Category Archives: My 50 Year Perspective on Ministry

The best time I ever had in the ministry

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The only reason that plane ride in the T-38 was so much fun is that I survived it, then looked back and remembered it with pleasure. Columbus AFB Wing Commander Chet Griffin arranged it. He said, “You’ve been ministering to these student pilots all these years; you ought to learn something of what they go through.”  As I say, it was great fun–in retrospect. (smiley-face goes here)

The 1977 trip to Singapore (via Chicago, Anchorage, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bangkok, and finally my destination) and back was part of a long, long process of drawing an evangelistic comic book for the missionaries there, then coloring each of the many pages (with acrylic and tiny brushes!), and printing up 10,000 copies for their use. It was a job! And fun mainly in retrospect because we did it, it was most unusual, we would never be doing anything like that again, and we survived it.

That deacons meeting that went on for four hours with me as its subject (“to fire or not to fire, that is the question”) was exhilarating only in looking back after we saw how God used it and what He did with it. At the time, no fun.

In fact, I have an admission to make.

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The abundant part of the “abundant life.” Not what we expected.

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In 1989, when Margaret and I were dealing with a church situation where the Lord had sent us three years earlier, we found comfort in the 66th Psalm.  Specifically a few verses in the center jumped out at us as we read it on our back porch one evening….

“For you, O God, tested us; You refined us like silver; You brought us into prison and laid burdens on our backs. You let men ride over our heads; We went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance” (Ps. 66:10-12).

As we were praying a few minutes later, Margaret surprised me with these words: “And Lord, in that scripture you said you were bringing us to a place of abundance.  So, we’re going to claim that right now. Whatever it is and wherever it is. Whether it’s here in this church or somewhere else, we believe you are going to lead us to a place of abundance.”

I had not seen that as a promise. But once my spiritually-sensitive bride spotted it, it made a world of sense.

Thereafter, when we prayed, we frequently thanked the Lord for HIs promise to lead us to a place of abundance.

Not long after, things went south.

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A strange thing happened on the way to the cemetery

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(After our recent article on weddings, someone suggested we tell about unusual funerals over a half-century of ministry. Here goes….)

I don’t have any funerals where the “honored guest” got up and walked out, or where the wrong person was discovered to be in the casket, or such foolishness as that. And for good reason.

Funerals are highly structured affairs, regulated by state law and overseen by a whole battery of employees and family members.

When we gather at the funeral home, the family has already been in conference with the mortician on how they want things done. The funeral directors stand nearby to make sure all goes according to plan. As a result, there is usually very little wiggle room there, space for the unexpected to occur.

And that’s not all bad.

I did this one funeral…

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You wanna hear about weddings? I can tell you about weddings…

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There was this one wedding….

–Which was attended by Sandra Bullock. I didn’t know it at the time, and learned it later. The famous movie star was all of 10 years old. The bride was her aunt or a cousin of her mama’s or something. (I wonder if she remembers me. lol. )

–Where I called the groom by the name of the best man. Oops.  (Thereafter, I wrote the names of the bride and groom in large letters at the top of my materials.)

–Where I dropped the ring. For years in rehearsals, I’d instructed the bride and groom, “If it drops, let it go. No one will know and we’ll get it later.” And now it happens and I’m the one stooping down to pick it up. Oh, well. Not that big a deal.

–Where the groom was wearing cowboy boots with his formal tux. During the picture-taking, I said to the bride, “Debbie, you should have worn yours.” With that, she hiked her dress up and showed me. She was wearing her boots too.

–Where the bride fainted. See below.

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Letter to our grandsons on choosing a wife.

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“He who finds a wife finds a good thing”(Proverbs 18:22).

Let’s talk about finding a wife.

The simplest thing to tell you two boys is to do what your dads did.  My sons and your dads, Neil and Marty, chose excellent women for their wives and your mamas. I wouldn’t be surprised if they chose better than they knew and that may well have been the result of your Grandma’s prayers.

For a long time, Grandma prayed that God would pick the right women for our sons.  He came through in flying colors, as you know.

Now, try to do as well as your fathers did and we’ll be through here.

Background: Grant is about to turn 20 and Jack is 12.  Jack lives outside Charlotte, NC, and Grant the same distance from New Orleans.  Grant works in Zoes Kitchen, a trendy restaurant near here and takes courses at Delgado Community College, while Jack is doing what 12-year-old boys do.

We’re some years away from either of you choosing a bride, I fully expect

But now is the time to begin thinking about it, particularly Grant.  Before falling in love with “the” one and your hormones beginning to smother your brain and blocking out all judgment, now is the time to make some decisions and establish some standards.

By “standards,” we mean you should say “This is what I will will insist on in the woman I marry and I will settle for nothing less.”

The other side of that coin, of course, is that you should dedicate yourself to becoming a husband worthy of her. After all, what’s the use of finding the ideal wife if she decides you are an unfit husband?

But, that’s another article. This one is about you choosing her.

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The day I quit cartooning and gave it to the Lord.

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I’m not sure exactly when this was, perhaps sometime around the late 1970s.  I would have been in my late 30s.  I’d recently been to Singapore to draw a full-length comic book for the missionaries and was doing a regular cartoon feature for our foreign mission magazine out of Richmond, Virginia.  Cartooning was getting to be a big thing in my life, even if it didn’t always fit in with my work as pastor of a Southern Baptist church in a county seat town in Mississippi.

At some point, it began mattering too much.

That’s when I quit.

I recall giving it back to the Lord–literally laying it on His altar–and saying, “This is yours, Father. If I never draw again, it’s fine. Thy will be done.”

Now, I had started drawing as a preschooler.  Mom put my little sister Carolyn and me at the kitchen table with pencil and paper and told us to sit there and “Draw!”  Her intent was not to teach us to do anything other than stay out of her way as she cleaned the house.  But I made the discovery that day.

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Letter to my six granddaughters on whom to marry. And whom to avoid.

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Six of the finest young people on this planet happen to be our granddaughters.  Margaret and I are blessed beyond measure.

In order of their arrival into our lives, they are Leah Carla, Jessica Mae, Abigail Rebecca, Erin Elizabeth, Darilyn Samantha, and JoAnne Lauren.  They are as pretty and sweet as their names.

Sometimes, when I’m in the car with one of you, I will raise the question: “How do you choose a husband? What kind of man will you marry some day?”

Now is the time for you to be thinking of this.  In fact, you should have been giving this thought for some time now. Leah, senior member of this sextet, is 25 and little sis JoAnne is the youngest at 16.

First, whom to avoid.  Run from these types just as fast as you can, as far as you get…

1) Lazy.  No matter if he’s charming and sweet-talks you and thinks you are the best thing ever (which you are!), do not be taken in by him. If he can’t hold a job and prefers to live off the earnings of others, marrying a bum like him would be a disaster.  You will be the breadwinner for your entire married life. Marry a hard worker.

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How to stay youthful all the way home

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“They will still yield fruit in old age; they shall be full of sap and very green….” (Psalm 92:14).

It occurs to me that there is one article I can write which Rick Warren cannot (not yet anyway), which Thom Rainer is not ready to write, and which some people couldn’t come up with if their lives depended on it.

“How to be young in old age.”

I’m in that “old age” period, I suppose. Man, it hurts to admit that. But then again, as they say, considering the alternative, I’m good with being 74.

And, I remind myself, I have done funerals for a lot of good people who would have given everything to live this long and see their children married and their grandchildren grow up. So, I am blessed and I thank the Lord.

If you are, thirty, let’s say, and reading this, then I suggest you stop and consider how you are feeling at this very moment. Well, that’s how I feel. I feel great, clear-headed, alert, alive, joyful, without a pain or ache in my body.  Believe me, I am thankful.

That’s not the youthful part, though. When senior adults talk about being youthful, in most cases they’re not speaking of their libido or their athletic prowess. They’re talking about their spirit, their attitude.

And, from the reports of those who know me, I qualify.

So, therefore, let’s give it a try.  How to stay youthful in old age. My top 10 ways….

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Observations and a prayer on turning 74.

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“They will still bear fruit in old age; they will be full of sap and very green” (Psalm 92:14).

As of this Friday, March 28, I hit 74 years of age.

Is that old? Depends on where you’re standing, I suppose. To a kid, it’s ancient. To me, it’s just another birthday.

Yep, 1940 is my year.  And what a year that was. I remember it well!

Europe was already ablaze thanks to murderous Adolf Hitler. Six weeks after I arrived his Nazis invaded the Low Countries and on the same day (May 10) Churchill became Prime Minister of Britain.  I had nothing to do with any of that in case you are asked.  In the U.S., Congress agreed with FDR to call up our National Guardsmen for one year of active service. A song from that period says, “Good-bye dear, I’ll be back in a year. Don’t forget that I love you.”  (It goes on to say, “They took my number right out of a hat, but there’s nothing a fellow can do about that!”)

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Some people love the idea of work more than its reality

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(These are simply stories and not a how-to article.)

“We must work the works of Him who sent Me, as long as it is day; night is coming, when no man can work” (John 9:4). 

ONE.

My grandson Grant might have been 5 years old. Frequently, on my off day that summer, I would pick him up and we would spend the day together. We would go to the park and feed the ducks or head to the playground. Sometimes, we visited the zoo and later the playplace at our favorite McDonald’s.

That day, he agreed to go with me to pick blueberries.

Now, to get from the city–we live in the western part of metro New Orleans–to the country is a drive of an hour minimum.  And to get to Talisheek, Louisiana, added another 30 minutes to the trip.  Grant was buckled into the back seat and we talked all the way. From time to time, he wanted to know, “How much longer?”  I soon decided this might have been a little more than he needed.

Eventually, we arrived at the blueberry farm. It’s a self-service thing where you take a plastic bucket and go in any direction. Later, you weigh up the product and leave money, so much per pound, in a slotted box.

Grant and I got our ball caps on, rubbed on some sun screen, grabbed our plastic buckets, and headed out into the field.

“Grandpa, this is fun.”  I was glad to hear that. The long drive faded in his memory, apparently. That was good because the ride home would be just as long.

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