Where I’ll be preaching (and, of course, you’re invited)….

Easter Sunday night (March 23), 6 pm, at Emmanuel Baptist Church (on Highway 82 west), Gordo, Alabama. Our longtime friends Tommy and Diane Winders will be singing. I can’t wait.

That week—Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday mornings (March 24-26), 10:30 to noon–I’ll be speaking at the annual senior adult revival for that area, the Pickens Baptist Association, held at Stansel Baptist Church, on state route 17, above Carrollton, Alabama. The service calls for special music and a testimony from senior adults before my sermon, followed by a pot luck lunch.

Saturday morning, March 29, at 9:30 am, I’m doing a leadership training session for a group of African-American pastors at Lower Light Baptist Church in New Orleans East. If interested, call Jeffery Friend at Suburban Baptist Church (504/242-0955) or Kenneth Davis at the host church (504/421-1802).

April 20, 9:30 am, preaching on missions at Calvary Baptist Church, 2401 General DeGaulle, New Orleans.

In between, during, and throughout, my days are comprised of a ton of meetings, boards, retreats, conferences, training sessions, and the like, but I’ll not bore you with those.

And now, the apology….

Actually, it’s an “almost” apology. About the vast numbers of articles we are posting on this blog and sending to your mailbox. We never planned to overwhelm you to this extent.

Originally, if you can believe it, the plan called for one article a week. This was ten years ago when I was midway through my 14 year stint as pastor of Kenner’s First Baptist Church. My buddy Don Davidson, now pastor of Alexandria (VA) First Baptist Church, but then at Mt. Hermon in Danville, VA, told how he was doing a “Fax of Life” weekly page, an article which his people received by FAX and posted in their workplaces. That was a great idea, I thought, so we started doing it.

That’s when I discovered how much I had missed writing.

I’d written magazine articles for Southern Baptist publications throughout my ministry, never a large number, at the most maybe 4 or 5 a year. Once, I jumped up in the middle of the night and jotted down a kind of parable which “HIS” magazine (collegiate publication of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship) printed and which has since been reprinted all over the world. For years I would periodically receive small royalty checks because another magazine had used that article.

The point being that I had loved to write, but had stopped. Not on purpose, just the way things happen in life. You get busy doing your day job, which in this case was a demanding pastorate.

I didn’t even have a typewriter in my office during most of the 1990s. I’d scribble something in longhand and give to Janie Moskau my secretary who would put it in the desired form and send it on its way.

One day in the late 90s our minister of education Jim Lancaster installed a computer in my office. He didn’t even ask, just did it. My, what I owe that good man. Jim now pastors the FBC of Hammond, LA.

Back then, we just sent out an article every week or so. And of one page, if you can believe it.

Then, for reasons I cannot explain, they began to get more often and much longer.

Soon we began to hear complaints from some who received these via the internet that they were clogging up their mailboxes. That’s when Marty (number two son, computer genius with Bank of America in Charlotte, and webmaster for this blog) worked out the present system of two mailings a week, in which we mail only the intro to each article, after which if you want the rest, you click on the link.

And now, I’m almost embarrassed at the numbers of articles you are receiving in your box twice a week, usually four or five. More than one a day.

I hear from many readers who say, “I don’t have time to read them all, so I scan them.” Good. Only my siblings and my mom read them all, I expect. (Assuming they do.)

But this seems to be a very prolific time for me, with the creative juices flowing, the computer calling in the middle of the night sometimes to “get up now and do something with this.” I’ve learned that if I do not write it then, it’s forever lost. Every pastor knows that from sad experience. You wake up with this incredible idea or insight into a Scripture, but it’s 2 a.m. and you think, “I need my sleep; if I get up, I’ll not be able to go back to sleep. I’ll surely remember this in the morning, it’s so good.” The next morning you can’t recall a single aspect of that inspiring thought.

So, these days, the main thing is to get these articles down, in print, on the website. I am assuming, rightly or wrongly, that they will outlive me. Marty tells me he “backs them up” from time to time, saving them on something so that in the event of an accident, we don’t lose this record of my life (!).

We have enough “Leadership Lessons” for a book (I’m working on it!) and eventually will have enough articles on prayer for one. The other series which I kind of backed into lately (“The hardest person, time, church, funeral, wedding, etc”) should likewise make a book one of these days, once we get, say, 25 of them. If so, I hope to call it “Doing Hard Time in the Pulpit.”

I may have told you about the time, perhaps 5 years ago, when I was browsing in the Lifeway Christian Store on the campus of our Baptist seminary. A man came up to me–I did not know him and have no memory at all who he was–and said, “You don’t need to be buying books; you need to be writing them.” And he was gone.

I took that as a word from the Lord.

Ever since, I’ve been writing books. Not publishing them, you understand, but writing them. The hard part, I expect, will be getting these into book form (and figuring out what to do with them once they’re in print), and I’m working on that. Will appreciate your prayers.

I sincerely thank you for your indulgence and patience.

We’re about to grant you a reprieve of a week. I’ll not be writing from Wednesday March 19 through the following Wednesday, March 26. The first half of that 8 day period, I’ll be visiting with my mother at the Nauvoo, Alabama, homeplace, and going to church with her at New Oak Grove Free Will Baptist Church on Easter Sunday. Then, traveling to Gordo and Carrollton for the meetings mentioned above.

I’m always happy to receive your responses, criticisms, and any other input that you wish to send our way. Thanks for partnering with us in this.