Dear Lord,

I have been a far poorer Christian than You wanted or I intended.  But I am so glad to be a member of the family of Christ, to be saved and to know it as well as I can know anything.

I am honored to be the brother of the rest of Thy redeemed.

I have been a poor example of a preacher for these many years and have not blushed (the way I should) when someone who barely knows me lauds my wonderful Christian life. Nevertheless, I’m so honored to be a pastor and preacher.

I am a sinner and not only in my pre-Christian life. I’ve sinned enough since becoming a believer to disgust my Lord, embarrass my parents, and disqualify me from ever doing anything in the church.  Yet, I love the assurance that my sins were dealt with on Calvary and each day, He forgives me.

If my post-salvation sins had not been dealt with on Calvary along with all the others, I’d be in a heap of trouble.

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In 1959, I transferred to Birmingham-Southern College from a school in Georgia. For a brief time, I lived with my sister Patricia and her husband James, and we all joined West End Baptist Church. It was my introduction to Southern Baptists.

No sooner had we joined the church than I discovered the Baptists of Birmingham held a thriving twice-a-month gathering for their teens. On the first and third Saturday nights, upwards of 500 young people would gather in some Southern Baptist church for an inspirational program, followed by a fellowship time with refreshments.

I had grown up in rural Walker and Winston Counties of Alabama and although our little Free Will Baptist Church loved its young people, we had nothing like this.

I ate it up.

Soon, I was promoting the gathering among West End’s youth, encouraging ours to be the biggest group present. Some nights we would have 50 or more on the city buses which the church hired to transport us. (It was on one of those buses where I told the lovely Margaret Ann Henderson for the first time that I loved her. The date was December 3, 1960. She was 18 and I was 20.)

One evening, I was approached by Larry Andrews, our church’s music minister (and the father of best-selling inspirational author Andy Andrews). “Joe, I was talking to Bob Ford. He’s the associate pastor at Ensley Baptist and pastor advisor for the youth rally. Would you be interested in becoming program director for the rally?”

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The best thing my parents did for me was to give me 3 brothers and 2 sisters.

It was hard on Mom, I guarantee you, and not a whole lot easier on Dad.

Mom birthed all of us–and another son who lived only two or three days and was never named–in a 9 year period.  Dad worked in the coal mines to put groceries on the table and shoes on our feet. Sometimes, he doubled back for another 8-hour shift because the money came in handy.

When Mom went to Heaven on June 2, as she approached her 96th birthday, she was surrounded by her remaining five children, all of us 70 years of age or above.  (One has to wonder how that would feel, seeing all your children live to be old!) (Note: Dad died in 2007, and our youngest brother Charlie died 18 months earlier.)

Last week, the five of us met back at the rural Alabama farmhouse for the first time since Mom’s departure. On Thursday night, we had a dinner to celebrate the birthdays of oldest brother Ron and next-to-oldest brother Glenn.  They were born 364 days apart.

I went up on Wednesday, taking Amtrak’s “The Crescent” from New Orleans to Birmingham. Youngest sister Carolyn and her husband Van met me there, and chauffeured me to the farmhouse, some 60 miles to the Northwest. (People sometimes ask, “So, what town did you grow up in?” I reply, “No town. Even though I tell people I’m from Nauvoo, Alabama, we lived 5 miles out from that. In the next county even.” It’s about as rural as it’s possible to get.)

Growing up, we thought of ourselves as far apart in age. But eventually, all six of us were in our 20s together, then our 30s, and so forth. When we were all in our 40s, I asked Mom if that made her feel old. “No, it’s not my problem,” she answered.

These days, we’re all peers. All but the girls are white-headed, and we know why they aren’t.

For the record, here is the “skinny” on each of the siblings….

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(This is an experiment to which I’ll be returning from time to time and editing, adding to, trying to turn into something. Readers may ignore it or visit it to see how it has changed. I don’t see it as a journal so much as trying to make sense of the most critical 3 months of my young life.)

I was never very good at introspection, trying to figure out why I said something or did something or how I got to be the person that I am. Most men are said to have the same limitation.

However, looking back over a life that has lasted nearly three-fourths of a century, it’s hard not to notice a few life-intersections that felt minor at the time but turned out to be major game-changers.

The summer of my eleventh year was just such a time.

In mid-1951, my world changed. Our family moved from a West Virginia mining camp into the home of our maternal grandmother on the remote Alabama farm where my mom had been raised. To my mind, we had moved from civilization to Mars.

We went from living in a mountaintop community with swarms of children to a farmhouse 13 miles from town and nearly that far to the nearest friend my age. It felt as if I had been sentenced to solitary confinement.

From a life preoccupied with playing and enjoying myself, I moved to one focused on the life of a working farmhand. Ball games and fun times with buddies were replaced by long afternoons in the field alongside my brothers and sisters.

In leaving West Virginia, I traded an exciting new school with terrific teachers and great classmates for an old, barren, two-room Alabama school 10 miles from the county seat, presided over by a small-time dictator-principal and his wife. Mrs. Johnson taught the first 3 grades; Mr. Johnson had the other three. I wondered if the county school board even knew they were in the system.

For the four years we’d lived in West Virginia, our Alabama cousins seemed to find my Yankee brogue fascinating and on summer visits south, would gather around just to listen. When we moved back to Alabama and it became apparent that I was going to be a classmate at Poplar Springs, my strange speech pattern quickly went from exotic to an embarrassment;

That summer, in the annual revival at New Oak Free Will Baptist Church, the small church where our family had worshiped for generations, Jesus Christ came into my wife and saved me. .

Finally, toward the end of that summer, Mrs. Boshell, our elderly neighbor one mile up the highway, was murdered. Before the sheriff arrived, some of us children stood on her front porch and stared down at her mutilated body.

It was years before I gave thought to the effect such a sequence of major events arriving in wave upon wave could have upon an 11-year-old boy.

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I began pastoring Unity Baptist Church of Kimberly, Alabama, in November of 1962 and was ordained the next December 2. So, we’re coming up on the 50th anniversary of this (ahem) significant milepost.

I expect the Today Show to call any day now.

The normal thing is for a minister to look back and tell of his regrets, what he wishes he had done, had done better, or wishes he had not done at all. And who doesn’t have some of those? I confess to wondering about people who say, “If I had it to do over, I’d live my life exactly the same way.” We would, of course, if we were as ignorant as we were the first time through. But you’d like to think you’ve learned something on the first loop that would restrain you from the foolishness that marked the earlier passage.

Therefore, I’d like to begin this series–which I expect to add to throughout the rest of 2012 as things occur–with Three Things I do not regret from a half-century of ministry.

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