The farm hasn't looked this green in a generation. Patricia and her husband James always have a nice garden and this year they've outdone themselves. Carolyn and her husband Van--they're buying Mom's place and beginning to farm it--have turned the land around the farmhouse into a lovely garden also. Sunflowers in the field just beyond the pear orchard. Scarecrows hanging from trees to scare off the deer. "The deer love okra," said Van. Who knew? Maybe they're making gumbo.

I timed my visit just right for the blueberries. Patricia has some 20 or 30 bushes in two fields, and they're loaded. I brought back what probably amounted to four gallons. James works in Birmingham and co-workers buy all he can bring to town. He sells them for $8/gallon which we've told him is much too low. Anyone who has spent 30 minutes picking a gallon will tell you that 50 dollars ought to be the minimum.

I'm by blueberries the way I have always been by peanuts. Whether they're good for you or not, we'll let the experts decide. But I eat them almost every day of my life just because I love them.

When you leave our house and head down Poplar Springs Road toward Nauvoo, where you intersect with Highway 5 (which runs from Jasper to Haleyville), just in front of you in that big barren space is where our family lived in the early 1940s. My earliest memories of life on this planet date back to that house owned by the coal company. I recall when the state paved that highway in 1946 and electricity came through about the same time.

Patricia and I would sometimes go into the woods behind the house picking blueberries. They grew wild, the plants no higher than your knee, only a few berries per bush. To me, they were like blue jewels. Patricia showed me how to crush them in a pint jar, and add water and sugar. The result was the sweetest, most wonderful taste I'd ever experienced. It was so special that I decided to save some for later. I stuck that jar half-filled with the nectar of the gods in the back of the pantry and checked on it from time to time. For a six-year-old, this was better than money in the bank. Then one day, I pulled out the jar and found myself staring at an inch of mold on top. I was broken-hearted to learn we had to throw the whole thing away.

Thus I began to learn about this fallen world we live in.

I brought back enough blueberries for everyone we know to have some. Thank you, Trish.

My Dad is a constant presence at our home even though he's been in Heaven for eight months now. No one sits in his chair, and I've not seen a soul in the swing on the front porch. That was his place.

I look at the huge old trees around the house which Pop built in 1954. He set out those trees himself, and now each one looks as though it has occupied that spot for a century. He planted the pear orchard and built the pond.

I always run by the cemetery when I'm coming that way. I know Pop's not there, but I feel closer to him there. To my surprise, I laid over the tombstone and wept like a baby, like I didn't even do when he died.

I would not bring him back to the kind of existence he knew the last year or so of his life. It's just that he was such a powerful, positive presence in our lives and left such a major hole when he left. I just miss him.

You understand, I'll bet.

Mom pointed out the telephone book for Walker County hanging by the phone. "Pop wrote up at the top of it. 'The last roundup.' He figured it would be the last one he would need."

When the mail came, Mom laughed. "The state of Alabama sent Pop a postcard telling him it's time to renew his drivers license." We laughed together. I brought the card home with me; don't ask me why. As one with a healthy view of death, Pop would have laughed at that postcard and said, "I beat them to it." He expired before the license did.

In fact, I carry his final drivers license in my billfold. He gave up driving 10 years ago, but renewed the license just for the fun of it, then gave it to me. We look enough alike, I've thought of using it for identification purposes just to see if they think I'm 95.

Dr. Mike Miller resigned as pastor of McElwain Baptist Church in Birmingham today. Three weeks from today, he will preach his first sermon as our pastor at First Baptist Church of Kenner. Everyone is beside themselves with joy and excitement.

Today is the final Sunday for our interim pastor, Dr. Mark Tolbert, professor at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. This church has loved his preaching and his leadership and recommends him strongly to any congregation needing an interim shepherd.

What I wonder is what in the sam hill are newspapers doing sending 40 year old men to cover movies for 10-year-old girls? In the movie, Kit is trying to get the Cincinnati newspaper to run her writings. So, why--this is such a no-brainer that even editors should have thought of it--why not get a 10 year old girl to review this movie?

Who wants to know what the local drama expert thinks of a children's movie? I for one don't.

Friday afternoon, I took our 11-year-old granddaughters, Abby and Erin, to see this movie. Until a few days ago, I had no inkling that a series of dolls exist in the name of this little girl or that to pre-teens, Kit Kittredge is as big as Nancy Drew (or maybe Barbie is a better comparison) was to earlier generations.

I was unable to take JoAnne, 10, who lives in New Hampshire or Darilyn, 10, but 11 later this month, who lives in North Carolina, with us. But wouldn't that have been a hoot, taking all four granddaughters of that age! Anyway, I did the best I could and took the two who are nearby. It was a fun two hours.

Okay, being your typical grandpa, I would have enjoyed sitting on a park bench for two hours with those two (and moreso, those four). So the fact that I had a good time tells you nothing about the movie.

Okay, the movie. I did what you do before choosing a movie, and checked it out on some of the internet rating places. Today, after seeing "Kit Kittredge," I'd like to go back to some of the reviewers who called it "simplistic" or "formulaic" and say to them, "Hey--it's a child's movie! It's not for grownups and certainly not for movie critics."

The truth is that "Kit Kittredge" is more purely a child's movie than most that claim that for themselves. So many cinematic offerings in that category--whether from Disney or Pixar or other well-respected houses--are fakes. The parents are sitting there enjoying the movie along with their young-uns, and getting all the little innuendos and inside jokes that were inserted for big people and no one else. Meanwhile, the kids are wondering what all the laughter is about.

In this movie, if a kid doesn't get the joke, it was thrown out. Movie critics don't know what to do with that.

The local reviewer said the outcome was "predictable." Well, I'm not as smart as the critic and I didn't predict it. Besides--and this is a biggie when it comes to children's movies--predictability has nothing to do with anything. Pick up the most popular book series on the planet, Nancy Drew, and see the titles: The Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase, and so on. The title gives away the plot. Do the little girls care? Not in the least.

That's why movies like this do not need to be reviewed and critiqued by sophisticated adults who are clueless as to what little girls want in their stories.

The bad guys in this movie are funny, they are bumblers, fools, and fun to watch. The parents are distracted and busy with adult tasks--it takes place during the Great Depression, so adults had plenty to worry about--and the children are the stars.

It's a children's movie, critics. Deal with it.

I seem to remember that in the first "Home Alone" movie, the only one worth paying two bucks to see, Kevin pulled off antics children might dream of doing but would never attempt, the bad guys were simpletons and idiots of the highest order, and the adults were irrelevant. Kids loved that movie. Real-world adults have little patience for such goings-on. That just made it even more fun for the little ones.

Adults can be truly weird when it comes to children's books and movies and television shows. If the writers have managed to slip in grown-up themes alongside the little-people plots and simplistic happenings, we adults decide only a genius could have accomplished such a feat. "This movie works on all levels," we hear. "The parents who take the children to see this movie will enjoy it as much as the little ones."

What that means is the writers and producers of that movie chickened out. They did not have the courage to make a movie just for their target audience, in this case, little girls. Wanting to impress critics and pick up extra stars in their ratings and more dollars in their receipts, they added the little wink-wink asides for the grownups.

The problem is they lose the kids. They miss them entirely.

As a pastor, I frequently did children's sermons in Sunday morning services. Mostly, I loved it but sometimes it felt burdensome, particularly when I ran out of ideas. The biggest temptation--one I fell prey to time and again--was to look at the boys and girls but tilt the message to the adults in the audience. Not good. The children sometimes did not have a clue what was going on when the adults laughed at a point I had made. No problem; it wasn't for the kids. I was a grownup, talking to grownups and using the children only as props.

What a fake. Why did I feel every children's sermon had to teach or tie in with some grand theological theme. I groan just thinking of some of the lessons I tried to convey. I'll not bore you with examples. (You're welcome.)

May I suggest we let the children be children. And when we do ministry for their age group in church, let's ignore all the grownups sitting in the bleachers watching.

The fact is most grownups I know love the idea of little children being protected and not being innundated with the kinds of concerns they themselves deal with every day of their real-world lives. If you make a children's movie or if you simply present a children's sermon in church, when tempted to insert snide remarks about the President of the United States or your disapproval of what's going on in Iraq, cut it out.

Literally. Cut it out.

Not everyone ought to be making children's movies, writing children's books, or producing children's television shows. Not everyone is qualified to teach boys and girls in church or tell the children's sermon in worship.

To do any of this well, the person has to have one over-riding quality in the mix with all his grownup features: he/she needs to have a childlike spirit.

A childlike spirit refers to the ability to block out the complexities of big-people life and to think as a child.

Jesus said, "Unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18:3)

We real-world adults are still trying to figure out what He meant by that.

Below are the eight points he makes. Rather than posting my comments on his website, the way bloggers invite readers to do--in fact, we treasure those comments and invite them here--I'll leave my conclusions here. I'm confident the professor would not appreciate much I have to say, my being Southern Baptist and no doubt a fundamentalist Bible-thumper to his way of thinking. Besides, he'd probably tell me if I'm going to write this much about what he said, I should get my own website. (I told a writer that recently. He/she came back and said, "Sorry. I don't keep up with all the places I blog.")

Well, since I have my own website, here we go.... Let's call the professor Henry and his wife Hankette.

1. Please, please keep your hands off my wife and off me.

Henry doesn't like hugging, and worse, he abhors people he has just met who stand there stroking his arm, shoulder, or back. Hankette is worse about this than he.

2. Do not call us out by name in front of the entire congregation.

Hank writes, "Our modus operandi when we're trying out a new place is to take in the full service, then decide whether to fill out the visitors' card." He says, "Handshakes? Smiles? Absolutely. But if we tell you our names, don't say to the whole congregation, 'Be sure to welcome Henry and Hankette who are sitting on the back row!'"

3. We'll come to the post-service potluck if we want to.

4. If we fill out a card, don't stalk us.

One church they visited promised, according to its website, that this is what would happen to those who fill out a visitor's card: immediately following the service, a church worker knocks at their door with a gift. He/she does not come in, but just gets acquainted at the door. Thereafter, for the next several months, telephone callers from the church periodically check on the visitors to see if they are being adequately welcomed and integrated into the community.

Henry writes, "That's right...after having a parishioner follow us home uninvited, we'd have had our own personal telemarketer for 'several months' thereafter."

5. There is no need to raise one's hands when singing.

In charismatic churches (his term), when worshipers raise one hand to the sky, palm out, while singing or praying, "this weirds me out," Henry writes. And then, on those occasions where they raise two--TWO!!--hands to the sky, he's out of there. "This led me to wonder if someone had kicked a field goal nearby." He adds, "Seriously, if there are multiple hands up, there's little chance I will return to that church."

6. I'm not a fan of the praise band.

A guitar, piano, organ--fine. But the keyboards drive Henry up the wall.

7. And if you must have a praise band, do not...do not...do NOT clap on one and three.

Henry writes, "Now, anyone 70 and younger who matured in the post-Elvis era should have no trouble understanding the idea of clapping on the backbeat."

Now, personally, I do not have the foggiest notion what clapping on one and three or on the backbeat means. As one with a stunted sense of rhythm, I've noticed my tendency to clap on the opposite beat from the one church members around me are emphasizing. I take that as a birth defect and usually choose not to clap at all.

8. Presentation really matters in a sermon.

Henry and Hankette do not like jokes in a sermon. They don't want the minister to "put on a show." "If entertainment were my goal, I'd stay home with the TiVo. Instead, I want a time and place to think about God and re-center myself."

Henry writes, "I don't even go to church to make friends. That's a secondary concern. I do hope to make friends at church, but that's a byproduct of meeting people with similar values. But when I'm at a service, it's not to be friendly; it's to connect with God."

He concludes with these fascinating lines....

"When any of these seven (he had eight) rules above are broken, I can't re-center. I can't connect."

"So, we'll keep shopping around. If you're a member of (a church of his denomination) in (that area of the Northwest), we might be visiting you next. You might want to abide by these rules. If you do, you might have yourself new parishioners who will likely be around for about a quarter century."

There it is. What do you think?

I let the article marinate in my head for two days, read the entire thing to my wife, and then phoned her three hours later to get her opinion. Discussing things with Margaret helps me clarify my own feelings on matters.

At the end, readers are invited to leave your comments. And lengthy is actually okay, so long as you are on subject.

1) What an egotist Henry is. He seems to think Christendom should adapt itself to his personality style. He assumes everyone in the church has his/her act together and he and Hankette are the only seekers in the place, so members of the congregation should accommodate themselves to them.

2) But, Henry's right in a number of areas. Churches do not exist--or should not, at any rate--just for the extroverts and huggers among us. Pastors need to watch the tendency to amuse and entertain from the pulpit and remember their assignment to "preach the word" (II Timothy 4:2). About the hand-raising and praise bands, Henry needs to loosen up. This guy is too uptight.

3) Henry seems to think that corporate worship should be identical to private, individual worship, just more crowded. But there has to be a reason Scripture calls on God's people to come together for worship (Hebrews 10:25). In a special sense, the Lord is more present with the group than when we are alone (Matthew 18:20). When people who meet to worship join their voices and hearts--and who knows, maybe their hands too, Henry--something divine often happens.

4) Shy people need to work against the shyness and not let it rule their lives. Like fear, it will grow if given in to.

In her biography on cartoonist Charles Schultz, "Good Grief," Rheta Grimsley Johnston told how the man was afraid to fly. Yet, he took at least one plane trip a year in order to fight against the fears. Shultz knew if he gave in to the fear of flying, next it would be a fear of driving, then a fear of leaving home, until finally, he would not be able to leave his room. Fears must always be resisted.

Same with shyness, I think.

5) I'd like to ask Henry, "Where is the Holy Spirit in your search for a church?"

Henry and Hankette are church-shopping as though they are atheists, on their own, with their list of needs and requirements. "Meet these and we're yours," they are announcing. Sheesh! No, thank you.

I don't want Henry and Hankette in my church. I don't like their attitude of "meet all my requirements and we will honor you with our presence." These are the kinds of members who put the worry lines and grey hairs in the pastors and drive them to early graves.

I'd like them to meet John and Gloria Pake, who were members of my first church after seminary, Emmanuel Baptist in Greenville, Mississippi. When the Pakes moved to this small Delta city, they began visiting churches. Here is the story as John gave it to me at a reception the night before our first Sunday there.

"The first Sunday in Greenville, we visited Emmanuel Baptist Church. We were not impressed. The crowd was small, the choir was poor, and the sermon was average. And yet, strangely, we felt the Lord drawing us to join. But we didn't."

"The next Sunday, we visited Calvary Baptist. This was another story. The church was overflowing, the choir was terrific, and the sermon was inspired. But, we felt no leadership from the Lord to unite with Calvary. So, next Sunday, we went back to Emmanuel."

"It was the same story: poor crowd, choir, sermon. Once again, the Holy Spirit was nudging us to join. So we did."

"Within two years," John said, "everything had changed. The pastor resigned to go to another church, they had made me the Sunday School director, and now, we have a new pastor."

John's point is one pastors would like every newcomer and "church-shopper" (don't you hate that term!) to know: our church may not be what you are looking for, but it could well be the one God is leading you to. Perhaps He wants you to come help this church become more Christlike.

6) Lastly, I'd love for Henry to pastor a church for about six months and find out what it's like on the other side of the pulpit.

The minister is knocking himself out trying to keep his congregation together, to pay the bills and get the roof fixed and plan the services. He struggles to minister to those who are sick, having surgery, upset, seeking, doubting, dying, and grieving. He does the counseling, the weddings, the funerals, and the janitorial work in some cases. He works on sermons that address real concerns and is continually smarting from criticism that his messages are too short, too long, too dry, too light, too emotional, too uninspiring, too theological, and too funny. He struggles to have a Bible study time of his own and a prayer time that is unhurried. He has a family, too, and they need more of him than he has left, which leaves him with a chronic nagging guilt over his priorities. He tries to read some of the religious magazines which fill his mailbox, tries to read the occasional book, tries to attend the denominational gatherings his bishop/superintendent/director-of-missions says are urgent, and tries to have time to meet his wife or a pastor friend for lunch once in a while.

Then, on Sunday morning, the minister--fatigued from nights at the hospital with a dying member, committee meetings without end, and criticism flowing in from every quarter--walks up to the pulpit and attempts to turn all that off and lead the congregation--and himself!--in worship. He gives it his best shot. Hopefully what he had to offer today was acceptable to God, and not incidentally, to the official board who has been on his back lately.

Then someone hands the poor pastor Hank's list of "rules" which a church must meet if it is to be honored with him and his wife becoming members. No raising of hands, no praise band, no levity in the sermon, no touchy-feely, don't embarrass us by over-welcoming us, and do not follow up on our visit.

The minister reads that and his spirit drops another six inches. He feels someone has just placed another concrete block on his back, adding to an already considerable burden.

7) And so, my prayer for Henry and Hankette is this: "Dear Lord, forgive them. They know not what they do. And please help your servants the ministers to ignore such egotistical demands. May all such church-seekers humble themselves and follow the counsel of your servant Paul who told us to be devoted to one another in brotherly love and to give preference to one another in honor."

That last is a reference to Romans 12:10. Verse 3 of that chapter reads: "For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith."

And verse 16. "Be of the same mind toward one another, do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation."

You listening, Henry? Hankette? This has your name all over it. And mine, too, so frequently.

All illustrate wrongs way to pray.

I've previously mentioned in this website Lehman Strauss' book "Sense and Nonsense About Prayer." Well, after owning the book for three decades--it was first published in 1974--and frequently citing its lessons, I decided the time had arrived to go back and re-read it. I did that Monday.

The twelve chapters that deal with our subject--Strauss has a section at the end on the Lord's prayer and the prayer life of Jesus--are worthy of your consideration and study. At the end of these chapters, he invites the reader to agree or disagree with him at any point, but in love. I found myself disagreeing with facets of one or two principles in this list, but overall, the list is excellent and I commend it to you.

At the end, we'll include three of his non-sensical stories on how not to pray.

1) It does not make sense to pray if there is unconfessed sin in the heart. Psalm 66:18
However, it makes sense to confess our sins if we expect God to hear us.

3) It does not make sense to pray unless we pray in the Spirit. Ephesians 6:18
However, it makes sense to avail ourselves of the privilege of praying in the Spirit.

4) It does not make sense to pray if we do not pray in Jesus' name. John 14:13-14
However, it makes sense to pray in Jesus' name.

5) It does not make sense to pray without faith. Matthew 21:22; Romans 14:23; Hebrews 11:6
However, it makes sense to pray in faith.

6) It does not make sense to pray with an unforgiving spirit. Mark 11:25-26
However, it makes sense to forgive others before we pray.

7) It does not make sense to pray unless we pray in the will of God. I John 5:14
However, it makes sense to pray according to God's will.

8) It does not make sense to pray when we are not thankful. Philippians 4:6
However, it makes sense to include thanksgiving in our prayers.

9) It does not make sense to pray if we are not abiding in Christ and His word is abiding in us. John 15:7
However, it makes sense to abide in Christ and have His word abide in us.

10) It does not make sense to pray if we are stingy and miserly. Proverbs 21:13
However, it makes sense to cultivate the grace of giving so that our prayers are not hindered.

11) It does not make sense to pray if our marriage relationship has broken down. I Peter 3:1,7
However, it makes sense for Christian husbands and wives to live by God's plan so that their prayers "be not hindered."

12) It does not make sense to pray if we ignore the spiritual exercise of fasting as an aid to prayer. Matthew 6:16-18.
However, it makes sense to fast and pray in keeping with the teaching of Christ.

Story No. 1

Lehmann Strauss was conducting a Bible study in a southern city. The host pastor called on a college professor to lead in prayer. The man stood before the microphone and here--word for word, recorded on tape--is what he prayed:

"God, you created the heaven and the earth. You created man, and you didn't do it by some evolutionary process. (Strauss notes: "That bit of news must have been an eye-opener to God.") And now, God, we thank you for sending the speaker. Bless the message of Dr. Strauss because we pray in his name. Amen."

Strass teases: "Ah, brethren, that one touched my heart."

Story No. 2

Strauss was doing a Bible conference in Pennsylvania when a plane crashed nearby killing all aboard. The conference director called on a man for prayer. Evidently, the fellow wanted to pray for the families of those who had been on the plane but could not remember the location of the crash. He prayed:

"Lord, bless that plane crash out there in--out there in--out there in--Well, Lord, You know where it is; you must have read it in the morning newspaper."

Story No. 3

Strauss says the most inane statement he has ever heard about prayer is "Prayer can do anything God can do." He writes, "Apart from our Lord Jesus Christ, there never has been a praying man, nor is there a praying man alive today who, through prayer, can do anything that God can do. There are things God has done, and can repeat, but He has not repeated them and possibly never will. Moreover, there are things God can do but which He will not do, notwithstanding our much praying. Still, there are Christians who have adopted as their favorite saying, 'Prayer can do anything God can do.'"

While pastoring in Pennsylvania, Dr. Strauss was called to the bedside of a dying man 89 years old. His body was racked by cancer. The family had hoped he would live to see one hundred. A daughter asked Pastor Strauss to pray and ask God to raise up her father and give him an additional 11 years of life. He declined, adding that he had no leading from God to make such a request.

Bitter resentment showed in the scowl on her face as she said, "Well, pastor, prayer can do anything God can do." Strauss says, "In her expressed opinion, I was not a man of prayer. Yet, neither she nor the other members of that family could produce through prayer the result she expected of me."

Perhaps one request we should make of God in our prayers is that, while teaching us to pray, He would teach us to use good sense in our prayers.

Invariably, Mom will say, "I don't feel like going. Every bone in my body hurts." This Sunday, it was her feet that were giving her trouble.

Also invariably, at church, people will come up and hug her and say, "You look so pretty. I hope I look that good when I get your age." Pastor Mickey Crane will brag on her--she's both the oldest member and the one with the longest continuous membership--and tell her what a reward she has waiting in Heaven.

Across the road from the church is the cemetery where Mom's husband of nearly 74 years lies buried. Twenty feet away, her youngest son, Charlie, is buried.

I said to her Sunday, "Mom, back in the 1940's, when you had six small children to deal with every day, if you had only gone to church when you felt like it, you would never have gone. But you learned to make yourself get up and get ready and go on. And look at the payoff."

I said, "So, today, you're just continuing to practice a habit you've kept all your life."

What she ended up with is a family of church-going children, with two of her four sons being preachers with nearly 90 years of ministry combined.

That church is where my Mom and Dad met in 1930. She was 14 and attending a youth singing that night with her sisters; he was 18 and with his brother, looking for any place that might have some girls.

If it hadn't been for that church, those six young'uns of theirs might not have ever been born. And without that church's influence and presence in our lives, we might not have been born again.

Funny how a single decision can go on blessing future generations and setting the course for hundreds of descendants after you are gone. That's what happened when my grandparents chose that church.

When young stressed-out mother Lois McKeever decided on a Saturday in the 1940s that the family would be in church the next morning, she called on Ronnie the oldest, to drag out the "number three washtub" and start the bath water. The children were readied for church on Saturday night, so that nothing was left for Sunday morning except breakfast and getting dressed.

Neighbors said we looked like little goslings, following our Mama on the way to church. It was a two-mile trek if you stayed on the road. By cutting across the woods and fields, you saved a mile. One of those fields now functions as the church cemetery.

Mom reminded me that when we moved to West Virginia in 1947, the very next Sunday she had all her brood in church. This time it was a Methodist Church (this was before they became "United"), and she says, "We didn't know a soul there, but we went."

She smiled and said, "Pretty soon, all the boys and girls in the neighborhood were going to that church. They saw you all going and they went, too."

Lois McKeever turns 92 on July 14. If you'd like to send her a birthday note--just a handwritten note, it does not have to be a store-bought card--here's her address: 191 County Road 101, Nauvoo, AL 35578.

She will enjoy your notes, keep them in a basket on the dining room table, and re-read them again and again.

Thanks for doing this. The day is approaching when I won't be able to ask you to do this anymore.

Today, Sunday, the Times-Picayune ran a feature on Dr. Ed Renwick who is retiring from Loyola University's Institute of Politics after four decades of commenting on the local political scene. In 1967, Ed came to New Orleans to work on his doctorate--on the "Long" dynasty, which covers Huey, Earl, and Russell--and ended up staying.

For a political junkie, he says, Louisiana is Heaven. "We're so divided in Louisiana--by ethnicity, by race, by religion, by language, by geography. You have the French and the non-French, the Catholics and the Protestants, North and South, black and white, liberal and conservative. Having all these different forces makes the politics lively. It's never boring here."

Most state governments, Renwick points out, are rather weak. But not us. "We come out of the French and Spanish traditions of absolute monarchy, and on top of that, we're Catholic."

The state collects royalties from the oil and gas produced in the state and that adds up to a neat sum. Renwick says it's like a fountain of money pouring in.

"We have a very strong governor. The whole system is kind of monarchical. We elect kings."

Or popes.

Staff writer Elizabeth Mullener played a little game with Dr. Renwick, tossing names of various state political leaders to him for his take. The result was memorable. In fact, my hunch is only the fact that he is retiring liberated him to go on record with some of these blunt comments.

Robert Cerasoli, New Orleans' Inspector General: "A good guy, a competent person. I think he's had a tougher time than he thought. He finally got his telephone turned on, I see. But I don't think he's got his computers yet. This is just grade-school-type harassment. Just horrible. Some things never change in New Orleans." (See my comments on Cerasoli from the June 28, 2008, article "Firing Our Leaders--When and If.")

Ed Blakely, the city's recovery director: "Blakely is an impressive fellow--much more impressive one-on-one than he is on TV. He certainly has a big ego, which I think at times is a problem. But overall, I think he's a good guy, very knowledgeable, very smart. Like everyone else, though, he had never run into anything like Katrina. Nobody could solve a problem of that magnitude in a short period of time. It's simply impossible. I think we expect greater things from him than it's realistic to expect."

Ray Nagin, the mayor: "He's a hands-off type mayor and this is not the right time for a hands-off mayor. If you're going to be hands-off, you'd better have an extremely large and competent staff, because if you're not doing the nitty-gritty, somebody else has to. It seems to me he doesn't have enough competent people working for him."

Bobby Jindal, our governor: "So far, he's been kind of disengaged, which surprises me. That's not the way Louisiana governors usually are. They usually take a very active part. A governor really has to lead in this state. It's very oriented toward the governor being the leader and being out front--wheeling and dealing behind the scenes, then presenting a policy. So far, he doesn't seem to be doing it that way. But he's hardly ever been an elected public official before--just a couple of years in Congress. The positions he's held were mostly in the bureaucracy, and a bureaucrat is supposed to do the work and keep his mouth closed."

Mary Landrieu, our Democratic senator: "She's up for re-election, and I think she'll probably win. She's done a good job, particularly since Katrina--and there haven't been that many people who have done a good job since Katrina. The closet would be very small."

David Vitter, our Republican senator: "I've never been able to comprehend how he could do something so stupid. It defies imagination. The chances of him getting caught were very good. I think he's a pretty good politician. He thinks very politically. He makes the right political moves--with one great exception." (He refers to Vitter's admitted relationships with prostitutes in Washington and perhaps New Orleans.)

And lastly, his takes on the last three governors of Louisiana, most recent first....

Kathleen Blanco: "I think she's a decent, honest person, which is a lot to say for a Louisiana politician. She was in an extremely difficult situation. She never should have gone on national television after Katrina. Everything was in chaos. I think it hurt her and framed her for the rest of her term. It was a major blunder. As time went on, she did better. But first impressions are extremely important."

Edwin Edwards: "The most talented politician of my era here, although he used his talents in some strange ways. Knowing everything about state and local government, knowing all the players and what made them tick, being able to put compromises together--nobody was better than him. They say he never went to bed at night without having returned all his phone calls. Many politicians cannot say that. Many non-politicians cannot say that. It was one of the secrets of his success. It meant that he spent hours a day on the phone--every day. But he almost always got what he wanted out of the Legislature--and almost always out of the voters." (Our only four-term governor, Edwards is serving a sentence at a federal prison for racketeering. When licenses for casinos were being handed out in Louisiana in the mid-1990s, his support was available for a price.)

Buddy Roemer: "The most disappointing politician in recent Louisiana history. His ego just got completely out of control. He didn't return his phone calls. He got into fights with legislators. And politicians felt his staff didn't treat them well. That's not a wise move."

Remember the old Willie Sutton line? Asked why he robbed banks, he said, "That's where the money is." Ed Renwick picks up on that and says, "Who's rich in this state? The government. That's why we always go to the state for everything." And, that's why "they're robbing the state--because that's where the money is."

Stay with us, Dr. Renwick. We will be needing your insight for a long time to come. Thanks for four decades of excellent insight and professional analysis.

I googled "eye floaters" and learned they are normal and to be expected as we age. My wife is rubbing that in. ("Poor thing--he's getting older like everyone else!" No mercy around here.)

In time, our brains adjust to the point that we won't notice the floaters. They will still be there, presumably, although one of the internet sources indicated they sometimes diminish.

The brain is a magnificent organ. It filters out the trivial and mundane and alerts the mind to the odd and unusual, anything out of the ordinary so we're able to function in a world where stimuli fly at us from all directions every minute of the day. This is a protection against overloading the nervous system, for which we thank our Designer and Creator.

This process of culling out the commonplace allows the person living by a railroad track to rarely hear the train go by. It enables animal workers to function in and around horrendous odors.

Evangelist Bill Glass asked a friend at the Fort Worth stockyards how he stood the smell. He said, "What smell?"

This is why your teenager is able to study with his music blaring, but he cannot function while listening to yours. It's different and his brain has not learned to filter it out.

You've noticed how you can drive to work, the same route you've taken hundreds of times, and when you arrive, you remember nothing of what you saw along the way. You were awake, you're confident you drove safely, so why, you wonder, do you recall nothing of what you saw. The answer is that your brain filters out the commonplace and draws your attention only to the unusual. Had a dog run into the street in front of your car or had a circus been setting up at the park, you would have remembered that.

But there's a downside to this wonderful trait of our brains.

We end up filtering out and taking for granted the people nearest us, those who mean the most to us, the ones we count on in the deepest way. They're always there, so our minds are freed to go on to other things.

We filter out the needs around us that we see every day. You drive past that shanty or broken down house trailer so often that eventually it becomes part of the scenery. The thought that someone might actually live there and need a neighbor or a friend never enters your mind.

This helps us understand the case of Bartimaeus, the blind beggar of Jericho.

He sat there on the side of the road as one enters the city from the north, his tin cup in his hand, the dirty rags barely covering his body, and eventually became part of the landscape. Citizens and theologians walked in and out of the city gate, discussing issues of the day, happenings across the Roman Empire, and prophecies of the Bible, without so much as a glance in his direction. That's how he learned the most astounding news of his lifetime: a man called Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah, He was alive at that moment, and God's hand was upon Him.

He learned that Jesus had been through Jericho several times before, en route to or from Jerusalem, and that He was known to heal the sick and even raise the dead. From the talk, Bartimaeus learned of Old Testament prophecies about the coming Messiah, that He would be called the Son of David, that He was the embodiment of God's love. How much more he overheard and understood, we can only surmise.

So, Bartimaeus came to a decision: the next time Jesus came to Jericho, he would give Him an opportunity to heal his blind eyes.

And so, he sat there, day after day, part of the scenery, one feature in the landscape, ignored by almost all who came and went. And then one day, his brain was nudged out of its stupor by sounds and vibrations out of the ordinary. A crowd was walking past Bartimaeus into the city. Something big was up.

"Hey, what's going on?" he called into the air. "Someone! Anyone--who's passing this way? What is this crowd?"

Finally, someone answered, "It's Jesus of Nazareth, old man. He's headed this way."

A shiver ran over him. The moment he had longed for and dreamed of. He struggled to his feet.

"Jesus! Jesus!" he called. "Jesus! Son of David! Have mercy on me!"

When you're blind, you don't know whether the person you're calling is standing next to you or a mile away, so he didn't want to take a chance. He called out at the top of his lungs.

"Jesus! Jesus! Over here! Have mercy!"

"Mister, would you hold it down? We're trying to have a dignified welcome for our distinguished guest, and you're creating a scene. Okay?" The voice belonged to some city official or another.

"JESUS! JESUS! SON OF DAVID! OVER HERE, PLEASE, LORD! HAVE MERCY ON ME, JESUS!"

Well, that got everyone's attention. Other people in the crowd asked him to hold it down and one or two suggested arresting him. But the more they shushed him, the louder Bartimaeus cried. He would not be put off. He would meet Jesus.

When the Lord came within earshot, He heard the man's cries.

"What is that?"

"Oh, Lord," someone said, "we have this blind beggar who's hollering for your attention. I'm sorry. I know you must get that all the time and how fatiguing it must be."

"Bring him to me," Jesus said.

And that's how it happened. That's how the blind beggar of Jericho left his darkness and his rags on the road outside town and became a productive citizen. That's how the spiritually sensitive of that town--assuming there were some--got the lesson of their lives about not ignoring the "potted plants" in their village.

Bartimaeus later looked back on that day and gave thanks a thousand times that he had not been foolish, the way so many are today, and put off meeting Jesus. He could so easily have said, "He's still young, He's been here numerous times before, He'll be back. I can meet Him at my own convenience some future day."

He had no way of knowing at the moment that this was Jesus' final trip through Jericho, that this was his last opportunity to meet the Messiah. Wow, he thought to himself, that was a close call.

"Dear Lord, please override this canceling-out-feature of my brain anytime there is a commonplace need around me which I have ignored because of its familiarity. It may be the person in my own family who needs my witness, a family on my way into work who need my friendship, someone in my office who needs my prayers. Amen."

(They tell me you know you're a preacher if, hearing of a new physical ailment, the first thing that occurs to you is a sermon illustration you can get from it.)

In the beginning, they proposed tripling their pay to something over $50,000 annually for what is part-time work. When the citizenry howled at that, they cut the figure to $37,500 and that's what passed. Even so, it's more than a 100 percent increase over their present salary of $16,800. There's also a nice per diem allotted each legislator which is rarely mentioned.

Now, whether they deserve that kind of increase or not has been ignored. The fact that they've been maybe 20 years without a pay increase should be factored into the discussion. However, once the session adjourned and finally, it appears, our representatives began to pay attention to the clamor from outraged voters, suddenly they got concerned. Too late. The deed was done and the lawmakers had closed up shop and gone home.

So, hearing the frightening sounds of recall-petitions throughout their districts, our state lawmakers started running for cover. Some are announcing they choose not to receive the raise, while others are calling on Governor Jindal to veto it. It's almost funny.

The recall petitions are for real and are gathering momentum, even the one for Jindal himself, the most popular governor we've had in ages.

Saturday morning, I sent this letter to the editor of our Times-Picayune:

"What are the chances that the people behind the recalls are the ones who opposed the ethics reforms and prefer the political status quo we've lived under for generations? Not so fast with those petitions!"

Saturday morning's Times-Picayune says the leader of the recall against Speaker of the House Jim Tucker (a member of Oak Park Baptist Church in Algiers) has stepped down since he found that he cannot lead such an effort when he doesn't live in that official's district. State law says the chair and vice-chair of such a recall committee must live in the same zone as the official.

The committee has until December to collect 8,000 signatures of registered voters.

Reminds me of how some churches do their pastors. The shepherd serves faithfully for decades, then when he does something truly unwise or even foolish, that's all for you, buster. Out you go. Some churches, but not all, thankfully. We are always encouraged when we learn of churches that show grace and mercy to their leaders who prove themselves as human and fallible as the rest of us.

My Dad and I were traveling the highway between Nauvoo and Jasper, Alabama, when he pointed out the church on the left. "Their pastor was caught hunting out of season," he said. "The members took up an offering and paid his fine." My kind of church folk.

This is bizarre. Saturday's paper reports that a LaPlace woman was driving her 2005 Jeep Cherokee while typing into the GPS navigational system--and was hit by a train going 38 mph. She was taken to the hospital and had only minor injuries. She will be cited for failure to yield at a railroad crossing.

I'm certain there's a funny line in there, but nothing comes to mind at the moment.

We have occasionally commented on two local officials who came to New Orleans in the post-Katrina period to help us out--Ed Blakely, the so-called "recovery czar" for the city, who announced in March of 2007 that within 6 months major construction projects would be changing the skyline, and Robert Cerasoli, the city's inspector general, who arrived from Massachusetts with a mandate to uncover corruption in New Orleans and help to prevent it.

A lot of people have been critical of Blakely because, while he arrived with glowing credentials and grand promises, it soon became obvious he has lots of other irons in the fire, serving as a university professor, expert lecturer, and outside consultant. Locally, he takes credit for projects he had little to do with, and in general--according to those who follow these things closely--is not earning his impressive salary.

Cerasoli came to work last September 1 and had to fight for a large-enough slice of the city's budget to fund his office, then was forced to paddle upstream against a city government stonewalling his requests and ignoring his existence. Finally, he got the budget he wanted and has spent most of this time trying to hire staffers and get a computer system operating. Such are the realities of modern political life in the Crescent City.

Times-Picayune stories on both men are featured alongside one another Saturday. Dr. Blakely attempted to give a report to the city council Thursday but couldn't get his powerpoint to work. When he finally did, the print on the screen was too small to read, and everyone was generally disgusted. Council President Arnie Fielkow suggested he come back next month.

Cerasoli was also giving a report on his office, but the article does not make clear who was receiving it. He admitted he has been slow in getting the 30 staff positions filled, but assures everyone he has begun investigations into the use of public vehicles by city workers.

When Mr. C was asked how long such an investigation might take, he said, "I don't want to get caught in a 'cranes in the sky' kind of thing," referring to Blakely's now famous prediction. His office will set up a hotline so citizens can report their complaints, but in a reference to the expensive and inadequate 311 customer service hotline the city installed, he said, "We want a live voice behind that hotline. We don't want people to be getting 311-type stuff."

As long as we are on the subject of city matters, here's another. Rob Couhig, former owner of one of our sports teams and defeated candidate for mayor the last time around, was interviewed last week by a reporter with the Philadelphia Daily News. Couhig is quoted as predicting that flooded citizens in the Midwest will recover faster than their New Orleans counterparts because, "they're not about to sit around, wringing their hands, waiting for the government to bail them out." The reporter commented, "(Couhig) says sadly, (that) was what his beloved hometown did--and still does."

Oh, that went over well, locally. Not.

The Philadelphia paper had described Couhig as "one of the smartest men in town." Maybe so--I've never met the man--but but he's been doing a lot of verbal backtracking ever since the locals began yelling foul.

Ed Renwick has retired from his Loyola University position as a professor of political science and commentator on shenanigans in state and local government. A teaser for Sunday's paper promises that he will give us his take on "40 years of Louisiana politics." Ought to be a barrel of laughs. (See our Sunday article on Dr. Renwick.)

A lot of this stuff, it's either laugh or cry and we're tired of crying.

POSTSCRIPT-- On Monday, June 30, Governor Jindal bowed to public sentiment and vetoed the pay raise. The recall petitioners are celebrating and abandoning their committees. The senator from New Orleans (Sen. Ann Duplessis) who originally sponsored the bill and who famously was photographed thrusting her arm into the air in victory after its passage, blames the governor's reneging on his promise to support the bill (that's what she says) on a few bloggers.

The editorial cartoon in Tuesday, July 1's Times-Picayune, shows the citizens pulling down a statue of Senator Duplessis. The statue portrays the identical stance of her pose in the senate, pumping her arm high in victory.

One of the newspaper columnists attacks House Speaker Jim Tucker for saying the present pay level is pitiful and just right to put the legislators in the poor house. He points out that Mr. Tucker is in no danger of entering the poor house, having just sold an apartment complex for over $6 million.

So goes life in New Orleans. Never a dull minute.

Not everyone is looking for the same kind of church.

Not everyone is outgoing and friendly and eager to make new friends the first time they walk in the door.

Not everyone responds to the same stimuli, loves the same programs, needs the same kind of spiritual nourishment.

Okay, granted. There are indeed people who will visit our churches and appreciate not receiving a handshake and be delighted no one contacted them the following week.

But they are the exception. Case in point: Last Saturday night, as I write, Scott approached me at a church dinner. He said, "A few years ago when I moved here from Boston, I didn't know a soul. But you welcomed me to church and from then on, you knew my name. I was impressed by that. I mean, I wasn't anybody." He might have said I visited him in his apartment that week, I'm not sure. (Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't. So I'm not giving myself an 'A' in that department.)

Scott needed the personal touch and appreciated the warm welcome. He ended up meeting the love of his life in our church, was made a deacon, and recently served on the pastor search committee.

Not everyone wants to go where "everybody knows your name." The shy ones among us need a little space.

I asked Chris to give us her story. She's a lawyer in a large Northeastern city, educated in the Midwest, raised Catholic. Presently, she is an active member of a good-sized Protestant church in her city, one that has been led by some well-known pastors.

Chris writes, "I want to emphasize that this is not a conversion story. I was a 'true believer' as a Catholic.... As a general rule, Catholic churches are much larger than Protestant ones. I always hear (our) church referred to as such a large church. We run 1700-1900 in attendance. In my experience, it is a normal-sized church."

In her job, she often passed this church on a corner by the subway stop, so she was familiar with its location. She checked out its website and listened to some sermons on-line. Then, one day when she did not have time to get to her Catholic church, she dropped in on the new congregation. For a time, she worshiped with both churches, one on Sunday morning and the other Sunday night. Eventually, she made the move to the new church and became a member two years ago.

"This church made it easy for me to get involved and connected in a variety of ways," she writes, "on my own initiative and at my own pace." On one hand, she could have continued attending Sunday services and "not particularly know people for six months--or six years." But then, "on the other hand, there were things like the welcome dinners, the connecting group, the 'e-mail the pastor with your burning theological questions' link on the website that I could take advantage of if I wanted to."

She continues, "I have attended other large churches that don't have those ways to connect. For example, in many (not all) Catholic parishes, it's common for parish life to revolve around the school, which is just fine if you are a married couple with your 2.4 children enrolled in the parish school. If you don't have school-age children or don't have private school tuition in your budget, it's hard to be a part of the community. That's a problem."

"I have seen fellowships that expect, or even almost require, everyone to get very close very quickly. I firmly believe that there should be some significant conversational space between 'What's your name?' and 'So, how's your walk with the Lord?' We are not close friends simply by virtue of munching donuts together at one coffee hour. There is also a fine and not easily discerned line between a community caring for members in trouble and poking your nose in other people's lives."

Once Chris visited a church where everyone was asked to pass around an attendance sheet and sign in. The pastor encouraged everyone to come to a gathering after the service where they would be looking at the lists, seeing whose attendance had been spotty, and writing them letters. "My roommates and I were appalled."

Having said that, Chris emphasizes that her friends know that if she hasn't been in church lately, something is seriously wrong and they send out a search party. "The difference, I think, is that those are people whom I have invited to be in relationship with me. It is an entirely different matter when that relationship is presumed from day one."

I've left out much of Chris' story. She ends with this: "I am a bit of an odd duck, personality-wise. I am an off-the-charts introvert, (but) also the sort who will have enough initiative to take advantage of opportunities that are available. I have no need for a personal invitation. A lot of people do need that personal invite. So I am not sure how widely applicable my experience is. But there's my story."

Thank you very much, new friend.

A few days ago, when Chris e-mailed us her testimony, I replied, "I'm not sure what to do with it yet. My usual experience in something like this is to wait until the Holy Spirit connects it with something else. That's how I know what He wants me to do with it."

That happened today.

On my off day, I was cleaning out the closet in my home study and discarding stacks of old magazines. Here and there I ran across family photos, newspaper clippings, and other mementoes which required my attention. That's how I found two scribbled notes from at least a decade ago under the title "Let's build a church for shy people."

I need to emphasize to Chris that what follows has no connection with her, not in a hundred years! (So much of my writing is stream-of-consciousness. Whatever occurs to me next gets included in the material next.)

"Jeffrey Dahmer was a shy person. During his murderous rampage, he killed and dismembered 17 or more people in Milwaukee. An article in the August 4 (no indication about the year!) Times-Picayune says Dahmer was shy and awkward with girls. At the high school prom, he wore brown slacks and a vest with a string tie while all the other boys were in black tuxedos."

"This is reminiscent of Lee Harvey Oswald, another misfit, who spent several years as a child in New Orleans. We have read that he attended the First Baptist Church and was not made welcome because he was a misfit."

Okay. Maybe "misfits" is a better term for these guys, or psychopaths, not nice, normal, benign adjectives like "shy" or "introverted." Anyway.

Under the heading "Let's build a church for shy people," the old notes carried these four points....

1. Seek them out. Do not let them hide too long. Jesus came "to seek and to save those who were lost."

2. Love them in. No pressure. Let your love and the Holy Spirit work.

3. Lift them up. Pray for them.

4. Turn them loose.
a. Tell them the choices and opportunities.
b. Make no demands on them.
c. Do not embarrass them while welcoming newcomers.
d. Do not assume they know where I Peter is.
e. Do not burden them.

To my way of thinking, if we can help our church leaders a) be aware of the need to welcome every newcomer who walks in the door, while b) always praying for the Spirit to make us aware of the subtle signals guests send out as to whether they want more or less from us--if we can do these two things, we will have come a long way.

Whatever we do, let us resist the urge to turn our churches into centers only for the extroverted, outgoing, outspoken believer. Not only is there room for the shy believer, but he and she will bring a needed balance to the other members of the congregation.

I did not meet the guest speaker in my church that Sunday, since I was preaching in another city. But I heard what he said from the pulpit and have flinched at it ever since. He was a big hugger, I learned, and told the congregation, "I can tell your spiritual temperature by hugging you."

He explained that many people tighten up when he bear-hugs them, while others throw themselves into a full-body press with all the enthusiasm of a Hulk Hogan. And that, dear friend Chris and other shy ones across the fruited plain, is how that preacher discerned the spirituality of Christians he encountered along life's way.

I know you're sorry you never met him. (Not!)

"Lord, please give us a healthy love for Yourself and a sensitive, sensible love for one another. Amen."

"You have failed your missionaries by your prayers," Mrs. Fuller told the thousands of messengers at the convention. With that, she had our undivided attention.

"All the people I talk to back in the States tell me, 'We're praying for your safety,' or 'We're praying for you to get out of that country.'"

She continued, "You should have prayed that God would keep us safely in this country in order that we might bear fruit for Him. Consequently, we have been exiled from a country of great need where we should not have left."

She concluded, "Give us back to Lebanon in your prayers."

No one who sat in the huge auditorium that night will ever forget her plea.

In the New Testament epistle of James, we read, "You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives...." (4:3) Another translation has it read, "You ask amiss."

Lehman Strauss wrote a powerful book on prayer a generation ago, with the intriguing title, "Sense and Nonsense About Prayer." I confess to buying it for the title. I knew there was a lot of nonsense about prayer out there, and was glad to hear someone in a leadership position admit it.

A sensical prayer would be any that touches God, that wants what He wants, that desires His glory above all else.

A man of God stood at a meeting I was attending and said, "I have talked to hundreds of missionaries over the years, and have heard their prayer requests. Never once have I heard them ask us to pray for their safety. Their prayers are always for the effectiveness of their work and their own faithfulness, for God to turn the hearts of the people they are serving, for revival in their country."

That's a great reminder about right praying.

My friend Rick Humphreys, a deacon worthy of the office, tells me he calls my name in prayer at least weekly. "I pray specifically that God will bless you with long life so you can serve him for many years to come."

What's striking about Rick's prayer is that, while I was his pastor for over a dozen years, I've been gone from that church for 22 years as I write this. Now, that is a faithful prayer warrior, and I'm deeply blessed to be the beneficiary of such intercessions.

I recall the Hezekiah lesson, however. When told the time of his death had come, he panicked and stormed Heaven with desperate prayers. Therefore, God added 15 years to his life. Whatever we may think of God's doing that, we have the record of Scripture that it would have been better for Israel had Hezekiah died on schedule. During that overtime add-on of 15 years, two tragic things occurred. Hezekiah fathered Manasseh, who would become the sorriest king in Judah's long history, even to the extent of sacrificing his child to the pagan god Molech by burning him alive. (II Kings 21:6)

Then, when a delegation from Babylon showed up in Jerusalem--"We heard you were sick and wanted to bring you these get-well cards and flowers!"--Hezekiah was so flattered he lost his composure and did something truly foolish. He took the visitors into his treasury and showed them his wealth, then led them into the Temple to see the golden vessels being used in the service of God.

Like giving the Mafia a tour of your vault. Not real smart.

The visitors could not wait to report to the Babylonian king on their return home about all the wealth of Judah. Then, when Nebuchadnezzar began flexing his muscles and looking around for nations to conquer, he remembered Judah.

Thanks a lot, Hezekiah.

(The Hezekiah story is found in II Kings 20.)

My point here is that, while all of us would like to live long and prosper, as Mr. Spock put it, better to live as long as God wills and serve well. Thanks, friend Rick, for such a prayer.

"I hope you will pray for me," a woman said after learning I was a minister. I answered, "I'll be happy to. What shall I pray?"

That simple question threw her. She had in mind some kind of general prayer for her well-being, I suppose, but my question caused her to think about the needs in her life, something I gathered she had not done in a while.

After a bit, she said, "I need peace. My husband is not well. And my son needs a job."

And we did pray, right there on the spot, for the three requests she mentioned.

Jesus once asked a man, "What do you want me to do for you?"

The odd thing about that question is that the man was a blind beggar who had been disturbing the Jericho neighborhood by his cries, "Jesus! Son of David! Have mercy on me!" When people tried to shush him, he yelled that much louder. Clearly, he wanted to meet Jesus and to have His blessing in his life.

You and I could have said, "Lord, why would you ask such a thing? Anyone can see that this man is blind and he's a beggar. He needs healing."

But the question was not to you and me. It's so easy for us to assess the needs of the people around us while turning a blind eye to our own. He was asking Bartimaeus, the blind beggar of Jericho, to get specific in his prayers.

Bartimaeus could have asked for a better begging place. He could have asked for five shekels. A training program for the blind. Employment opportunities. He could have said, "Lord, make them be nice to me."

All of these would have been legitimate requests. But they would have missed the point. Here he is facing the Lord of Heaven and earth with the chance of a lifetime. He must not blow this.

Bartimaeus answered, "Lord, I want to receive my sight." And Jesus said, "Okay. You've got it."

Really. That's what He said. (Luke 18)

May the Lord lead you and me to really think about what we are praying and to leave behind the foolish nonsense of prayers prayed amiss.

Paul said, "We do not know how to pray as we should." (Romans 8:26)

That's why one of our first prayers might ought to be, "Lord, teach us to pray." (Luke 11:1)

"Did you learn anything working in the emergency room at Charity?" Father Hankins asked Son Hankins, the M.D.

He did, he said. "Three things in particular. I learned to wear my seat belt, not get on a motorcycle, and never buy my wife a forty-five."

So, what have you learned in your "residency"?

In reading a book on 1940 England recently, I received a reminder that the makeup of my church and yours is a microcosm of society in general. Case in point.

On May 10, 1940 (six weeks after I arrived in the world), as newly chosen Prime Minister Winston Churchill was forming his cabinet, former Prime Minister Lloyd George sent word that he would be willing to serve under Churchill, so long as he could retain the right to criticize.

To no one's surprise, Churchill did not go for that.

Then, a few months later, Mr. George sent a similar message. He had a particular office in mind which he coveted. The price Churchill would pay for the prestige of having Lloyd George on his team would be that he would be free to criticize.

Whatever was the man thinking?

"Will you support the new minister of education?" That was the single sentence on the ballot I distributed in a Sunday morning worship service. Our church was in the process of bringing a new staff member on board and I wanted our people to get behind him and follow his lead.

One man, who was perennially elected by the undiscerning membership to leadership positions in the church, wrote on his ballot: "I will, if I agree with the direction he's taking us."

He was retaining the right to criticize. He was also reserving for himself the privilege of sitting in judgement on everything the minister did. If he happened to be walking in the same direction as the new minister, he would be willing to get behind him and follow.

This is not a team player. Unfortunately, the man had his clones among the deacons, which explains why I did what I did.

"I'm asking you to make a tough decision here today," I told the 15 or 20 deacons who had gathered for their monthly hour-long session. I had their undivided attention.

"I'm asking you to support the recommendations of this board. Discuss matters in here all you please, but when the deacons walk out of here with a recommendation to take to the membership, you are not to oppose it. This is not asking much from you--this is just basic integrity--but it will go a long way toward building the unity of the congregation."

You would have thought I had asked them to give up their Heavenly reservation. The very idea. Why, it's my God-given right to criticize.

One said, and others nodded in agreement: "If I feel strongly about a matter, I owe it to the congregation to speak out and tell them why. If it's opposed to what the deacons are recommending, so be it."

I said, "Then someone tell me why do we hash out matters in the deacons meeting in the first place? I always thought it was so we could come up with the best plan possible and present a unified proposal to the church."

They didn't disagree with that.

"But if you the deacons stand up on the floor of the church business meeting and oppose your own recommendation, it confuses the congregation. It works against the unity and peace of the church. Instead of blessing the Lord's church, you are hurting it. You're dividing it."

Someone said, "I'm not giving up my convictions!"

I thought a moment and answered, "No one is asking you to do that. And if the matter being recommended to the church seems so dangerous to you, if it violates some basic doctrine of the Christian faith, so that you are willing to pay the price, go ahead and lay your body across that railroad track. Either stop the train or get run over."

"But understand this," I said. "When you speak your mind inside this deacons meeting, then you get up in the church business meeting and oppose the deacons recommendation, the other deacons conclude that you are not to be trusted. You are working against the unity of the church and violating the trust the church had in selecting you as a leader. You will pay a price for your disloyalty in the lack of trust we all will have in you."

Fighting words from the pastor, some thought. The very idea.

Those few deacons had no use for me, either before that and certainly after it. That's why I decided to bite the bullet and do something I should have done three or four years earlier when I first arrived. We took the church business away from the deacons altogether.

Actually, I didn't do that. The constitution of the church did it. It specifically spelled out that the deacons are to be servants and minister to people, but that the pastor shall use the church council to receive recommendations for church programming and business decisions. (A church council is composed of various program heads in the church, as well as chairs of committees.)

I'll not forget the reaction from those few deacons when I announced that from that moment on, we would begin living by the constitution. No more business matters in the deacons meeting. Just ministry and prayer and spiritual matters.

You would have thought I had announced we were all to shave our heads and chant "hare krishna" in the airport from then on.

Then I made a discovery which seemed hilarious at the time, although the few antagonists saw no humor in it. It turned out that some of the nay-sayers had been members of the committee that wrote that very constitution, no more than two years before I arrived on the scene.

Since their resistance to me was continuing unabated, I informed the deacons of this fact and read the names of the committee members who wrote the constitution. One man in particular was furious. He remembered nothing at all about any of this. He was sure the constitution had been slipped by the deacons in a sneaky move.

But I was ready.

I pulled out the minutes of the church business meeting which chronicled the details of the presentation and discussion of the new constitution, five years earlier. Not only was the deacon in question present at that meeting, but he participated in the events of the session. We had the smoking gun.

If you know anything about dealing with certain people, you know full well that some are not into logic or reason. The battle is an emotional one and gets personal real quick. But they had lost this battle for good. The other deacons were only too happy to start obeying Scripture and ministering to people, and took to the program immediately. And, give them credit, the nay-sayers quietened down.

The other deacons never looked back and continue ministering to this day, as far as I can tell.

Last weekend, as the new pastor-to-be met with various committees and groups in the church, a woman threw a question to him. "I want to know if you intend to restore the deacons to their rightful place of running the business of the church?" Or something to that effect. I wasn't there, but heard the report.

The pastor, wise beyond his years, assured the questioner that he loved deacons, believed in them, valued their counsel, and would be depending on them to do well the work the Lord called them to.

Not what she wanted to hear. But it was the right answer.

The way I read the Bible, no one in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ has an inherent right to criticize. We have a far greater duty to submit ourselves to Christ and to the leaders He chooses for the congregation (see Ephesians 5:21 and Hebrews 13:17).

In fact, if you want to do an enlightening Bible study for the next hour, study those instances in the Old Testament of the people who murmured against the leadership of Moses as he led them from Egypt to Canaan. Start with Exodus 5:21. We are surprised to see the Israelites started criticizing Moses from the very first, before they even left town.

Then, as you move forward with Moses and the Israelites through the Exodus, you will want to check out texts like these: Exodus 14:11-12; 16:2; 17:2-3; Numbers 11:1; 12:1; 14:1ff; and 16:1ff.

What's at stake in this matter is a multiplicity of concerns, with these four topping the list: the glory of Christ, the unity of the church, the effectiveness of the Lord's work, and our witness to the world.

How we wish every church member would learn that these concerns supersede our individual rights to complain against our leaders.

I had a similar experience on my first visit to Cincinnati some thirty years back.

On Friday night, I attended a baseball game at the old Riverfront Stadium and saw the Reds play the way only the "Big Red Machine" of the 1970s could play. Everyone around me was friendly, they were enjoying themselves, and they included me in the mix. At the end of the game, they were all shaking my hand, saying how good it was to have me in the Queen City, and inviting me back. Bear in mind that I was alone and had not known a soul in the city. It was a charming experience.

On Sunday, I attended a worship service across the river in Covington, Kentucky, that was a clone of the Manhattan church Dr. Criswell attended. Cold, formal, irrelevant to anything in my life.

Thereafter, when I have reflected on that experience, I have adapted Dr. Criswell's line and said, "Had they given an invitation, I'd have joined the Cincinnati Reds!"

What made the difference? Figure that out and you will go a long way to determining why some churches are growing by leaps and bounds and others are dying on the vine.

I've not spent hours sorting this out, and your opinion on this is as good as mine, but a few things seem clear. With both "Hello, Dolly" and the baseball game, we were watching professionals do what they did best. These were people who had devoted their lives to their craft and took it seriously. They were well-trained and highly prepared. Every detail of their presentation--whether the songs and acting of the play or the baseball game's announcers, organ music, seating comfort, and the hot dogs--had been gone over time and again and made as good as they could make it.

And the church? My opinion about dead, cold churches will color my analysis, of course. You get the impression that the worship leaders care little about what they are doing, that they are bored as well as boring, that their main purpose is to get through the service, and that someone actually enjoying what they present is the farthest thing from their minds.

I used that little word "enjoy" on purpose. It's a lightning rod and draws the ire of many a "pure" worship leader. "We're here to worship God, not enjoy the service." Mostly, I agree. However, I've noticed that when I worship best, I get a lot out of it myself. And I've also learned that if my emotions are not involved and my intellect challenged, if this is just an act my body is performing and words my mouth is uttering, I may as well have stayed home for all the good it's accomplishing.

The huge question, the massive consideration that must be dealt with by every church staff team planning a worship service is this: how and at what point do we engage the congregation?

But when fellowship breaks out in the worship service, you have something special.

At this point, I have painted myself into a corner.

I am no expert on worship. I know how to worship, I think, and certainly know when real worship is taking place in a service. But when it comes to telling others how to put together a service that will meet all the goals of such a time, well, I'm still the amateur.

Often, in my limited experience, worship just "happens." God decided to show up that day, and the effect was life-transforming. People were moved by the music, humbled by the message, elated by the holiness, and blessed by the decisions made. And where the results were not visible, it still felt "okay," because you knew you had been in the presence of God and that gave it an authenticity nothing else can produce.

In those cases where the Sovereign God just "showed up," it might have been because He was honoring the prayers and heart-hungers of His people. Or, it could have been all about His mercy. I find myself falling back on Psalm 115:3 lots of times. "Our God is in the Heavens; He does whatever He pleases."

It's tempting here to say one cannot plan a service that will accomplish this. However, I've seen it done often enough to convince me otherwise. If the worship planner is Spirit-filled and knowledgeable about what he or she is doing, services can be planned that will move a congregation a long way down the road toward meeting God.

When I was pastoring, frequently on Sunday mornings I found myself praying, "Lord, do something today not in the worship bulletin." That is, something we had not planned. Surprise us.

The last time I did that, something memorable occurred. Just before the service began, a deacon sidled up to me and whispered, "Pastor, we have a motorcycle gang with us today!" He wasn't sure whether that was good or bad. But I was fairly certain it was the local chapter of the Christian Motorcycle Association on their monthly "Steeple Search." They meet for breakfast, then pick out a church to surprise.

Surprise is the right word, too. Imagine the typical church, assembling for a routine service, nothing much going on, when suddenly the front door opens and thirty men and women walk in, decked out in black leather and denims, the men rather oversize and mostly bearded, all of them heavily tanned and sporting tattoos. The second surprise is discovering what radiant believers they all are. They 'amen' the pastor through the sermon and infuse the hymn-singing with a gusto and zest worship leaders dream of.

That's what happened in our service that morning. I introduced the club members, the congregation applauded them in welcome, and the rest of the service was electrified. Our guests brought laughter, joy, and emotion into our worship that day.

If it was left to me, I would have them in my church every Sunday.

One of my favorite Scriptural insights is found in the Old Testament book of Ezra, when the people of Israel were gradually returning from Babylonian captivity and trying to rebuild Jerusalem. One of the first things they did was to clean up and restore the foundation of the Temple. And when they finished that portion of the work, they stopped for worship.

Here are the final four verses of Ezra chapter 3.

"Now, when the builders had laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests stood in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the Lord according to the directions of King David of Israel.

"They sang, praising and giving thanks to the Lord saying, 'For He is good, for His lovingkindness is upon Israel forever.' And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid.

"Yet many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers' households, the old men who had seen the first temple, wept with a loud voice when the foundation of the house was laid before their eyes, while many shouted aloud for joy,

"So that the people could not distinguish the sound of the shout of joy from the sound of the weeping of the people, for the people shouted with a loud shout, and the sound was heard far away."

Now, that was worship! There is a generational difference here, as the older people cried and the young folks laughed, but it produced a blend which was surely lovely in the sight of the Lord.

They were celebrating.

Now, all we worship planners have to figure out is whether we have anything to celebrate the next time the people of God come together in our church.

Case in point, the Times-Picayune for Sunday, June 22, 2008. The best story is a front-page feature, but we'll get to that in a moment.

When I have chided my young pastor buddies for not subscribing to the daily paper, they have come back with, "I read it on the internet," and I have been silent. But having been to nola.com and read the portion of the paper which is on-line, I tell you it's not the same. They're missing a lot of fascinating material.

They're missing the comics and the puzzles, of course, both staples in my morning routine. And they're missing the kind of fascinating tidbits that pop up in other places throughout the newspaper, and which never get posted on the 'net.

Take the wedding announcements. Being a longtime pastor, occasionally I'll see people I know there. And then, once in a while, I'll scan the articles themselves, don't ask me why. Today, I found this....

Michelle Lynn Autin was married on May 17th to Brent Bernard Branigan. The third paragraph was made up of one fascinating sentence: "The bride carried creamy white hydrangea, stock and roses, wrapped with her great grandmother's linen handkerchief a gift from her grandmother, Theresa M. Hindermann, that included her grandfather's onyx rosary, antique doubled side charms, that pictured her grandfather, George J. Hindermann, Jr., great grandfather, Joseph T. Mangerchine, Sr., great grandmother, Thelma M. Mangerchine and her beloved pet Tigger, bound together by strands of crystal."

Whew. The bride was carrying all that. Wonder if she was using a wheelbarrow.

Underneath that article was one announcing the wedding of Mr. Courtney Baine Robinson of New Orleans to Miss Kristen Michelle McKeever of Fort Worth. Her parents are Mr. and Mrs. Urbin C. McKeever, and no, I do not know them. Just found it interesting. We see others by our name so seldom.

No doubt they're wonderful people.

One day recently, I was scanning the paper--you have to do a lot of scanning if you take a big-city daily, otherwise reading it will consume an hour a day--and in the neighborhood section, ran across a photo of Hugh O'Brien, the Hollywood actor who will forever be remembered as TV's Wyatt Earp from the 1950's. Here he is in his 80's now, still handsome, and assisting locals through his charitable foundation. I decided some editor was too young to know a real Hollywood icon when he/she saw one and buried that item in lesser portion of our paper, and what a shame that was.

My grandmother, Sarah Noles Kilgore, would watch "Wyatt Earp" with us--she had the only TV in the family for a while, and thus "enjoyed" lots of visits from her grandchildren--and would comment that "Virge looked just like that in his younger days." Virge was Grandpa, who had died a couple of years before.

Sunday's Times-Picayune says New Orleans' hospitality industry (that means "tourism") has returned to 75 percent of its pre-Katrina levels.

A huge section in the Sunday paper promotes taking the train to Chicago. You can rent a roomette both ways for a price comparable to plane fare, and the trip is an experience in itself. As an old railroad employee--Seaboard and the Pullman Company--I thoroughly agree.

Okay, here is the front page feature: "Scores of volunteers have answered the call to help rebuild New Orleans. But one Ohio church keeps coming back." The hero of this lengthy article (written by our friend Bruce Nolan, who clearly made a trip north to visit the church) is Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church. Located 15 miles north of Dayton in Tipp City, this church has sent 41 teams in our direction to help with the rebuilding and shows no signs of slowing down.

This megachurch (they run 4,400 on Sunday) is not your average spectator congregation. Just after the world saw television images of what Katrina was doing in the Gulf South, that church decided to do something. A single offering brought in $113,000. Working through their denominational channels, the church began sending teams of volunteers our way. Five teams have come so far in '08 and six more are scheduled before the end of December.

Now, a church this active did not wake up one day and decide to help the Gulf Coast. They've been actively working for a long time in places like Darfar, Haiti, Jamaica, and various countries in Asia. The members cover their own expenses. Gale Pence, 57, said, "People at work think we're nuts. Let's see, you're taking a week's vacation, paying money to sleep on an air mattress and working for free? And we say, 'Yep.'"

And what does it cost? $275 for six days in New Orleans; $2,999 for 11 days in Thailand assisting locals trying to inhibit the sex-slave trade; and $2,000 for a trip to the English language camps in the Czech Republic.

Nothing like this happens without strong leadership. The longtime shepherd of the Ginghamsburg church is Pastor Mike Slaughter, 56. He tells the Sunday worshipers, "You get no points for coming to church on Sunday." He emphasizes, "We are to be the hands and feet of Jesus," and "You love God by serving people. The poor have a special priority with God.... If it's not good news for the poor, it's not the Gospel."

The church's director of global missions--you can tell they are intentional about this work--says, "We tell people if you don't want to serve, you won't fit in here. You'll eventually become uncomfortable."

Interestingly, Pastor Slaughter hasn't even been to New Orleans yet. He is a motivator of others. "Not a nurturer," said a nurse on the New Orleans trip, "but a gooser."

I'm going to give a couple of Bruce Nolan's quotes from Pastor Slaughter, mainly because they're thought-provoking. Some of them, we'd like to ask him to elaborate on, but still....

"I believe Jesus is absolute truth, but I don't believe Christianity is absolute truth. I believe Christianity as a religion has become something significantly different than what Jesus was about." To be comfortable in mainstream religion, he says, is almost by definition to fall short of the radical message of the gospel.

Nolan writes, "Although Ginghamsburg's culture is strongly evangelical, emphasizing Scripture and each believer's personal relationship with Jesus Christ, it is firmly embedded in the liberal evangelical tradition that dedicates itself to social justice rather than battling over cultural issues such as same-sex marriage and teaching evolution in the classroom."

Four years ago while he was trying to raise money to help the victims of genocide in Darfur, Pastor Slaughter admonished his congregation, "Christmas is not your birthday. Stop acting like it."

Instead, he urged them to cut their holiday spending in half and give the other portion to the poor in Darfur. That year, they gave $317,000, and $1 million last year.

Slaughter encourages his people to "live simply so that others may simply live."

This may be the time to throw in a favorite story from another United Methodist pastor, my longtime friend Harold Bales of North Carolina. At the time he told me this, he was leading the First UMC in downtown Charlotte, five blocks from the church I served.

Across the street from FUMC sat a downtown park where the homeless congregated. Since Harold's church was a cavernous, impressive old building now mostly empty for Sunday services with the rise of suburban congregations, he found himself preaching to a lot of vacant pews. That's when he began sending his people into the park to meet their homeless neighbors. The church fed them breakfast, then encouraged them to stay for services.

One day, a longtime member of the congregation approached Harold with a complaint. "Why do we have to have those people in our church?" Harold said, "Because I don't want to see anyone go to hell."

She answered, "I don't want them to go to hell either."

He said, "I wasn't talking about them. I was talking about you."

In the 1940s, things were different. Often, before the main feature, an emcee would come out onto the stage and lead the crowd in singalongs, get people out of the audience for little contests with small prizes, and in general, connect members of the movie audience with one another. No more. We grew out of that, got too sophisticated for such antics, became too busy. Those of my generation and a little older look back to those days with fond nostalgia.

Churches are becoming more and more about spectatorship. Turn on your television and watch the mega-churches being preached to by their celebrity pastors. Five or ten thousand people pack into giant auditoriums. They sit and listen, they respond as the preacher asks, and they get up and leave. They are hampered by their sheer success from fellowshiping with each other. We cannot imagine the pastor announcing to eight thousand people, "John Jones' class will be having a cookout in Dwight Munn's backyard Friday night and you're all invited."

Meanwhile, the church a half mile down the street from the megachurch, the one that has sat on that block for the last fifty years and only recently watched as the ever-growing congregation-on-steroids bought up a hundred acres and moved in and began sucking all the members out of neighborhood churches, that more normal church watches and wonders what it has to do to keep its members and gain a few more, and makes all the wrong decisions.

The "normal" church--as opposed to the giant spectator congregation--begins to invest in screens and projectors and high-tech innovations. That must be what it takes to draw people in, they think, and they must be right.

But drawing crowds in may be missing the point.

If the fellowship is missing, something vital has gone out of the life of a church.

There's a line in the preaching of Jeremiah that haunts me. The false prophets, he said, have "healed slightly the brokenness of my people" and "my people love to have it so." (Jer. 6:14 and 5:31)

The congregation likes it when the minister applies superficial healing to their ills. Perhaps it glosses over the severity of the problems. If the remedy for a broken marriage is "five suggestions" or "four principles," then we must be better off than we thought.

In spectator church, the altar call is minimized. You don't have time for it. Or you don't have the room. Or you don't have the people to handle the kind of gridlock such an invitation would produce at the front of the church. So, many such churches ask those interested in making decisions to fill out the application in their bulletin and drop into the offering plate.

The saddest part of spectator church is that when the crowd leaves the ampitheater which functions as their church building, what we have is thousands of strangers heading for the parking lot to go their separate ways, each feeling they've done what God requires and gone to church today. If anyone feels a pang of regret from the absence of contact with other members, they gloss it over with Sunday afternoon activities.

That's the biggest corruption of Christian fellowship in my book--spectator church.

Here's a second: cliques in the congregation that look a lot like true fellowship but fail in the biggest test of all.

In the last church I pastored, I received two letters in the same week which drove home the point we need to make here. The first came from a longtime member who had moved to Oklahoma. Her family had not joined a church there yet, she said, because they couldn't find one with the loving spirit as ours. She missed our fellowship and decried its absence in so many of the congregations they had found in their new city.

I read that letter to the church the following Sunday. Many of the writers' friends, the ones she was missing, sat in the congregation nodding their heads. They missed her, too. At the conclusion, I asked, "Is that the way you feel about this church? That we have a friendly church with great fellowship?" If anyone felt other than that we were the very definition of those qualities, I couldn't tell.

Then I read the other letter.

"My family and I visited in your church last Sunday. Not a soul spoke to us. You have an unfriendly church and we'll not be back."

I looked at our stunned congregation and said, "The writer sat in these pews last Sunday. The letter arrived Wednesday. Folks, she's talking about us. She found us to be an unfriendly church."

Is it possible for a church to be both friendly and unfriendly? It is, if it's a clique.

A clique is defined as a small group that tends to be exclusive. They love one another, take care of each other, and have fun together. They may work well together, feel one another's pain and joys, and function like a single body. However, they are exclusive. They want no one else in their group.

I've seen Sunday School classes like that, and I'll bet you have, too. They've been together for years with the same membership, taught by the same teacher, meeting in the same room. They even have their own language and inside jokes and stories. A newcomer who walks into their room on a Sunday morning is lost, trying to follow their tales of who did what with whom and attempting to figure out who each one is by his nickname or first name only. The visitor quickly realizes he is an intruder and does not make that mistake twice.

Churches can catch this disease, too. The members are friendly to everyone except the newcomer. The pastor is in on the game and makes the announcement that "a cookout will be held Friday night at Bob and Virginia's house." Too bad if you don't know who Bob and Virgina are or where they live.

The authority on the fellowship of your church is the newcomer, the first-timer.

Scary thought, isn't it.

Lee and Dottie Andrews were every pastors' dream of loving members. Every Sunday they came to church with their antennae out, looking for newcomers. Invariably, when they found them, they introduced themself, chit-chatted a little with their new friends, then invited them to join them for lunch at the local cafeteria.

Many times, when my family would walk into that restaurant after worship, we would find Lee and Dottie sitting at a large table surrounded by half a dozen strangers. I would walk over to greet them and have Lee introduce me to each one. He would know their names and a little about each one, and then he would tell his guests about me. To hear him tell it, I was the world's most wonderful pastor and a genuine friend. One of my life-goals was to live up to Lee's hype on me.

Most of the people Lee and Dottie took to lunch ended up joining the church. When they retired and moved to Florida, we grieved for many reasons. I told the congregation about this practice of theirs on Sundays and urged others to step up and take their place. If anyone did, I couldn't tell.

The simple fact is that people are hungry for fellowship. Most of the newcomers walking in the door of our churches on Sunday are looking for a meaningful contact with other humans who will love them and help them into the inner circle of love and fellowship.

1) The apostles' doctrine -- which means they were studying the Word. Without a written New Testament, the apostles were relating their personal stories of Jesus to the new believers. In our gospels, we have much, most, or possibly all of what they shared.

2) Fellowship. More about this below.

3) Breaking of bread -- they were eating together.

4) Prayer -- they were praying with one another.

Let's draw a bead on the second element, fellowship. The Greek word, as everyone on the planet has heard by now, is 'koinonia.' It's a good word and basically refers to something that is shared. We sit at the table together and share a "common" meal. "Common" means we all partake of it. When I was in college, the big living room on the first floor of the dormitory was called the common room. Likewise, we have words like community, commune, commonality, and communication.

My Greek professors--all of whom are in Heaven and presumably none of whom read this blog--might not appreciate my free-wheeling take on "fellowship" or "koinonia," but I think of it as simply "hanging out." To "fellowship" is simply to spend time with others without an agenda.

We don't do much of that any more. Not in life in general or in the church in particular. But it's one of the best parts of life.

Each afternoon at the McDonalds a few blocks down the street from my house, the old guys meet for coffee and fellowship. Their wives are glad to get them out of the house, their adult children are glad Pop has some friends, and the men themselves may look upon it as harmless chit-chat, but the idea is the same. Hanging out.

I spent two hours hanging out at church this morning. Here's what happened.

In the courtyard, the children were gathering. Signs identified where various classes were to assemble, with a teacher or volunteer at each. Since I was pastor of most of these folks for fourteen years and have known some almost all their lives, I went around hugging and hello-ing. I do not know most of the little children, but ended up drawing a number of them.

When VBS assembly began, I followed them inside and observed how these things have changed over the years. In the 1960s, as a very young pastor, I directed our church VBS and led every aspect of the program. I memorized all the songs and scriptures and pledges and got more out of it than any child.

Today, the VBS joint program--the assembly or whatever it's called now--has come into the 21st century. It's big business. Lifeway produces these incredible turn-key operations for Bible school with DVDs, props, costumes, posters, everything. The theme this year is "Outrigger Island," a Hawaiian motif, and it's as classy as anything you'll find. Last week while driving through a small Alabama town, I noticed that the Church of Christ was announcing "Outrigger Island" as their Bible school, too.

Whether the children learn their scriptures and songs better than our kids did 40 years ago, I'll leave to others to decide. In those days, I'd include what we called a "character story" every day. My son Neil still remembers some of them, since I would retell the better ones year after year. Glenn Cunningham's recovery from a devastating school fire to become an Olympic champion is one that has stayed with him all these years.

Anyway. After the program when the children went to their classes, I walked around, talking to people.

"Tabatha, tell me about yourself," I said to a woman in the kitchen whom I had not met until that moment. Since everyone was sporting name tags, introductions were simple.

"I started coming to church with Kathy Farnsworth and got saved," she said. "And I am happy in the Lord!"

Definitely not what I expected, so I probed a little. What was life like before? "Miserable. I was searching. I drifted from church to church until I got here. I knew this was where God wanted me. I love it here."

What religion were you before? "Catholic, but not much of one."

How did your family take it? "My dad didn't understood it. He would say, 'So, honey, you're not a Catholic any more?' I assured him that something inside me would always be Catholic, but this was about Jesus Christ in my life and living for God."

When she told me her father died not long ago, I said, "Then, he knows by now that what you did was right." She said, "He showed me with his eyes before he died that it was fine with him."

I gave her a big hug and said, "Welcome to the family."

Walking around. Hanging out. Seeing 18-year-olds who are heading to college this fall, but who were babies when I became their pastor in 1990. Young adults now, they think of me like an uncle or something. Sweet.

I chatted with a friend whose husband died several years ago. "I think of him every day," she said. When I asked about her children, she said, "My daughter has helped me keep my sanity. She's like you in that she finds humor in every situation." Then she told me a story you will enjoy.

"My daughter called me one day and said, 'Mom, have you been to the cemetery and seen Dad's grave?'" I said, "Not in the last few days."

She said, "Well, the grass on it is greener than anything around it. It's uncanny."

"Sure enough," my friend said, "it looked like someone had gone around it with an edger. It was neater and greener than anything out there."

"I told my daughter, 'Maybe it was Dad's friend Tom. He owns a place that sells gardening supplies. Maybe he put a little fertilizer in Dad's pocket before they lowered him into the grave."

We laughed at her little joke.

"But my daughter said, 'Oh Mom, you know that dad was always full of it!'" They screamed at that. I could imagine her terrific husband enjoying it, too.

I said, "I remember something you said years ago when your own mom died. At the wake, people were coming and going and eating in her home. You said to your sister, 'If mom knew people were in her house eating off paper plates, it would just kill her!' And you all had a big laugh over that."

She smiled at the memory. I could tell it did her good just to remember this.

Visiting with friends. Hanging out. In the name of the Lord.

I introduced myself to children I didn't know and asked some of the older ones who were working as volunteers about themselves.

My strong contention is that there is no place for shyness in the church. This is the place where you walk up to strangers and greet them, where you meet someone for the first time with "So, tell