This happened years ago but David and I still laugh about it.

David was a deacon, a lawyer, and a young Christian who wanted to grow in his usefulness to the Lord. One day he asked to accompany me on my hospital visitation. “I’d like to get more comfortable visiting in the hospitals,” he said. “Sure. Great.”

A good thing for a deacon to do. For any of us to do.

The next morning around 7:30 we met in the medical center parking lot. We greeted each other and I made a couple of suggestions. “The first few patients we see, I’ll introduce you, but don’t say anything. Just pay attention.” Then, we went upstairs.

In 99 percent of the cases, hospital visitation is not rocket science (cliche!). It’s merely a Christian friend calling on another friend. Sometimes it’s big brother ministering to a hurting brother, and often nothing more profound than two old buddies chatting. Normally, my plan was to visit with the person no more than a couple of minutes, and if all was well, to share a verse of scripture (memorized, not read) and lead in a brief prayer of praise and commitment.

After the third or fourth visit, in the stairwell heading upstairs, I said, “David, in the next room, I’ll call on you to pray.” Fine.

A few minutes later as we left the patient’s room, in the hallway he said, “How was that?”

I said, “Well, normally that’s a good thing to pray. But I don’t think that a hospital room when a person is getting ready for major surgery you want to pray ‘Lord, help us to live this day as if it were our last.'”

He said, “Did I say that?” I laughed, “It’s all right. She didn’t seem to mind.”

It’s a cliche’ and not a bad one. The line was first spoken sometime in the decade of A.D. 170-180, thanks to the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. (He lived April 26, 121 to March 17, 180. He was a Stoic philosopher and seems to have been the type of ruler Plato had in mind with his concept of “philosopher-kings.”)

The exact quote from Marcus Aurelius: “And thou wilt give thyself relief if thou doest every act of thy life as it were the last.”

A note about cliche’s. They grew to be widely accepted and well-worn figures of speech for good reason: they served a useful purpose.

But as with most generalities, you don’t want to push them too far. An episode of “The Simpsons” bears this out.

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I’m about to raise a question I have no answer for.

A friend whom I’ve not seen in decades called yesterday. In the course of the conversation, when I asked what church he attends, he said, “There’s a tiny church near my house. I’m not sure why I still go there, they’ve had so many fights and splits over the years. When someone asked why I stay, I told him, ‘The Lord hasn’t led me to leave.'”

Why is he still there? Why hasn’t everyone left?

Up in the country, in the land of my youth, a number of longtime friends attend a historic church that meets only Sundays at 8 o’clock. The building has no heat or air, as I recall, and maybe no electricity–not sure about that. Yet, the crowd packs out the little building. They have their service and adjourn to their homes or to some breakfast restaurant. No Sunday School, no evening service, and nothing else as I understand it.

Why do they keep coming? What’s the attraction?

This week, a minister from another state introduced himself over the internet as a bi-vocational pastor of a country church. “Sunday morning only” is how he put it. The people stay for lunch–dinner, they probably call it–and go home. The pastor named another church, with membership in the thousands, where he attends Sunday nights and Wednesday nights.

I find myself wondering why the members of his church aren’t coming to the big church with him. What is the attraction to the small church with very little to offer?

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There are few easy jobs in the typical congregation and plenty of really difficult ones. My candidate for the hardest “elected” position is chairman of deacons.

The absolute toughest and most critical, of course, is the position of pastor. He’s the point man and so much rides on his faithfulness. A close second to that is the deacon chairman.

I say this in full recognition that in our denomination at least–the Southern Baptist Convention–deacons are a varied lot. What they do and how they minister is strictly up to the individual church. Some function as boards of directors, some are teams of servants, some work as a steering committee composed of chairs of every committee in the church, and some are true spiritual leaders.

But there is one thing true in 99 percent of our churches: the chairman of deacons is the number one lay position within the congregation.

On paper, the deacon chair is simply the moderator of the monthly meeting of his group. But in actuality, he (and in the rare instance, she) is the go-between for the pastor and the congregation.

The congregation is having a major problem that involves the pastor. Someone has to visit the shepherd for a confrontational sit-down with him. It falls to the deacon chairman.

Someone or some group within the congregation is out of line. They are attacking the pastor unfairly. For the shepherd to confront them seems self-serving and puts him on the defensive. Someone else needs to do this. The chairman of deacons inherits the job by default. There is no one else better situated.

When you are nominated by the church as a deacon, they convene a council to examine you, then the church ordains you. It’s a big deal. We need to do something just as significant when the deacons choose their leader. The job is the weightiest in the church when done well.

A deacon chairman needs four qualities; if he misses even one, the church could be in trouble.

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In the latter months of World War II, as the Allies were closing in on Germany, the Nazis developed a ruse that worked well for a while.

They would find German soldiers who spoke English well and dress them as Americans. They would arrange for them to be “lost” and to rejoin the Alllied forces as they moved forward. Their task: to infiltrate the American troops and assassinate Generals Eisenhower and Patton.

In time, the good guys developed some tests for exposing the fakes. One German was cut down by the Americans when they saw how he was walking. He was ramrod straight whereas all our troops slouched when they walked.

Another group learned to address the soldier using “pig Latin.” If he was stymied by that, he was exposed.

And they developed questions. Two, I recall, were: Who is Betty Grable? and What position did Lou Gehrig play?

The answers were: movie star/pinup girl and first base for the Yankees. It was understood that every GI in the world would know this.

If you have been in the warfare against the forces of righteousness and the enemies of all that is good and holy for any period of time, you have come up against counterfeits and pretenders, fakes and shams.

The question is, how do you tell? And what should we do about them?

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