had joined the Catholic church some two years earlier. From her parents, she had received no religious instruction or leadership, and when her boyfriend's mother invited her to attend the Catholic church with them, she did so eagerly. She took the instruction classes and was baptized and loved everything about it, she says. But her younger sisters, ages 10 and 17, had attended only Baptist churches the few times they had gone, so with Grandpa being a Southern Baptist preacher and preferring something along that line, all three indicated a Baptist church would suit them fine.
The question was, which one.
I don't exactly write books; I tell other people to write books.
The story behind that cryptic comment is this: when Rudy and Rose French left New Orleans nearly a year ago, after an incredible two years in our post-Katrina city with so many ups and downs, I suggested Rudy write his experiences down. My initial thought was it would be therapy for him, help to "get it out of him."
The British have a saying that one handles tragedy by "tea and talk." Putting his experiences in writing became a form of talk for Rudy. The tea, well, Rose has to take care of that.
To my pleasant surprise, Rudy not only wrote his experiences and testimony down, he published it in a book. "You Can Learn A Lot From A Hurricane: My two years in New Orleans following Katrina" is Rudy and Rose French's story.
Now, Rudy and Rose are missionaries. They are missionaries everywhere they go, not just at some site where the denomination might send them. Recently, he went to Korea as a short-term missionary. Right now, they're living in Springville, Tennessee, and are missionaries there. For two years, they were missionaries to New Orleans.
Regular readers of this blog have heard some of my stories about Rudy. Some you didn't know it was Rudy I was writing about, because I didn't want to embarrass someone he was bumping up against in his service for the Lord. Rudy is the guy who left Canada, selling his gun collection to pay expenses, and drove to New Orleans to help us following the hurricane of August 29, 2005. When we didn't put him to work, he volunteered at one of our churches that was feeding state troopers from across America--and the ladies in the kitchen put him in charge of the garbage detail. Now, Rudy began to have a little attitude problem.
George Will says Barack Obama reminds him of Fred Astaire in that he's the coolest guy in the room and all eyes turn in his direction when he enters. But would you turn over your nuclear arsenal to Fred Astaire without knowing more about the character of the man? Nor with Obama.
My wife and I disagree about John Edwards.
When the news broke Friday about his affair with a woman who worked on his campaign and the baby who may or may not be his, Margaret commented that "all men are naturally that way." My first impulse was to utter, "Thanks a lot," but what I said was, "Edwards is beautiful to look at, fabulously wealthy, and was potentially the president of the United States. Don't you know a lot of women threw themselves at him."
If a certain percentage of women come on to pastors--and, as my seminary prof Dr. James Taylor warned in the mid-1960s, "It will happen to every one of you in this room," and he added, "Even you, McKeever," to laughter from the rest of the class--then you know that a guy like John Edwards has been in the crosshairs of many a woman.
That is not to make a judgement on the woman in the news said to be his paramour.
I found it overwhelmingly sad that every television news show felt an obligation to devote hours to a) a report on Edwards' affair, b) details on what had occurred, and c) speculation about how Elizabeth Edwards took the news and what this means for their family.
Welcome to the "National-Enquirer-ization" of our culture. Nothing is off limits; we no longer know any shame.
Oh, John Edwards is ashamed. But it's the media's constant hammering on what he did that strikes me as shameful. To my knowledge, at no time had he presented himself as beyond sin or without fault. We knew the man was fallible and capable of such sin, because--agreeing with my wife now--we're all that way, capable of the worst moral failures.
Evidently, some time recently, the Times-Picayune ran an editorial cartoon from Walt Handelsman, former cartoonist for the T-P and ever since with Newsday out of Long Island, in which he caricatured John McCain's twisted smile in some way. In going through all the newspapers I missed for nearly two weeks of vacation travel, I came across this letter to the editor from Tuesday, July 29.
"Walt Handelsman's caricature of a 'scowling' Sen. John McCain was a real thigh-slapper."
Following Katrina, as groups re-entered the city and began to organize for ministry, quite a few gravitated to the name NOAH as their title. Southern Baptists did, then found a United Methodist group already had staked it out, so ours became Operation NOAH Rebuild, the NOAH standing for "New Orleans Area Hope."
As we reported here recently, it now turns out the City of New Orleans had its own version of NOAH, the New Orleans Affordable Homeownership Corporation. Established as a non-profit outfit to supplement the work of volunteers who were being overwhelmed by the scope of the rebuilding yet to be done, NOAH has become a front page story for the worst of reasons. Thursday's headline reads, "Volunteers did the work but NOAH contractors got paid."
Two years ago, Mayor Nagin said he wanted the city to offer gutting services because the faith-based and grassroots organizations just couldn't do it all. This was the centerpiece of his 2007 budget, funded with several million dollars which, no doubt, came from the federal government directly or indirectly.
The NOAH agency was headed up by Stacey Jackson, who has resigned in the last couple of months. The office worked with sub-contractors who then gutted out houses assigned to them, turned in an invoice and were reimbursed by NOAH. That was the plan, at any rate, and it appears to have worked. Sort of. Somewhat. To a certain extent.
The fact is no one knows. No one from the city's NOAH agency checked to see that the work was done, we now learn.
So, among the scandals now coming to light is the fact that at least 90 homes which NOAH paid contractors to gut out were untouched by those companies, but volunteers from around the USA did all the work.
(We cannot emphasize too strongly this controversy has NOTHING to do with Operation NOAH Rebuild, which has never charged anyone a dime to gut out or rebuild a house. This is a ministry of God's people helping our people in need for the glory of Jesus Christ.)
Friends. They make life so much fuller, fun so much deeper, work so much easier, and burdens so much lighter.
I urge young pastors to "find yourself some friends; you're going to be needing some." Not all pastors know this or believe it.
Amazing how much independence and isolationism one finds among pastors. They will stand in the pulpit and exhort their members on the virtues of fellowship with one another. They will illustrate the point by the well-worn story of the pastor who sat in the living room of a straying church member and with the tongs, reached into the fireplace and moved a burning coal off to one side where it proceeded to die. The enlightened member told the pastor he got the point and would be in church the following Sunday. "We need each other," the preacher tells the congregation.
Pastors believe that for everyone except themselves.
The average pastor seems to believe that fellowship with other pastors is time wasted. Whether this is a personality quirk or some theological snag formed from a misreading of Scripture, I'm not prepared to say. But it's dead wrong.
The Lord thought the preachers needed to get together. He chose twelve--make no mistake, they were chosen to be preachers--and kept them together for three years. When He sent them out, it was in pairs. When God called missionaries, the first went forth as a team, Barnabas and Paul. The second generation was made up of Paul and Silas, plus Barnabas and John Mark. No one went alone.
On Paul's final trip to Jerusalem for Pentecost, he sensed a deep need to visit with the leaders of the church at Ephesus. A messenger traveled to that city to round up the church leaders, bringing them to the coastal town of Miletus for a day with Paul. Acts 20 describes the meeting and uses three terms for the leaders: elders, shepherds (pastors), and overseers (episcopos). We moderns would do well to note that the head of that congregation was not one hot-shot know-it-all man, but a number of people working together as a team.
How does one find a special friend? First, you won't find them in clusters, but one at a time, slowly, carefully.
My own plan is simple: ask God, then pay attention.
This land is far from being overpopulated. If you doubt that, take a drive and notice how mile after mile is woodland and farmland. Even New York State--which I crossed this week and will do so again Monday on my way South--is mostly one big city and a lot of rural countryside.
The corridor from Washington, D.C., northward through Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York City has the worst mishmash of interstates and toll highways imaginable. If you doubt this, get down your atlas and stand in awe. Some of the interstate segments are so scrunched in with the others, the pages have no room for the numbers. I missed a sign in New Jersey and went 10 miles out of my way before turning around and at the last minute finding the correct turn. The tolls coming up (from Washington to New England) figured out to something like 20 bucks.
One of the best traits of human beings is our adaptability to difficult situations. Drive through any of the interstate corridors in and around Washington, D.C., and be amazed that people who grew up in "normal-land, USA" can adapt to such killer traffic patterns and go on to deal with it every day. That's one of the most admirable traits of the human animal---and the fact that we put up with it one of the worst.
You'd think that after a while, a person would decide, "The stress of driving in this traffic is destroying my nervous system and dooming me to an early grave; I think I'll move to a quiet town somewhere." The fact that we don't, that we hang in there for the sake of a job and money, speaks volumes about us, and none of it is good.