If a pastor wanted to take a good look at himself and assess his ministry and do so thoroughly and effectively, he might need some outside help. It’s hard to be objective about ourselves and see our own areas of need and weakness. We adjust so easily to our problem areas and handicaps that, in time, they’re just a part of us and we work around them so easily it feels like they aren’t even there.

There is a hole in the linoleum in our kitchen floor we never notice, but which would give a visitor pause. The day we returned from Hurricane Katrina evacuation in late September, 2005, we were moving our ruined refrigerator out of the house and the tiny little dolly — too little for such a mammoth load — ground its wheels into the floor. We borrowed a stronger one from a neighbor and completed the job, and with so many other things to do to make the house livable again, just never got around to repairing or replacing the linoleum.

In the same way, flaws in ourselves which we overlook and even accept as part of our makeup, an outsider might find horrendous and insist be dealt with.

We did something last week that was a first for my ministry, either in a church or association. At our request, the North American Mission Board brought in a team of six interviewers who spent two full days and evenings in one hour sessions with some sixty of our pastors. The arriving pastor would complete a written confidential questionnaire dealing with how he sees the association, the state convention, and the national denomination. Then, he and an interviewer would spend the next hour in a closed-door session.

After the session ended, the interviewer required another 10 or 15 minutes to jot down his personal conclusions. Then he came out into our auditorium, met the next pastor and repeated the process. My job — a really hard one — was to stand around and drink coffee and eat snacks and greet the pastors when they arrived. I am uniquely qualified for this assignment.

In a few weeks, NAMB’s Hugh Townsend, the leader of last week’s team, will return to New Orleans and assemble with our association’s leaders for a “prescription meeting” during which he will present the findings of his team. Not having done this before, I have little idea what to expect, but we are confident the next Director of Missions will find this to be a tremendous asset. It should give him a head-start in beginning his work with our churches.

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At some point in the distant past, whether in an old movie or television program or even a book I can’t tell you, but I recall Dr. Watson complimenting Sherlock Holmes on a brilliant deduction concerning some clue he had seen no one else had noticed. “Of course,” Holmes remarked. “It’s what I do.”

Forgiveness and grace—that’s why we believers do.

Here is one page from Ruth Bell Graham’s 1989 book, “Legacy of a Pack Rat,” with a parenthetical, explanatory remark of mine.

“Someone has said, ‘If there had not been a Stephen, there might never have been a Paul.'” (We recall how Paul watched Stephen being stoned to death for nothing more than preaching Jesus. As the stones beat the life from him, with his dying breath, Stephen prayed, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin.” ((Acts 7:60)) Paul never got over that.)

“A tribal war was raging in Uganda. The soldiers led a line of prisoners to a bridge over a crocodile-infested river where they could shoot them and dump their bodies into the water for the crocodiles to dispose of.

“Among the prisoners that day was a young Christian. When his turn came to be shot, he asked permission to say a word first. ‘Make it quick,’ his captors ordered. The young man looked at them calmly, without fear.

“‘I am a Christian,’ he said. ‘I am not angry with you, for the same Jesus Whom I shall see in a few moments died for you as well. I forgive you. May you accept His forgiveness also.’

“They shot him. Turning to the next in line, they recognized a man from another tribe. ‘What are you doing here?’ they demanded. ‘We are not at war.’ And he was abruptly dismissed.

“But that young man was never the same again. He spent the rest of his life sharing his new discovery of the risen, transforming Savior.

“He had watched a Christian die.” (Page 211)

As followers of Jesus Christ, you and I are not perfect, only forgiven. After receiving God’s grace, we are sent into the world to bless others. One of the best ways we accomplish this is by extending our own forgiveness and love..

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“I went to school in upstate New York and graduated magna cum miracle. I didn’t make the top half of my class, but I was one of those who made the top half possible.” — H. A. Thompson

More of him later.

My friend Chris, a lawyer of the female persuasion, is taking some seminary courses. Her pastor asked, “Are your just doing that for fun or are you working on a degree?”

Until that moment, Chris did not know those were her only two choices. (What about, “To improve my mind? To grow in my understanding of God’s Word?”)

Since she owns a bachelor’s from college and a doctorate of jurisprudence from law school, and without plans to go for ordination, Chris has no special need for a master’s in theology or divinity. So, she said, “For fun.”

The pastor teased, “You’re going to seminary for fun? Chris, you need to get out more!” They laughed.

I told her, “Seminary can be fun — depending on your definition. If you enjoy a great challenge, get a kick out of pushing yourself to the limit, balancing unreal schedules, and such, you’ll have a ball!” My best memories of the five years I spent in theological school center around great class times with outstanding professors and casual discussion times with classmates.

My friend Danny is the administrator at our church and owns bachelors and masters degrees in fields related to his earlier career which was managing plants for Dow Chemical and Union Carbide. Last year he took early retirement and went to work at the church. These days, he is enrolled in New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, working on a masters of arts in worship leadership.

I asked him why.

“I’m trying to stave off Alzheimer’s!” he laughed. I said, “I do Sudoku for that reason.” He said, “It would be cheaper!”

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Read the fine print. In television ads, Charlie M. of Dubuque bought this sales program and made $100,000 the first month. At the bottom of the screen: “Results not typical.” Ha. I coulda told ya that!

Elsie B. of Carbondale went on our diet plan and lost 38 pounds the first month. Results not typical.

Bob R. of Macon developed 6-pack abs in 5 minutes a day on our exercise-a-tron. Results not typical.

You want to scream at the television set: So, what is typical?

What’s typical is that the average purchaser of these products never listens to the whole program, never reads the fine print, tries a few times and finds it difficult, and eventually sets the package on top of the garbage can.

So, you’d like to get into your community with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, would you? You’d truly like to bear a witness for the Lord and reach a lot of people, huh? Maybe start some new churches? Then, turn to your New Testament, to the Acts of the Apostles.

What we would expect to find there would be a perfect case scenario, and everything but the words underneath saying “results not typical.” But — good news, friend — God does not play these little games. The experience of the believers in Acts will be typical of what you and I will find, to a great extent.

Consider some of their experiences….

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I call it my NLTS, and it works like this: I have my understanding of God worked out so that everything fits, and any reality that tries to intrude, I deny or ignore.

A pastor friend introduced me to the concept, without realizing it.

I was on his church staff, the newest assistant among several young ministers. After having pastored three small churches, serving on the team of the largest congregation in the state was a heady experience. The governor was one of our deacons, former governors sat in the congregation, and state denominational leadership filled many of the pews. Television cameras beamed our live services throughout the state. I knew it would be a rare thing for me to be asked to preach in this church. But it happened, sooner than I expected.

One Saturday night, the pastor called. “I’m coming down with something. Be ready to preach tomorrow morning. I’ll let you know.”

I ended up preaching both services the next day, morning and night. It was the Sunday night sermon that offended the pastor.

With so little advance notice, I had pulled out a couple of sermons I’d used before in previous pastorates, ones I felt confident about. The Sunday night sermon asked the question, “What about those who die without having heard the gospel?” Often when I would speak on college campuses, that question was raised, and I felt I knew the biblical answer.

The answer, for anyone who takes the Bible at face value, is clearly that no one is going to Heaven without believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible is consistent on that, the Holy Spirit verifies it in the Word, the testimonies of missionaries through the centuries bear it out, and sheer logic confirms it. For example, if people who never have heard of Jesus go to Heaven when they die, then ignorance is the best plan of salvation there is. Call in all the missionaries, shut down the mission boards, and cancel all the outreach programs; leave everyone in darkness and we all end up in Heaven. Simple. Also dead wrong.

A day or two later, the pastor, now recovered from his weekend ailment, called me into his office. “I do not agree with your message Sunday night,” he said. He was sure that God had ways for people to be saved and go to Heaven without the precise requirement of knowing of Jesus, trusting the cross, and praying some version of the sinner’s prayer. I was stunned.

He added, “Joe, I have my theology worked out. It’s a circle. And if one part of it is wrong, it changes everything else. And what you preached Sunday night does not fit.”

To his credit, he did not insist that I preach his convictions and silence mine.

When I left the office that day, I determined to proclaim the message of the Scriptures and to let nothing change that. I also committed myself — and this is equally important — to continue studying this subject and to be open to whatever the Holy Spirit wished to teach me on this, or any other, subject.

His NLTS. The pastor had his, and excluded anything that did not fit it.

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How does a pack rat begin the uncluttering process? You accumulate books and magazines and articles, mementos and keepsakes, plaques and awards and framed things from a forty or fifty year ministry, and then one day, you begin to get rid of it all, piece by piece.

Fortunately, every time we move (change churches or offices or homes), we have to go through and throw out. So, it’s not like I’m starting from scratch. But still, you’d be surprised (depressed?) by the files and books and stuff I still cart around from one place to the next.

Even when you’re not trying, things just accumulate. For example, at this moment, atop the bookcase in this office are the following items, going left to right: a pewter bud vase (that’s empty); a ceramic angel a friend gave me a couple of Christmases ago; a “New Yorker” magazine coffee mug; a replica of a Toucan bird someone brought back from an overseas mission trip; a gavel received from when I was president of something or other; a small casket (?) with “McK” etched into it which plays “How Great Thou Art” (the signature on the bottom reads “Wilber”); a red clear whiskey bottle (empty!) with Harry Truman’s image in relief; a teak (i.e., wooden) beaver from a preaching trip to Canada a generation ago; a life-sized hand made of wood inside of which is the smaller image of a child from someone’s mission trip somewhere; several interesting rocks; a Louisiana Baptist Convention mug; a ceramic image of Jesus the Shepherd given to me forty years ago by a friend; a child behind a pulpit with a tiny dog standing nearby given by longtime friend Joyce Ponder; a bottle of brown water from Greenville, Mississippi, complete with a bug inside; another small angel; and finally, two metal (heavy!) University of Alabama bookends.

Still with me?

Now, lining the top of the office wall above that same bookcase are six framed items: a photo of Dr. Thomas Cox Teasdale’s tombstone in Friendship Cemetery in Columbus, MS, with photographer Sharon Sams Adams’ little son Boardman reaching up to the weeping angel; the original artwork from a Sunday “Gasoline Alley” comic strip given by artist Jim Scancarelli; the signatures of Billy and Ruth Graham above which each wrote their favorite scriptures; and three original daily comic strips, given by the artists: “Snuffy Smith,” given by Fred Lasswell; “Tiger,” given by Bud Blake; and “Frank and Ernest,” given by Bob Thaves.

And that’s just one wall!

Fortunately, we have regular meetings of our pastors around here, so little by little, I’ll lay out giveaways on tables and move the clutter from my office to theirs!

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“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name.” (Psalm 103:1)

“Hey you! You — self! — yeah, I’m talking to you. How about blessing God! Everything down inside me, let’s do it!”

British pastor and heart surgeon Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “Most unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself rather than talking to yourself.”

In recent years, motivational people in this country seem to have discovered the power of giving oneself a good talking-to. Denis Waitley has said, “Relentless, repetitive self-talk is what changes our self-image.”

Self talk is the internal dialogue we use to view the world, explain situations, and communicate to ourselves.

The discovery may be recent but the concept is as old as humanity. In fact, we find it all through Scripture. My favorite is this one….

“Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope thou in the Lord!” (Ps. 42:5,11, and Ps. 43:5) David evidently thought so much of the power of self-talk, he makes that statement, then repeats it twice.

Imagine someone chiding himself for being depressed. “Hey, you! What’s going on here? You of all people are sad? And for no reason at all! Come on — put your mind on the Lord! He is your Source.”

That’s the point. And that’s how it’s done.

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“The most striking thing about highly effective leaders is how little they have in common. What one swears by, another warns against. But one trait stands out: the willingness to risk.” (Larry Osborne, quoted by John Maxwell in “The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader,” p. 40.

Well, we all knew leaders are all different, but it’s good someone finally said it.

I’m so tired of this one-size-fits-all standardized formula for making effective leaders.

The most hopeful thing I’ve read about leadership in 2009 is this:

“If you look at the lives of effective leaders, you will find that they often don’t fit into a stereotypical mold. For example, more than 50 percent of all CEOs of Fortune 500 companies had C or C- averages in college. Nearly 75 percent of all U.S. presidents were in the bottom half of their school classes. And more than 50 percent of all millionaire entrepreneurs never finished college.” (Maxwell, “21 Indispensable Qualities,” p. 83)

Now, when John Maxwell cited those statistics (he didn’t give his source), he came to a different conclusion than the one that occurs to me. He said, “What makes it possible for people who might seem ordinary to achieve great things? The answer is passion. Nothing can take the place of passion in a leader’s life.”

Far be it from me to argue with John Maxwell, the guru of leadership on the American scene today. And I certainly do not dispute the importance of passion and focus.

For instance….

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“Thus the debates were scheduled. The verbal flint was at the ready. Lincoln and Douglas were about to set words on fire.” (from “A Companion to the Lincoln-Douglas Debates” by John Splaine and quoted in Brian Lamb’s “Lincoln.” Page 47.)

Words on fire. Sounds like Jeremiah 20:9, doesn’t it. And Luke 24:32. And you, pastor, when you stand in the pulpit with Heaven’s message for God’s children.

“Do you read yourself to sleep?” they asked President Harry Truman. “No,” he said. “I read myself awake.”

Novelist Rex Stout’s mother did not want her reading interrupted. She kept a bowl of cold water and a washcloth beside her chair. Any child who interrupted her reading got his face washed.

Ben Franklin said the person most to be pitied is the lonesome man on a rainy day who does not know how to read.

Writer Elmore Leonard was asked how he managed to keep the action moving in his stories so well. He said, “I leave out the parts people skip.”

It’s always fascinating to watch people struggle to find the balance between liberty and responsibility….

During the Summer Olympics, we heard repeatedly that because of his lifelong focus on swimming, Michael Phelps had missed many of the experiences and teaching moments of other young people his age. Well, he’s just gotten one. Being photographed smoking pot last week has cost him one of his sponsorships, perhaps worth millions. Did he have the freedom to smoke pot? Yep, so long as he was willing to pay the price.

I’m betting he never thought that puff or two came with such a heavy price tag.

A news report the other day told of a fellow at a Valparaiso, Indiana, basketball game who came out of the stands and attacked a referee whose calls he took issue with. He grabbed hold of the whistle chain around the ref’s neck and began choking. What he did not know was that the referee was a highway patrolman who called high school basketball games in his spare time. As they led the guy away in handcuffs, he could be heard to yell, “Hey, no fair! No fair!”

Can you say, “Idiot”?

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports today, Friday, February 6, 2009, that a semi-famous comedian (whom I’ve never heard of) has just been disinvited to be a celebrity on a float in an upcoming Mardi Gras parade. Krewe members learned in the last 24 hours that after Hurricane Katrina, that comedian said a lot of unflattering things about New Orleans and its citizens. In announcing the decision, the krewe chief said, “We’re cancelling him for his own protection.” Funny way of putting it.

To my knowledge there is no money involved in a celebrity riding a float, just the honor associated with it. But people seem to want to do it. Go figure.

Speaking of “real” celebrities, the kind making a difference….

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(I wrote what follows five years ago and laid it aside until my Dad was in Heaven. Dad read everything I wrote and I did not want to cause him any grief, even if inadvertently. The children are now 12 and almost 15, but nothing else has changed.)

This week we made some memories for our grandchildren. Our son Neil’s three children — Grant, nearly 10, and twins Abby and Erin, 7 — live one mile from us, and consequently we see them several times a week. During the Easter break, my wife Margaret and I decided to treat them to a train ride to Birmingham, then rent a car and drive 60 miles north and visit my parents for a day. The rail trip took 7 hours, a long time for children of this age who needed to be reminded not to ask again “how much longer.” We took along books to read, games to play, a picnic lunch, and snacks, and managed to get through the ride just fine. The girls got a lot of lap time with Grandma and Grandpa and everyone napped for an hour or so.

At my parents’ home, the kids became better acquainted with cousins and aunts, they explored the deep woods and meadows, discovered baby puppies with their eyes still shut, plus kittens, wild turkeys, a possum, and the obligatory farm dogs. They’re still talking about it.

Building memories for a child is a grand enterprise. Somewhere I read of a father who had to back out of his family’s ski vacation into the Rockies due to the unexpected demands of his job. Reluctantly, they started on the long drive without him. When his work wrapped up earlier than expected, he made plans to join them. Since he knew where each day’s drive was taking them and where they were spending each night, he flew to the city ahead and hired a taxi to drive him miles out the interstate and leave him. An hour or two later, as the family whizzed by in the loaded-down van, they spotted a familiar figure with his thumb in the air. “Was that Dad?” “That couldn’t be Dad!” “It was! It was Dad!” “Turn around.”

Later, when a friend asked him why he went to such trouble to surprise his family, the man answered, “Just think — for the rest of their lives, my kids will be talking about their crazy, wonderful dad!”

Unfortunately, not all family memories are so idyllic. Some families go through such pain that the memories are better off forgotten. Choosing what to retain and what to release can be an art. But it is always a choice.

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