When the bishop shows up in the middle of your sermon. Yikes!

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One Sunday morning, many years ago–I must have been in my mid-30s– as I rose to preach, Dr. Ed Young, pastor of the enormous Second Baptist Church of Houston, Texas, sat in the congregation to hear my sermon.  (I was pastoring the FBC of Columbus MS.)

Was I surprised? Discombobulated? Nervous?

Nah. Not in the least.

I didn’t let it faze me but went right on as though he were not in the house.

I didn’t know he was in the house.

He told me about it years later.  (Not sure how I would have handled it had I known. Smiley-face here.)

In college, the dean of education cautioned all us future teachers. “One day the superintendent of education will walk into your classroom. He (or she) will take a seat on the back row and motion for you to go on with your lesson.”

“When that happens, I want you to teach as though you know more about that subject than anyone else in the world.”

I never had that happen, but I always remembered the point he was making.

Do not falter or stumble because someone important is in your audience. No stuttering.

Do your job.  Stay the course.

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What outsiders do not understand

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“But the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, for they are spiritually appraised” (I Corinthians 2:14).

I was sitting in church last Sunday morning thinking about what outsiders say concerning our worship and how we practice the Christian faith.  Most simply do not get it.

1) Some say we are taking the way of Jesus as an escape, that this is an easy way out.

My main response is laughter. It’s anything but easy, but only an insider would know that. You’re swimming upstream in a downstream world. What’s easy about that?

I know people who suffer greatly for the stand they take for Christ.  If it were easy, they’d have bailed a long time ago.

2) Some say we give money to buy God’s approval.

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The most depressing thing about being a pastor–and what to do about it.

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“Apart from these external things, there is the daily pressure upon me of concern for all the churches” (2 Corinthians 11:28).

When showing his scars and enumerating his sufferings, Paul ends with a mention of the daily care of the Lord’s people.  That was a great burden also.

You don’t bleed from caring for the Lord’s flock. But you hurt as much as if you did.

The worst part of pastoring, the burden that keeps hammering you down into the ground, is the perfectionism.

It’s not something the Lord puts on us–well, not any more than on anyone else–because “He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that  we are but dust” (Psalm 103:14). He is under no illusions about any of us. The quickest way to divine frustration, I would think, is for the Father to expect perfection from His children.

He’s smarter than that. Thankfully.

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What a good administrative assistant (i.e., secretary!) does for a pastor

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(I purposely did not ask two people very important to me for input into this.  Our daughter-in-law Julie is the outstanding administrative assistant to our terrific pastor and friend, Dr. Mike Miller.  To solicit their input might put them on the spot.  So, the first time they see this will be when we post it.)

Originally, we called them secretaries.  I’ve often wondered if it was because they were “keepers of the secrets.”

Then, seeking to magnify their work in their own eyes as well as to impress upon the church members their importance, we began calling them administrative assistants.  Some call them “ministry assistants.”  All of these are good.

They’re almost always women.

I used to be a secretary. For two years after college, I worked in the production office of a cast iron pipe plant doing everything that secretaries do for the production manager.  I took dictation, typed his letters, ran the teletype, typed up production work orders from the purchase orders, and emptied the spittoon.   Mr. Clyde Hooper, my boss, chewed cigars. He would cut one into three pieces and slip a section into his jaw.  That practice, he told me, resulted from the 1920s in a chemical plant where no one was allowed to smoke. At any rate, having grown up on a farm where I mucked out cattle stalls and hog pens, emptying that spittoon was nothing.

There’s possibly no better training for being a supervisor than having been a lowly employee.  In the church office, I never minded asking my “assistants” to fetch coffee in the morning, because at least they didn’t have to clean out my spittoon! (I clean it out myself.)

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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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What I would say at your graduation

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(I have not been invited to speak at anyone’s high school graduation in years, and am not unhappy about that in the least.  Sitting through the lengthy program–sometimes outside in the sun!–and eventually rising to try to convey some heavy thoughts to a crowd interested in a thousand things other than my message, no thank you.  So, I’ll just post a commencement address here. Thank you very much. Oh, and congratulations.)

“Thank you, Superintendent!  Congratulations, graduates. And may I say, you look beautiful today.  Even the fellow on the front row who appears not to be wearing pants under his robe.

Today is a great day in your life.  But don’t let it be the high point. In fact, if you do life well, you will forget almost everything that happens today, as a hundred other great events in your life will crowd out these memories. So, savor the moment. It’s fleeting.

Here is what I’d like to convey to you. Got your pencil and paper ready? This will be on the test!

1) Keep on growing.

You’re not ‘you’ yet; in some ways you’re still an embryo.

When looked at through the lens of your complete life, you are today graduating from the 3rd grade. You have so much to learn, so much farther to go. This is no time to quit growing.

Someone in my high school told of a classmate rowing his boat out into the middle of the lake and dumping all his textbooks overboard.  His new high school diploma was all he would be needing. This is suicidal.  Not to say stupid.

I hope you didn’t love high school too much. One of the worst things that can happen to any of us is to have hit our peak in high school, to have loved it so much that we never want to leave, and to spend the rest of our days trying to recapture those moments.

Far better to have been a little frustrated in your schooling that “they” weren’t teaching something you needed, that “they” were wasting much of your time, that you could do better than this. This angst, if we may call it that, has a way of jet-propelling you out of school toward the next stage.

That’s good. You’re so ready to get on to the next thing.

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How a new minister can gain the trust of the congregation

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Elton was a new pastor of a small church up the highway from here. To call him excited is an understatement.

Early in the process, Elton announced to the deacons they would hold an overnight retreat and talk about how things should be done.  So far, so good, I suppose.

At the retreat, this new pastor informed his leaders that he would be calling the shots and making all important decisions and their job was to support him.

Elton was fired the next week.

The problem–well, one of them–is that the church Elton came from was run in just that way.  The longtime pastor ruled as a benevolent dictator. Those who did not like it were encouraged to find another place to worship.  And since the church had grown to be the largest in the area, it appeared that this methodology had Heaven’s blessing.

Let’s talk about trust. The new church did not trust Pastor Elton for the simple reason that they did not know him. When he tried to rule with a heavy hand, they rebelled and he was out of work.

Want to hear something confusing?

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Me and women preachers

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“There  is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

I’m a Southern Baptist pastor. I am a 74 year old male.

And I blog, mostly for pastors and church leaders within the context of churches like ours.

They’re the only kind of churches I know.

(As a child, I attended the Free Will Baptist Church in rural Alabama and the Methodist Church in rural West Virginia, before they became “United Methodists.”  As a 19-year-old college student, the Lord led me to become Southern Baptist. I have lived and worshiped and served within that context ever since.  As a pastor, it’s all I know.)

I don’t write for Catholics, although if they read my stuff and find something useful, I’m delighted. I don’t write for the United Methodists, with their district superintendents and bishops and annual appointments, but am always pleased when they tell me some of these writings have proven helpful.

I don’t write for women pastors, but am pleased when they say these articles have been of assistance in their ministries.

No Catholic writes to criticize because I don’t mention the pope and nuns and their saints. No UMC pastors criticize because I fail to take into consideration how they do things. But women pastors regularly let me know they are offended by my use of the pronoun “he” in referring to pastors.

Most are gracious in pointing out what they consider my slight and/or oversight, which I appreciate. I’m not naturally confrontational and appreciate kindness from one writing to point out my errors. I would rather make love than war, as the 1960s slogan put it.

But, I need to say something here.

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12 ways of understanding faith

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“Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6).

Faith is vastly different from presumption.

Faith has its reasons for believing a thing, doing something, going someplace. Presumption is blind faith, and believes/does/goes without having been told or sent.

“The just shall live by faith” (Habakkuk 2:4; Romans 1:17, and Galatians 3:11). “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).

Presumption has no place in the life of a believer.

The parents who withhold medical care from a child because they “just know” God will heal him are living by presumption, not faith. The preacher who leaves home for some foreign land without a clear word from God because he “just knows” the Lord will not abandon him is testing God’s patience and being presumptuous.

“Keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins” (Psalm 19:13).

I want to live by faith.  Faith means “I believe in God and I have confidence in the Lord Jesus Christ” (John 14:1).  I have evidence, conviction, and to some extent, proof. What I do not have is all my questions answered, all my doubts removed, all the evidence I’d like. If I did have all that, I would not need faith but would be walking “by sight.”

God wants us to live and work, worship and teach, pray and serve by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

When lived out and applied, faith shows up in a lot of ways….

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