One —

Charlie Dale, pastor at New Orleans’ Grace Baptist Church, has just sent a post-Easter message to everyone on his e-mailing list with the following:

“The church is full of hypocrites! It must be true because I’ve heard it all my life. Well, for those who decry the church being filled with hypocrites, I have good advice for you. Go to church on the Sunday after Easter. The Sunday after Easter is the lowest attended Sunday all year. The church won’t be full of hypocrites because the church won’t be full of anybody. If the past is any indication, our own church building will be one-quarter full. This is your opportunity to fill the church with genuine, authentic, pure-in-heart people like yourself; therefore, you’ll out-number the rest of us hypocrites! We’ll even read Christ’s own preaching against hypocrisy from Matthew 6:1-18 this Sunday.”

Charlie ends with this: “This opportunity only comes once a year. Don’t waste it.” He adds this post-script: “Note to hypocrites: Don’t worry. We know that we’re still in charge.”

Good stuff, Charlie. One thing you can be assured of: those who show up this Sunday will possess a good sense of humor!

Two —

Recently a friend said, “Tell me what to do, Joe. Sometimes in the introduction of my sermon, I get so carried away with what I’m going to preach, that I end up preaching the entire thing right then. Instead of reading my text and going about it in an orderly way, I dump the whole thing on them up front.”

I smiled and said, “Well, not to devastate you all in one blow, but the answer to your problem is called

I’m not going to identify the preacher to spare him possible embarrassment, but knowing him, he’d probably enjoy the notoriety. He shared this with a group of us one day ago and I’ve smiled about it ever since.

A few of us preachers were confessing mistakes we’d made in the pulpit. During a pause, he said, “Well, I once told the congregation to turn to some scripture, something like Luke chapter 5, verse 31. And when I got there, I saw it was not the text I had in mind. But for the life of me, I couldn’t find my note with the correct text. So, I just read that verse to them and then preached it!”

The other pastors howled. I suppose we all could just see ourselves doing that. Or maybe we took pleasure in knowing that with all the dumb things we’ve done, we never did that!

The preacher said, “When it was over, the people said it was one of my most spirit-filled messages ever.”

That, I suggest, is not a very good testimonial for sermon preparation.

I thought of something Bill Nimmons said. At the time he was the associate pastor of Starkville, Mississippi’s First Baptist Church, serving under Pastor D. C. Applegate, a lovely man of God with multiple health problems. Bill had unfortunately learned to expect those last-minute phone calls informing he that he would need to fill in for the pastor. That’s what happened this particular Sunday.

The call had come during breakfast that Sunday morning, leaving Bill almost no time to prepare. However, God took over, everyone agreed, and the sermon was excellent, the service a blessing, and a number of people responded to the invitation. Just before the benediction, the chairman of deacons announced, “This afternoon, Bill will have time to prepare tonight’s sermon. So, this morning, we saw what God can do. Come back tonight, and we’ll see what Bill can do!!”

It helps to have a sense of humor about church work.

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During the Great Depression, in an attempt to put people to work and spur recovery, FDR and Congress formed the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Interestingly, the WPA did not just recruit laborers and skilled craftsmen, but assembled artists and writers and put them to work. (Students of politics will recall that FDR’s right-hand man, Harry Hopkins, served as the administrator of the WPA.)

Artists painted murals in post offices all over America, where they can still be seen and enjoyed. Writers collected the stories and histories of communities across the country, most being recorded for the first time. These remain invaluable treasures today. One of the best of these was written about our city.

“New Orleans City Guide: 1938” is a fun read for anyone who knows and loves the Crescent City. First published, obviously, in 1938, it was reprinted in 1952 and 1983. The present reprint (2009) comes from Garrett County Press (http://www.gcpress.com). This book has been called the “masterpiece of the whole (WPA) series.” I bought it at Sams Club for $12.32, a bargain.

I’ve been trying to assemble a representative collection of books on New Orleans for our associational office. It occurs to me that new staffers coming to work here will enjoy reading them and learning the history and culture of the community where God has sent them. They do not have to approve it or even like it, but they need to know it.

A few things from the book you might find interesting….

Bear in mind the year 1718 is the official founding date for New Orleans. “The earliest direct reference to a house of worship in the city is in the account of Father Charlevoix, who, when visiting New Orleans in 1721, found only

“We are not ignorant of his devices,” Paul says of the one variously called in scripture as destroyer, tempter, and adversary (II Corinthians 2:11). We know that one of his favorite tampering grounds is the memories of believers.

Here are eight ways I’ve learned over a lengthy ministry that Satan uses to sabotage Christian influence and poison Christian behavior by messing with the remembering/forgetting mechanism of the Lord’s people… .

One: We remember the “good” from the bad, old life.

In the wilderness, Israel forgot the slavery and cruelties from their Egyptian captors and recalled only the few pleasures. “We remember the fish, the melons, cucumbers, leeks, onions and garlic,” they said in Numbers 11:5.

Vance Havner used to castigate Israel for their bellyaching and shallow cravings. “Melons — they are 95 percent water! Cucumbers — 12 inches of indigestion! And the onions and garlic — well, they speak for themselves!”

After we have come to Christ and been forgiven for the past, then to return to that trash heap and pick through the refuse to savor some choice morsels — not a good thing. “As a dog returns to its own vomit, so a fool repeats his folly” (Proverbs 26:11). That proverb was cited by the Apostle Peter in the New Testament concerning people who drop back into their sinful ways. “It has happened to them according to the true proverb,

Some of the richest events in my life have been happenings, moments that God in Heaven clearly planned but which on this end seemed spontaneous and proved to be lastingly rewarding.

Last Wednesday, I got word the mother of a friend had died and the funeral would be Saturday afternoon in Gadsden, Alabama. Larry Black, the long-time (now retired) minister of music at the First Baptist Church of Jackson, MS, and I became colleagues on that staff nearly 40 years ago and have remained friends ever since. I served in Jackson only 3 years before departing to pastor, but Larry stayed more than three decades. In the process he earned a reputation as the absolute finest worship leader in the country, period. I’m not alone in that estimation. He built an incredible music ministry in that church and worked with some of America’s greatest preachers in revivals and crusades.

Since we are about the same age, and both Alabama boys with similar backgrounds, over the years Larry and I used every opportunity to visit and talk about our raising and our parents and our kids. In seminary, he served the great Mid-City Baptist Church in New Orleans under Pastor Paul Driscoll, and developed a love for this town and an addiction to certain of its foods.

I needed to attend this funeral. Margaret and Neil agreed.

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I was surprised how deeply Mike’s visit and prayer touched me.

I had told our church staff that Margaret would be having foot surgery the following day and that they should not bother coming by the hospital. And yet, the next morning, there he was–Mike Dupont, our student minister, come to pray for his pastor-and-wife on his assigned day to make the hospital rounds.

Margaret had been prepped for surgery and we were idling away the time, waiting for the OR people to come for her. In walked Mike. He gave Margaret a hug–she thought of him as one of her sons–and we chatted. Then he led us in prayer and left.

A warmth passed over me, a feeling of being loved and ministered to.

This certainly was not the first time I’d been in the hospital and visited by a church member or a minister. As a veteran of several surgeries, both serious and minor, beginning at the age of 9, I have known my share of hospitalizations and been ministered to on numerous occasions by clergy and laity alike. But this was special, for reasons I cannot tell you.

That was some six or seven years ago, and I remember Mike’s visit like it was this morning.

If I were a betting man, I’d wager that I’m not alone in being surprised at how a hospital visit and prayer could bless a minister. My strong hunch is that most church members have never given a thought to the pastor needing a personal visit and prayer or some similar touch.

Now, having said that, we need to try to clarify something.

Not every pastor needs a church member to walk in this morning and lead him in prayer.

We’re all different and all in a state of flux, of change, of growth and movement and transition. What works today doesn’t necessarily work tomorrow. What I crave today might be irrelevant in a week.

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–To the motorcyclist on the interstate this morning, I’d like to say: “Friend, you need to understand a law of physics. The faster you go, the smaller you become and the more invisible you appear to the other motorists.”

People who ride these killer machines — and some are dear friends and brothers in the ministry — do so for the freedom, the exhilaration of the fresh air and the open road, and yes, let’s admit it, the sensation of speed. Nothing has the pick-up of a Harley on a highway. That’s what makes them doubly dangerous.

In the first place, other drivers don’t see you as a matter of routine. They’re watching for other cars and trucks, not for a bicycle-on-steroids, and that’s why even good and faithful motorists have sometimes inadvertently pulled into the path of an oncoming motorcycle. Secondly, if you increase your speed to something horrendous — this morning, the traffic was moving at 65 to 70 mph and the motorcycle had to have been doing 90 — I can almost guarantee you that no motorist will notice you until you are on top of them. That’s why every week in this city — every blessed week! — we have people killed on motorcycles.

–to the pastor who has lost his vision for his community, I’d like to say: “Dear brother, either resign or ask God to give you a new vision for the people inside and around your church.”

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The stark headline — in large red letters against a black background — blaring at the reader from the front of the April 13 Newsweek announces “The Decline and Fall of Christian America” by Jon Meacham, the editor.

The first thing Meacham admits in his personal column, however, is that the title is overblown. They’re selling magazines. Meacham says, “Christianity is not depleted or dying; it remains a vibrant force in the lives of billions.”

So, what happened?

Someone took a poll and found that fewer people are calling themselves Christians than a few years back and more Americans say their religion is “nothing at all.” Publishing houses quickly went into overdrive churning out books announcing the failure of Jesus Christ’s mission. The religion page of Saturday’s Times-Picayune depicts a book titled “Nothing: Something to Believe In.”

Give me a break.

I’m by this the way I am about the television news a couple of days ago describing the panic in America as a result of a) Obama’s election and b) the increase in murder/suicides by crazies, both of which, we’re told, have resulted in a rush to buy more guns and stock up on ammunition.

Talk about over-reacting.

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How does this look for a sermon on prayer? Text: “But certainly God has heard me; He has attended to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God, who has not turned away my prayer, nor His mercy from me” (Psalm 66:19-20).

And here are some possible points:

HOW DEAR

HOW NEAR

HOW CLEAR

HOW QUEER

Still with me? “How dear” is our God who would deign to hear from people such as you and I, sinners all. Somewhere I recall hearing of some pagan who for the first time learned about the God revealed in Scriptures. He exclaimed, “There! I always told you there had to be a god like that!”

“How near” is our God to us when we pray. He is near to the brokenhearted (Psa. 34:18) and near to all who call upon Him (Psa. 145:18). We are wise to call upon Him when He is near (Isa. 55:6). God says, “Am I a God who is near? And not a God far off (Jeremiah 23:23)?”

“How clear” is the Scripture’s teachings on this. “It will also come to pass that before they call, I will answer, and while they are still speaking, I will hear” (Isa. 65:24). “You have not because you ask not” (James 4:3). “Ask and you shall receive” (Matthew 7:7). What could be clearer?

“How queer” it is that even with all these insights and promises and a Lord so great, so loving and so available, we pray so little, so poorly, and so ineffectively.

The Lord Jesus said, “Until now you have asked for nothing in my name. Ask and you will receive that your joy may be made full” (John 16:24).

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