I walked into the hospital room just as the doctor was leaving. “He said I could go home,” she beamed. “And just think–after seven months!”

She had entered the hospital on March 6, and today was October 9. Through every day of the Spring, all through the hot Summer, and into the Fall, she had lain in that hospital room as sick as anyone I had ever seen. Even two weeks earlier, I wondered why she didn’t just give up. And here she was leaving.

I pulled up a chair and asked the question on my mind: how did this happen? What made the difference? How had she gotten better so fast?

“It was two things,” she said, and she gave me permission to tell her story. “They found out how to cure my infection and then a man came into my room. He stood right there and told me he sensed that I had a spirit of unforgiveness deep within me.” She smiled at me, then added, “Now, imagine someone coming into your room and telling you you’re carrying a grudge and it’s keeping you ill! But the more I thought about it, the more I realized he was right.”

And what did you do, I asked.

“I did what James 5:14 tells us to do–I called for the elders of my church and they prayed over me. I confessed my sin and gave it up to the Lord. I started getting better at that moment.”

I thought of two verses of Scripture. “There is no health in my bones because of my sin” (Psalm 38:3). “Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (James 5:16).

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My night-time reading these evenings is taking longer than planned, not because I fall asleep too early–as is often the case–but due to the nature of the book. It deals with a favorite period of history, one I’m well read on and which occupies a couple of shelves of my home library. The book is, well, frankly–it’s boring.

The author of this volume–and I consciously decided not to name it here–has made the assumption that anyone who buys his book has a built-in interest in that period and a foundational knowledge of its context and background. Therefore, he decided not to do the hard work other writers would have done in order to give it a human interest. No fascinating facts, no interesting tales, and, oddest of all, almost no conflict.

Plowing (trudging, toiling, laboring!) through this book, I could not help thinking of similar assumptions some of us preachers make as we prepare sermons for our Sunday services. Three assumptions in particular loom largest:

–“If I’m interested in this subject, the congregation will be, also.”

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We’ve seen that scene in movies a hundred times. A defenseless young woman is alone in a house where some unseen monster is loose, and what does she do but venture alone down darkened halls and into scary rooms. Invariably, she opens the door to the basement–which always looks like a dungeon–and steps into our deepest fears.

We want to cry out to her, “Don’t go there! This is not a good place to be!”

Sometimes, in real life, we feel like shouting the same counsel to friends who are venturing into unsafe places, particularly at vulnerable times.

In the case of an individual with a job to do, a most dangerous time is when he/she is feeling under-motivated.

When a friend confided that he was feeling under-challenged and unfulfilled in his job, I went into my fatherly mode and said, “You’re earning a paycheck that pays the mortgage, puts groceries on the table and provides for your family. That’s challenge and fulfillment enough for any man.”

Twenty-four hours later, a minister friend e-mailed a prayer request concerning his work. He’s having the kind of relationship difficulties we all encounter from time to time on large church staffs. I told him of my earlier conversation and suggested that might apply to his situation also.

People who study such things tell us that the demand for “fulfillment” and “challenge” in the workplace are relatively modern phenomena. Until the last generation or two, when we suddenly began to feel a sense of entitlement concerning all things, people went to work to do a job and earn a paycheck. Whether they felt satisfied, fulfilled, challenged, or motivated never entered the conversation. No employer saw it as his duty to help workers achieve their full potential. They were doing a job.

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The phone call this week ended my five-plus years as the director of missions with the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans. Officially retired as of April 27, the administrative committee had asked me to stay on a while in anticipation of the arrival of my successor–who is Dr. C. Duane McDaniel, presently the pastor of Hawaii Kai Baptist Church in Honolulu–as he will arrive on July 1.

The chairman said, “We’re going to cut you free as of the 31st, this Sunday.”

My mother says, “How does it feel being retired?” I said, “A lot like being unemployed.”

But thankfully the invitations to speak and teach are coming in, and it appears I’ll be staying busy.

I’ve written here that the plan is to leave untouched my Guidestone (denominational annuity agency) account for a couple of years to see if it will recover from the devastating hit the economy gave it over the last year. In the meantime, I’m taking every speaking/preaching opportunity that comes along, and–I’m so grateful!–Guidestone is doing its part.

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A generation ago, a leader of our Foreign Mission Board said to me, “Eventually, Southern Baptists are going to have to come to terms with our changing world. We know what we mean by the word ‘missionary,’ but in much of the world that is an inflammatory word and simply saying it brings up hostile reactions. We need to find other terms to describe our people.”

That time is now with us.

I am confident some Southern Baptists view the changing nomenclature of our missions effort with a certain amount of alarm, as though this were all about political correctness. But it has nothing to do with that.

In my last pastorate, Shelley finished college and went to central Asia for two years to work with what is now called “a people group.” That nebulous term refers to a subset of a nation in which the people are somewhat isolated, have a different culture, and speak their own language. Shelley was not allowed to tell us which country she worked in or the name of the people group. She sent e-mails home in code. For ‘pray’ she would write ‘yarp,’ which is ‘pray’ spelled backward.

A missionary executive told me this week, “There are people all over the planet who type into their internet search engines the name of their country and ‘prayer.’ They’re looking for just this very thing, for religious groups heading their way for proselyting. And when they find them, that person or that group is barred from entering.”

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I haven’t seen the latest “Star Trek” movie. It’s on my agenda, but I’ve not had the time and don’t see when I will for the next couple of weeks. Friends say it’s a good one, however.

The newspaper this Friday morning says that movie has been beamed to the astronauts circling the globe in the International Space Station. Previously — a year or more ago, I think — all the Star Trek movies had been teleported (sorry, couldn’t resist) up to these global-circuit-riders in the stratosphere.

Most of the current crop of astronauts say their interest in space exploration was whetted by the television show “Star Trek,” either the original with William Shatner (Captain Kirk) or the “next generation” bunch.

A writer for a more recent televised version of these explorers who “go where no one has ever gone before” has let us in on inside information which I find fascinating.

Over forty years, the six TV series of Star Trek comprise 726 episodes. For the 198 episodes in the series this writer was part of, 155 writers — a staggering number — were employed. So much for continuity, uniformity, theme development, character consistency.

The fact that trekkies soak up episode after episode and live and die by this stuff I find amazing. And more than a little depressing.

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We’re Camry people, ever since the first one we purchased used for Margaret in 1998. I went around to neighbors with a Camry in their driveway, asking, “Do you ‘like’ your Camry or are you crazy about it?” Without exception, everyone was crazy about theirs. Eventually, we bought new Camrys in 2001 and 2005. This being 2009 and the ’05 carrying 140,000 miles, it is clearly time to upgrade.

I dread the process of studying prices and choices and making the rounds of the dealerships. Car dealers know this, of course, and count on it to discourage shoppers from in-depth comparisons and induce them into “let’s get it over with” purchasing decisions.

Anyway, here’s what happened.

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A friend who publishes an internet magazine for preachers and frequently picks up something from this blog to share with his subscription list wrote with suggestions on future articles we might want to write. See what you think about these subjects….

–the most difficult passage I ever preached. (Do I dare admit to him — and to myself — that if a text is really difficult, I don’t preach it? I usually stay with it until I get a handle on it and thus it’s not the most difficult any more. The most difficult ones are the least-studied ones.)

–the 17 best lessons I’ve learned in the pastorate. (So far, I’ve only come up with the first two: keep growing and keep praying.)

–the 12 funniest jokes I’ve ever told in the pulpit. (Well, the three funniest I told my first Sunday at one church and almost got voted out before I ever moved in. I’m still giving this one a lot of thought. Like most pastors, I tell them and forget them.)

–the 10 biggest mistakes I’ve made in the pastorate. (Is it possible to do this? The pastors who read this will understand that there are some mistakes we make that are so embarrassing or shameful or secret that one does not dare admit them, regardless how long ago they happened. In fact, one pastor I know when asked to compile such a list of career mistakes in his ministry answered, “My biggest was five years ago when I honestly answered a question like this. The deacons read it and soon I was out of a job.”)

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