How to love your church’s monthly business conferences

Posted on by
1

I’m cleaning out desk drawers in my church office, trying to close it down.  After I retired  in 2009, our church generously provided me a secluded space to set up a desktop computer for writing. Since it adjoined the church library, it was perfect in every way.

These days, since I no longer need a separate office, for the past few months, I’ve been trying to close it out.  A bigger job than I’d anticipated.

That’s how I came across something written while I was still pastoring–that would be sometime prior to 2004–under the title “Conducting a business meeting.”

Pastors and church leaders are all too familiar with those monthly church business conferences that can be mind-numbingly boring at times and at other times can rip open a fellowship of believers and leave it in shreds.  Their unpredictability has caused many a church leader to look for ways to dispense with them, everything from simply forgetting to have them to amending the constitution and by-laws to say the church will have only quarterly or annual conferences to outright canceling them altogether.

No solution is ideal, as far as I can see. So much depends on the leadership and the membership.

That said, I wanted to reproduce the one page article here. It tells a great story….

Continue reading →

Predisposed toward the negative

Posted on by
2

“Help us, Lord! We’re perishing!” (Matthew 8:25)

A friend sent a packet of material to help me deal with the grief of my wife’s death.  I appreciate his kindness and thoughtfulness.  Included in the folder was his church bulletin and monthly mailout, which I enjoyed reading. That’s how I noticed something slightly odd.

The Sunday bulletin listed last week’s actual offering as, let’s say “$45,000.”   Above it was the figure which the budget requires on a weekly basis, perhaps “$55,000.”   Underneath it said, “Deficit: $10,000.”

Now, what we have here is a church showing that last Sunday’s offering, as generous as it was, amounted to a deficit, when all that happened was that on that particular Lord’s Day the contributions were low.  They probably made up for it the next Sunday.

If I were their pastor, I would instruct the editor of the publication to delete the word “deficit” from the dictionary.  “Use that word only when I tell you to do so.”

Some church members are automatically drawn to any bad report or negative slant they can find to attack or undermine the present pastor and church leadership.  I’d just as soon not give them ammunitiion.

Okay, now….

Continue reading →

Valentine’s Day: “Oh, are they having that again this year?”

Posted on by
5

My sister Carolyn sent me a list of lame excuses men use as to why they didn’t get their sweethearts anything for Valentine’s Day. “The Hallmark store was closed and I refuse to give you anything but the best.”

That sort of thing.

At the end, her list cited a quote from the old comic Red Skelton.

“All men have flaws; but married men find out them a lot sooner than others.”

You think that’s funny, but it’s not.  A lot of truth to it. And good truth, may I say.

This will be my first Valentine’s Day without Margaret, who left us for Heaven a few days ago. My first anything without her, as a matter of fact.  And I was thinking….

Continue reading →

Signs of healing begin to appear

Posted on by
13

“He healeth all our diseases…” (Psalm 103:3)

In the old Western novels, cowboys are taught that once a wound begins to itch, healing is on its way.

On January 23, a little over two weeks ago, my wife had what appears to have been a pulmonary embolism which triggered a cardiac arrest.  That was a Friday and on Wednesday night, with the counsel of doctors, my family made the decision to unplug life support.  My wife of nearly 53 years had not responded to any of the stimuli and treatments.  A physician friend said to me later, “Your wife died in the nail salon on Friday.”

It would appear so.

I’ve wept ever since.  We had a memorial service on Monday, February 2, and family members have been helping me with a thousand and one details.  Two wonderful ladies from our church spent the day here last Friday cleaning the house from top to bottom.  I’m still eating meals people brought.

And I’m still weepy. I asked a friend, “When do the tears stop?”  She answered, “I don’t know yet.  Jim’s only been gone 14 years.”

I do not grieve for Margaret. She was living with such pain and infirmities, and now that is all gone.  She is with the Lord, out of this pain and misery and dancing with the redeemed of the ages, if God’s Word can be believed.

I’m betting my life that it can.

A large number of people assure me they are praying for God’s healing for me.

Healing.  What a nice concept.

Continue reading →

Today my wife told me she loved me

Posted on by
6

“Herein is love, not that we loved God–but that God loved us and sent His Son…”  (I John 4:10)

I found the note today–five days after Margaret’s funeral–where she had listed in her handwriting some of the reasons she loved me.

Here’s what happened.

Just before Christmas, our pastor, Dr. Mike Miller, told the church how one year his wife Terri filled a jar with 100 notes, each one telling why she loved him. Each day he drew out one and read it and basked in the glow. He was reluctant to draw out the last one, he said, and has left it there ever since.

Margaret and I teased about that afterwards, as to whether we could do it. I told her I could list a hundred reasons she loved me.  She laughed that she might have trouble getting to a dozen.  Then, over the next few days, if one of us did something the other didn’t care for, we would tease, “Okay. One less reason” or “You’re now down to 5.”

It turned out she actually was making such a list.

And today, I ran across it.

Continue reading →

A guide to mistreating worshipers

Posted on by
6

“….they treated the Lord’s offering with contempt” (I Samuel 2:17).

The first rule of worship leadership should probably be stated as Try Not To Get In Their Way.

When  people come to worship, if you cannot help them, at the very least try not to interfere with what they are doing.

The sons of Eli the High Priest were nothing but trouble. Hophni and Phinehas–who doesn’t love those names!– “were wicked men; they had no regard for the Lord or for the priests’ share of the sacrifices from the people” (I Samuel 2:12-13).

God literally calls them SOBs.  “Sons of Belial” is the Hebrew expression translated as “wicked men” or “corrupt.”

Scripture has not a single positive statement about these miscreants.

Continue reading →

Don’t be afraid. Your life depends on it.

Posted on by
9

“And the angel said (to the shepherds), ‘Fear not.’  And the shepherds said, ‘Are you out of your mind? We are frightened out of our skulls!!’

Okay, I made that up. But it makes sense to me.

Sometimes being frightened is the right reaction.  Being scared is not always wrong.

What scares people the most?  You might be surprised. It isn’t terrorism, earthquakes or tsunamis.

According to one report, it’s walking alone in the dark.

I remember a time when I was fifteen, walking home from my uncle’s house, maybe a half mile. The darkness was absolute.  I had to feel my way along the old country road. Trouble is, halfway home, I had to pass George Lawson’s house and he had a massive dog that was beyond frightening.  As I was approaching the general area of that house, I walked as quietly as I could.  Then, without warning, suddenly the dog was there, not more than five feet from me, splitting the night air with a howl that could be heard in the next county.  You’ve heard of “jumping out of your own skin”?  If it was possible, that’s what I did. I ran the rest of the way, taking my chances on staying in the road.

So, yes, walking alone in the dark can be a fearsome thing.

The Sunday Parade magazine, the insert that accompanies the Sunday paper, for January 18, 2015, outdid itself this time.  The cover article by Maura Rhodes asks in large letters no one can miss, “What are you afraid of?”

Continue reading →

What my wife would tell pastors’ wives

Posted on by
19

This is being written two days before my wife’s funeral.

An hour ago, the pastor who married Margaret and me nearly 53 years ago sent a note of his love and prayers.  Bill Burkett is 90 now, living in Kentucky, and seemingly as sharp and gracious as ever.

I told him, “You would have been proud of Margaret.  She was a wonderful pastors’ wife.”

I know a lot of the Lord’s people who would attest to that.  Over a period of 42 years, we served seven churches in four different states. Every church situation differed, the needs varied, and her roles fluctuated with each.

Once, after we’d been married perhaps 15 years, at my suggestion Margaret met with a few wives of pastors in an informal setting. The stated object was for fellowship, but the result was usually mutual encouragement and more.

Continue reading →

Margaret Ann Henderson McKeever (June 9, 1942 – January 29, 2015)

Posted on by
86

“Beauty is deceitful and popularity is vain. But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her own hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates” (Proverbs 31:30-31).

Margaret would be embarrassed to know I used Proverb 31 on her.

But she was in many respects every ounce that strong woman to whom someone is paying tribute.  She had to be, considering all the hurdles she cleared, the obstacles she overcame, the setbacks and hardships and difficulties life handed her, all of which she met head-on and surmounted.

I wish you could have known her in her prime.

She could be fierce in her faith and soft in her sweetness, and focused like a laser when she set her mind to do a thing.  Only in her later years did the burdens begin to outnumber and overwhelm her.  Even then, she was a fighter.  Her calendar is filled with appointments I am having to cancel–meetings with therapists, nutritionists, pain management clinic, physical therapy, a psychiatrist, and a few other things. She was not giving up, she was not going down without a fight.

Joe married a fighter.  April 13, 1962.  A Friday night in Birmingham, Alabama.

She would have to be a fighter. She was tying herself to a young preacher who hardly knew how to be a husband, breadwinner, pastor, or a father, and much less a caretaker, lover, best friend.  I would have to learn all of this, and some lessons came harder than others.

Continue reading →

A few notes about my wife Margaret

Posted on by
112

Margaret is still with us as I write, so this is not an obit.

I just wanted to express more fully the appreciation of our family for the faithful prayers of countless friends far and wide who have lifted her and us to the Father since Margaret’s massive heart attack last Friday around noon.

WHAT HAPPENED...

Friday morning perhaps around 11 am, Margaret had driven herself to the nail salon for a pedicure.The ladies there say she had just seated herself on the chair when she began coughing. Then, she passed out.

They ran next door to the laundromat and asked for help. Someone called 911. The Harahan police station is a block away, and they responded immediately, followed by the firefighters.  They started CPR, and rushed her to Ochsner’s Hospital, some three miles or so to the east.

The hospital called my house. “Sir, you need to come to the emergency immediately.”  Daughter-in-law Julie had to drive me since we have only the one car.(I was afraid Margaret might have been in an accident. She’s driving very little these days and has been getting around with a walker or cane. But this drive was short and the parking was easy. Still, I was concerned.)

Continue reading →