I made a preacher mad at me the other day. I apologized and he forgave me, but I don’t regret what I did.

Here’s what happened.

I received an email from the man of God telling how a group of liberals is petitioning the Federal Communications Commission to end religious programming in the United States. This would stop Charles Stanley, David Jeremiah, and a whole host of religious programmers from broadcasting their messages.

The e-mail was a “forward,” of course. My friend had not written it, but merely read it with alarm and forwarded it to dozens of his friends.

I clicked on “reply all,” which sent my response to everyone who had received his note.

I said, “My dear brother, where have you been! This is a hoax! It has been around for nearly 40 years. The FCC never was petitioned to stop religious programming and couldn’t if it wanted to.”

I added, “This meaningless petition has been circling the earth for all these decades, causing gullible, although well-meaning, Christians to tie up God’s resources and their time in bombarding the FCC with thousands and thousands of pieces of mail every year.”

“Christians of all people should not pass this stuff along when they can’t verify it,” I said.

That’s how I hurt his feelings. So, I apologized.

Then, last week, that same petition arrived again.

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“But I say to you who hear, ‘Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you.” (Luke 6:27)

Put yourself in the place of the Lord. You want to get across to your people the importance of fellowship inside the body, how to keep relationships strong, and how to correct them when they get out of whack. So, what do you do?

Do you tell your people to love their children? to love their parents? their sweethearts?

They already do. Jesus said even bad people love their own.

Instead, Jesus tells us to love our enemies—the absolute last people on earth we would think of loving. We tend to think of our enemies as completely unlovable, the guy who did us wrong and is planning worse, the kind of people we want to hate or fear or resent and are thinking of getting back at.

Love my enemies? Are you kidding, Lord? I don’t even like them.

The good news is He does not tell us we have to like them. Some of them He doesn’t like very much either. ‘Like’ has nothing to do with it. It’s about love.

We have to love them.

This is not an option. The command to love our enemies is found three times in the gospels–Matthew 5:44 and Luke 6:27 and 35. The principle, however, is planted all through Scripture. We’re stuck with it. This is something our Lord Jesus Christ fully expects from His disciples.

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One day in 1965, John Steinbeck sat at an outdoor cafe in San Francisco with Howard Gossage, a friend in the advertising business. He said, “Yesterday in Muir Woods, Charlie lifted his leg on a tree that was fifty feet across, a hundred feet high, and a thousand years old. What’s left in life for that dog after that supreme moment?”

Gossage was quiet for a moment, then he said in his slight stutter, “W-w-well, he could always t-t-teach.”

At this time of the year when school has resumed, half the people I know are talking about teaching and teachers. Some friends are themselves teachers and another large segment are the students, everything from pre-K to post-doctoral. Some are thrilled to be back in school, others feel they have been sentenced to Angola for another nine months. That period is ideally suited to bring forth new life in other realms, however in the classroom nothing is guaranteed.

It can be time well invested, life-changing even, or it can be a prison-sentence.

As a lifelong student with two full decades in classroom instruction and the rest in the laboratory of life, learning and teaching have been two of my most enjoyable pursuits.

In fact, I’m signing on to teach a couple of classes at our New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in 2010, one in worship leadership and the other in interpersonal relations, both skills absolutely required in those who would shepherd the Lord’s flocks. Both subjects are dear to my heart. Both classes will be shared with another professor–a real one, I’m tempted to say–to give the students two perspectives and, since the classes are several hours long, to give the teachers some rest.

I’m excited. But I’ve done this before, actually–taught seminary students–and know that it’s real work.

If you think being a student is hard, and my grandchildren do, the teacher’s assignment is far more difficult.

No one lives by faith to the extent teachers do. If they judged the value of their work and the effect of their teaching by what they see sitting before them in the classroom, many would slip quietly into the faculty lounge and slit their throats.

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Cruising down the bayous of lower St. Bernard Parish, Jason Melerine had his crab boat up to 20 mph. Suddenly the vessel caught a piece of sunken hurricane debris, jerking the outboard motor off and giving Jason and his helper the jolt of their lives.

A front-page article in today’s Times-Picayune says there are 6,000 underwater snags in the waterways of our part of the world, remnants from August 2005’s Hurricane Katrina.

It’s a sermon illustration in the making.

The other headline that catches the attention of readers is part of the continuing saga of Michael Jackson’s doctor’s legal predicament. “Coroner: Array of drugs killed Jackson.”

Imagine the prestige MJ’s doctor–Conrad Murray, cardiologist from Las Vegas–must have sported when potential patients learned who his celebrity client was. Wow. Doubtless he had a long waiting list of people wanting him as their doctor. Anything to be that close to their favorite celeb. I expect there’s something inside all of us who are insecure about going to doctors in the first place that says, “If he’s Michael Jackson’s doctor, he has to be the best!”

Preachers, this one has your name all over it.

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My friend Bob has been dealing with a difficult family situation. It’s not as though he needs the grief, because Bob is getting up in years and his health is bad.

Bob said to me, “I can’t wait for heaven.”

I agreed and said, “They don’t call it ‘rest’ for no reason.”

That’s a reference to Revelation 14:13. “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on….that they may rest from their labors.”

When I was a kid, a song we’d hear occasionally was called “The Big Rock Candy Mountain.” We heard it, smiled at its silliness, hummed along and thought nothing more of it.

It turns out that was the hobo’s national anthem during the Depression. And it gives us his idealized picture of paradise.

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The absolute most foolish thing the lay leadership of a church will ever do is to bring in a new pastor, turn everything over to him, and abandon him.

“You’re God’s man; it’s in your hands now.”

Sounds good. But it overlooks one massive fact: he’s a sinner and you have just handed him a temptation he may not be able to resist. You have endangered your church and put his entire future ministry at risk.

Take just the area of finances, for instance.

If you want to corrupt a preacher–not all of them, but it will work with a strong percentage–give him the say-so over the checks that will be written from the church. Do not build in any kind of oversight.

Hand the minister a credit card and pay the bills when they arrive with no questions asked. I can almost guarantee that fully one-third or more of ministers will cross that invisible line into questionable territory.

The news out of Compton, California, this week reports another pastor arrested for abusing the church’s trust. This minister took as much as $800,000 from the church, according to the FBI.

The FBI? They call the feds in on these things? They do. This is not a private little matter between a pastor and the mayor or the police chief, who may even be a member of your church. This is serious stuff. The Compton pastor will spend several years in the federal penitentiary.

You might think all the members of that church would be upset at the preacher. You’d be wrong.

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Every minister with any experience at all could write a book to pastor search committees. They would urge them to focus on one pastor at a time, always keep your word, do not sugar-coat how things are in your church, bring along a packet of material on your church and community to leave with the candidate, and give him names and contact information on past ministers who have served your church so he can do his own background checking.

It’s a scary thing, being selected for a pastor search team, what we used to call the “pulpit committee.” That title changed when it finally got through to some people that they were searching for more than someone to fill the pulpit; they were seeking God’s shepherd for their flock.

Over nearly a half-century in the ministry, I have dealt with at least an average of one such committee per year. In fact, during one three year period, I counted up the number of contacts I had had from pastor-searchers: 36, one per month.

I’ve seen them all, from the absolutely fantastic to the disastrously inept.

Personally, I can think of a-hundred-and-twenty-three things I’d like to say to this little group of folks entrusted with the future of their church.

I’ll confine myself to three words of counsel.

–Don’t fall in love too easily.

–Take your own sweet time.

–Run lots and lots of references, then run a few more.

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