I said, “Open your Bibles,” and got two incredible reactions

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It was a typical church service.  When time came for the sermon, I suggested that everyone turn in their Bibles to the text we would be considering.

That was all.

You will not believe the two completely opposite responses I received.

First, that week I received a letter from a Rosemary Warner, someone I did not know.  Here is the letter in its entirety, unedited…

Yesterday I had the occasion to visit in your church.  I didn’t know why I chose to do that.  It just seemed like it was the thing for me to do, but now I know it was the will of someone much higher.  He sent me there for a reason.  I will not be back.

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What pastors are trying to do

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“In pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus….” (I Timothy 4:6).

On a crowded airplane, dad and his two-year-old son sat some rows back while Mom had to sit across the aisle and up several rows.  When the plane reached its cruising altitude, Dad lifted Junior above the seats so he could see his mother.

“See Mommy?  There’s Mommy.  Wave at Mommy! See?”

Junior sees nothing but a sea of faces.

“See Mommy?  Tell Mommy I love you. Say hi to Mommy.”

Nothing.  Junior still has not found his mother.

Then, just as Dad is about to tire of this, the little boy exclaims, “THERE SHE IS! THERE’S MOMMY! HI MOMMY! HI MOMMY!”

The entire plane overhears and everyone smiles. Junior continues, “HI MOMMY! I LOVE YOU, MOMMY!”

Dad finally distracted his small son with a book.

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The pastor and his mother

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Most pastors I’ve known have admitted that they were particularly blessed by their mothers.

I certainly was.

Lois Jane Kilgore McKeever grew up in church, met my dad when she and her sister were singing in church, and kept her six children in church until they were grown. (Of her four sons, two became preachers. Ron and Joe together have logged more than a hundred years serving the Lord.)

In those early years Mom got no encouragement from her husband (my wonderful dad), but she had us all ready on Saturday nights. My older brothers would pull out that number 2-1/2 washtub and fill it up.  We all bathed in the same water.  The joke was that the last kid died in quicksand.  Sunday mornings, we would walk a mile from our house to the church.

We were poor, but we were freshly scrubbed and our clothes were clean.  Lois McKeever was forever cleaning and cooking and washing clothes and cleaning house.  She kept the radio on to gospel singing and preaching, and could sing the prettiest alto you will ever hear.

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Questions about churchwork. Joe tries to answer.

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(Everyone is entitled to my opinion.  lol.  People keep throwing questions my way, for some reason. I suspect because it’s easy to do, and since in most cases we know each other only via the internet, it’s safe.  They know I’ll not be identifying them in a sermon or embarrassing them.  So, keep the questions coming, folks.)

Why do some people want to run a church?  I mean, what’s the point?  I can take you to two or three guys whose life ambition seems to be to boss the pastor around? 

I grant you they are oddities.  I’ve known a few in my time also, and have never understood why they do what they do, other than one thing:  They try to boss everyone everywhere.  It’s their personality.  It’s not just at church.

That doesn’t make it right.  It just explains it.

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To marry them or not? It can get complicated.

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Every pastor is faced by the dilemma of whether to marry certain couples.  And I’m not referring to the scarier twosomes that come in, where the immediate answer is “Sorry; not in this lifetime.”  Some of the decisions get complicated real quick.

I had honestly forgotten about this one until it popped up in my journal from 20 years ago. A friend recently filled me in on the rest of the story.

A highly respected pastor friend called me from another state.  A couple from his church wanted to be wed in my city, some 200 miles away.  Would I be able to do the ceremony?  A simple enough request. That happens a lot.   New Orleans, where I lived from 1990 until October of 2016, seems to be a wedding destination for a lot of people. One time the bride’s family was from New England and the groom’s folks lived in Texas. So, New Orleans was a convenient spot for everyone to meet in the middle.

So, nothing complicated about this request, I assumed.  The wedding would be at a hotel and my congregation would not be involved at all.

I cleared the date on my calendar, called the groom and we set up a time for the bride and groom to visit in my office.

A day or two later, in chatting with someone from that pastor’s city I happened to mention in passing that I would be doing this wedding.  She said, “Oh no.  You are?  You don’t know?”

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Expectations: The pastor informs a new church staff member

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Let’s say you’re the pastor of a growing church.  The church has just brought in a new minister to assist you in leading the congregation.  He/she might be a worship pastor, minister of music, student minister, or in charge of education or pastoral care.

One of the best things a pastor can do with the incoming minister is to make him/her aware of your expectations.  You will want to think them through and write them out, then share them after you both have agreed that God is leading him/her to your church.  Give the person the printed copy and don’t lose your own.  This may be necessary if the time comes when you have to deal with a rebellious or lazy staff member.

In sharing these, do it graciously, not dictatorially as though you are going to be looking over their shoulder all the time.

You could even follow this by asking for their expectations concerning you.  I guarantee you they have them.  They will expect you to deal with them as ministers of the gospel, to give them room to do their job, to pay them well and protect them on their off days, and to support them when the criticism is unfair.  If  the new staffer is expecting something from you which was not spoken and never implied, you want to know that up front before you get too deeply into the employment process.

What follows are things I shared with our staff members in six churches over forty-two years.  Some of them evolved, while some of them were there from the first.  The list is not complete, but only things I recall at this vantage point…

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The highest compliment a pastor can give

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“But Paul chose Silas and departed, being committed by the brethren to the grace of the Lord” (Acts 15:40).

“Tom, I need your help.”

“Ed, can you drop whatever you’re doing and meet me this morning?”

“Roger, I’ve got a tough visit to make and was wondering if you could go with me.”

Pastors don’t ask just anyone for this.

A preacher friend tells of the call he received in the wee hours of the night.

“A woman in the church was waving a gun around and threatening her family.  In recent weeks, we had been trying to help her with certain problems.  As I headed out the door for her house, I dialed the number for a deacon friend.”

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Don’t give us your testimony; show us Jesus.

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“For this purpose I wrote to you, that I might know the proof of you, whether you be obedient in all things” (2 Corinthians 2:9).

“I will show you my faith by my works” (James 2:18).

I’ve been looking back over twenty years of articles, notes, and journals where I recorded happenings in the churches I pastored.  Some of those events left scars, memories, and lessons enough for a lifetime.  Some people in those stories are forever unforgettable, either for their amazing examples of Christlikeness or for lesser reasons.

Recently on this website, I chronicled the doings of a few people who were angry over nothing, raging all the time, finding fault where none existed, then pinning blame when confronted.  I suggested the reason for this behavior: They are lost.  Unsaved.  “The natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God,” says I Corinthians 2:14, “for they are foolishness to him. Neither can he understand them for they are spiritually discerned.”

That says it as well as anything.

Today–a week after posting that piece–I was reflecting on some of those people, a few in particular. And, realizing that most are now passed to their heavenly reward (or lack thereof; not for me to say), I prayed the Lord would be merciful to them.  And at that point, the Lord explained something to me.

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The church which wants to help the needy has its work cut out for it.

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“Give to everyone who asks of you” (Luke 6:30).

Everyone who works around the church office will identify with this.

From my journal of Tuesday, August 12, 1997…

In the afternoon, I took a phone call from a Don Peterson.  “Remember me?” he said.

I said, “Refresh my memory.”

“My fiancée and I were in your services three Sundays ago.”

“No. Sorry.”

“Well, my father has died.  In Ann Arbor, Michigan.  I need some money for a plane ticket.  I need to borrow it until Sunday.”

I said, “How much?”

“Fifty-four dollars.”

I said, “How can I verify this?”

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When life peels away everything that defines you, who are you?

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“Take heed and beware of covetousness.  For a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of things which he possesses”(Luke 12:15).

“What do you do?”  In our society, that’s often the first question people ask.  It implies…

–that you do something in the way of a career.  Woe to the unemployed and those who call themselves homemakers.

–that you are what you do.  That your identity is bound up in what you do to earn an income.  Too bad if you lose your job or retire.  You become a cipher, at least in the minds of some.

If you don’t have a job, who are you?  If, like my wife Bertha, you loved being married to a pastor, when God takes him home and you can no longer fill the role you loved so much–the wife of a pastor–then who are you?

In our world, people’s names were often given in accordance with what they did. They received names like Baker, Cook, Weaver, Smith, Taylor, Hunter, Fisher, Farmer, Shepherd, Miller, Marshall, Ward.

I want to call your attention to a little story found in Luke 12.  Then, I’ll be asking you to use your imagination with me…

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