“Hey, I’m the boss of this outfit. I’m not accountable to anyone.”

No right-thinking pastor or mayor or bishop or even CEO would be so foolish as to utter those exact words, but believe me, some of us are living them out.

During this morning’s drive across New Orleans, headed to the office, I listened with interest to the NPR report of a bill being presented to the Connecticut state legislature that would result in a committee of parishioners overseeing the finances of the Catholic Church in that state. The bishop, as you might expect, is alarmed and Bill of Rights proponents (we all fall into that group, I trust) are concerned.

What brought this about, we’re told, is something the previous bishop (or maybe he was only a local church priest) did: embezzled a million dollars to finance a lavish lifestyle including a Florida condominium which he shared with — ready for this? — his boyfriend.

The matter was made worse by that priest’s refusal to allow anyone to look at the parish books. Consequently, parishioners felt they have no recourse to make certain this does not happen again other than going to the legislature.

As a pastor to pastors, I am forever counseling (and urging and preaching!) openness to our church-shepherds. While I’m not in favor of monthly church business meetings where members go over every little decision and every tiny expenditure with a microscope — this is a form of tyranny that should not occur or be condoned by God’s people — nevertheless, there needs to be a proper accountability for every leader. In most cases, a good finance committee will fill the bill.

“The Gambit” is a weekly, free New Orleans magazine devoted to the goings-on in this town, everything from where to find the best crawfish etouffee to what entertainers are playing in the city to the shenanigans at City Hall. In an editorial titled “A Culture of Arrogance,” the paper chides New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin for going back on his election promises of transparency and integrity. His administration has been characterized by everything except that!

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The first time I encountered this, I was just out of college and serving part-time on the staff of Central Baptist Church in Tarrant City, Alabama, next door to Birmingham. Pastor Morris Freeman was educating his young pre-seminary prot

In the old Snuffy Smith comic strip, cartoonist Fred Lasswell would sometimes have him rushing from one place to another, uttering, “Time’s a-wastin’!”

In recent days, I keep finding more and more time-wasters in my life. Recently, when my children and grandchildren began forwarding stuff from Facebook in my direction — photos of themselves, comments about what they’re up to — I decided I’d better get an account so I can stay informed. Whoa. What a pandora’s box that opened up.

“I want this-person (fill in the blank) to be my friend.” “You are now friends with that-person (fill in the blank).”

Now, don’t misunderstand. I treasure every friend and want all I can get and intend to enjoy the ones I have even more. But on this Friday morning, I quickly saw that my Facebook jottings (replying to this friend, commenting to that one) used up a full hour. Was this good or not? I’m of two minds on that.

Most days, when the mail comes, either in this office or at home, it’s a rarity to receive an actual first-class letter. Those are almost relics of the past. We can cry over it, worry about what the world is coming to, and find plenty of old-timers who agree, but it’s not going to change a thing. This generation stays in touch through the internet and sites like Facebook. (I am aware there are other similar sites out there, some for Christians only and such, but please — no one tell me about them and urge me to join. One is enough.)

The early Jerry Lewis had a line I’ve quoted for years which fits here: “Enough is enough and too much is plenty!”

I’ve decided the people who can get the most benefit from sites like Facebook are retirees. Most of them (soon to be me, too) have more time than folks with jobs. But for normal people with families and small children and jobs and other demands, they have to really watch it or these things can sponge up all their time and energy and brain power.

I heard a fellow say the best way he’s found to spend time on a plane is with solitaire on his laptop. For others, it’s Sudoku. And for someone else, it’s a favorite movie on DVD.

And did we mention texting?

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“Why shouldn’t I be afraid? There’s good reason to panic!”

All through Scripture, every time a heavenly entity shows up, the first thing he blurts out to puny humans is, “Don’t be afraid!” And with good reason, we might add. After all, if an angel suddenly appeared in this office or my living room — I’m talking about the kind of mighty angels we see in Scripture, not some chubby cherub from medieval paintings — my first impulse would probably be to have a heart attack on the spot.

We rarely have the response of the humans who receive this command not to be afraid, but doubtless some could have argued that there is plenty of reason to be afraid. In this day when “men’s hearts are failing them out of fear” (Luke 21:26), we have no trouble whatsoever finding causes for our torment and panic and worry.

However — and this is the heart of the Christian message — we have even better reason not to be afraid, to be courageous and bold even.

Here are three favorite variations on this theme found in God’s Word —

“Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” (II Kings 6:16) The prophet Elisha spoke to his servant who had just gone out for the morning paper and found himself face to face with the army of the Arameans who were encircling the city, there to arrest Elisha. A moment later, the prophet asked God to open the eyes of the servant. Suddenly, he saw the skies filled with the hosts of heaven. It was quite a reassuring moment.

“Be strong and courageous, do not fear or be dismayed because of the king of Assyria nor because of the multitude which is with him, for the one who is with us is greater than the one with him. With him is only an arm of flesh, but with us is the Lord our God to help us and to fight our battles.” (II Chronicles 32:7-8) King Hezekiah is addressing his citizens who have taken a look at the mighty Assyrian army just outside the gates and are ready to hand them the deed to the place. Sennacherib, the pagan king, cannot believe that Hezekiah is hesitant to surrender. After all, he has conquered everything in his path, including the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Now, tiny little Judah and its capital of Jerusalem are balking before him. The very idea! He sends messengers to Hezekiah with one of the greatest questions anywhere, a real testament to the faith of this leader. He asks, “What is this confidence you have?” (32:9) I love it! (Sure wish someone would ask me that.)

“You are from God, little children, and have overcome them, because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.” (I John 4:4) This reads like John has been studying his Old Testament stories, doesn’t it. In 1960, as a sophomore at Birmingham-Southern College and a newly baptized member of West End Baptist Church, the youth named me as pastor for their annual Youth Week in the church. Consequently, I got to preach the Sunday night sermon. (Mind you, this was a full year and a half before the Lord showed mercy and called me into the ministry.) The text — I have no memory whether it was assigned or what — was this passage from I John 4:4. Struggling with building a sermon from it forever burned its assuring truth into my mind and heart.

In both the II Kings 6 and II Chronicles 32 passages, it’s helpful to note that no one had to ask the people to look around and see all the reasons for panic. They were obvious. The enemy was at the gate and he was roaring with threats. Hearts were failing. The most natural thing in the world was to shiver in one’s skin and shake in his boots.

God doesn’t like it when His people fear.

In fact, He’s offended by it. Fear before the enemy is a vote of no-confidence in God and gives courage to the wrong people.

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A young friend sat across the table from me at lunch today and somehow — I forgot how it started — got me talking about my cowboying period. Yes sir, I recall every detail of those three days.

I was a young minister on the staff of Jackson, Mississippi’s First Baptist Church. That summer the student minister had taken two busloads of college kids to our conference center at Glorieta, New Mexico. Afterwards, they planned to take a rustic excursion into the Santa Fe Wilderness for a few days of camping. Murph called me on Friday and said, “Can you fly out here and go with us? I need you.”

At the time, I’d never been to Glorieta and had never flown west at all, so I had no way of knowing you do not want to fly from Albuquerque to Santa Fe. A friend who owned a travel agency in Jackson worked up the tickets and I was on my way: Jackson to Dallas-Fort Worth to Albuquerque to Santa Fe. Everything was fine until I got to Albuquerque. The airport people had to direct me to the desk for the Santa Fe Airways. A fellow who could have been a pilot or the mechanic handed me his business card and said, “That will be your boarding pass.”

The airline had two little Cessnas and for this trip, two passengers, me and this other Indian. They put our luggage on one plane and us on the other and off we went. For the next 45 minutes the updrafts from those mountains bounced us up and down across the sky. Nothing about it was fun.

Murph and the buses filled with collegians were waiting at the airport, we ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant, and we headed out of town. We arrived at our destination around 4 o’clock that evening, only to find that the ranch people had forgotten us. The reluctant cowboys had to go looking for horses to take us and our luggage the several miles back into the wilderness. Half of our group started walking on and the rest of us waited for the horses. We were midnight arriving at the campsite, and then had to set up tents. Not a good beginning.

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The best line I’ve heard in a while comes from Brenda Crim, one of our SBC missionaries in Alaska. She said, “Everything I own got its start in the offering plate of a Baptist church!”

Pastors and staffers (and our families) say, “Amen” to that. That humbling thought makes us grateful for those faithful brothers and sisters who year after year give to the Lord out of their love to Him and thus keep His church strong.

“Preaching the parables is like playing the saxophone — it’s easy to do poorly.” Don’t know who said it. A pastor, no doubt.

“The woman in John 8 was just a stone’s throw from dying.”

A man asked his friend, “When you stand before the Lord, what do you think will be the first question He will ask you?”

The friend said, “He won’t ask me a thing. He’ll look at me and say, ‘That one’s mine.'”

When seminary president Jeff Iorg went from the pastorate into denominational work, his predecessor said, “The things you will do in this job that mean the most to you, no one else will ever know about.” He soon discovered the truth in that. My guess is it’s true in 90 percent of our lives.

If I ever write my memoirs, Lord help me please not to do what a pastor friend of mine did. He’s been gone for a while now, but I located a copy of his autobiography on the internet and purchased it recently. Yesterday I read interesting and inspiring things from his life, then began to encounter a series of putdowns of those of us who believe the Bible and take it at face value.

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This is what started it.

On February 18, the country’s new Attorney General, Eric Holder, the first African-American to hold that distinguished post, said, “In things racial we have always been and continue to be in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.”

With that one sentence, he provided fodder for a hundred talk shows around the country.

He was right, of course. And I think I know why. Okay, one reason why.

A couple of days after he uttered those words, police in a Northeastern city shot to death a rampaging chimpanzee that had mauled a woman. That sad story made all the news programs.

Now, one thing editorial cartoonists love to do — it’s sort of a trick of the trade — is take some news item that deals with one thing and connect it to another, something entirely unrelated but which when juxtaposed makes an interesting point. So the cartoonist for the New York Post did that with the death of the chimp.

The cartoon — you’ve seen this, so I’m making no attempt to research the name of the cartoonist and the exact date it ran in the paper or even the precise quote — showed police shooting the chimp. One cop asks the other, “Now who are they going to get to write the next stimulus bill?”

This was clearly a reference to the slipshod bill which Congress was just dealing with and since passed. It was a slap at congressional leaders. Anyone who was up on his current events could see that.

Enter Al Sharpton.

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You hear it, see it, read it, or experience it. All your senses come alive. “This is one I’ll remember a long time,” you think, and sure enough you do. For a long time afterward, your mind reels with the possibilities. What can I do with this great story? What sermon will it fit? How can I work it in?

I’ve sometimes facetiously said that a great story will fit my sermon next Sunday. The sermon may have to be reworked, but that story will fit.

Like the time my wife and I were dining in Baby Doe’s restaurant on the mountainside in Birmingham, Alabama. At the time, we were living in Columbus, Mississippi, and were visiting relatives back in our hometown. As the waitress came and went, I noticed her name was Auburn.

That’s when I decided to get cute.

“Your name is Auburn,” I said. “I’ll bet you have a sister named Alabama.”

The smile I had hoped to generate did not appear. She said, “I have two sisters, Tulane and Cornell.”

I said, “Yeah, right.”

She said, “I have four brothers — Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, and Duquesne.”

I said, “Lady, I don’t believe a word of this.”

She said, “My father’s name is Stanford and my mother is Loyola. They were engaged before it occurred to them they both had colleges as names, and they decided to do this to their children.”

I was speechless. But she wasn’t through.

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Every chapter in Acts is a keeper, but none are more fascinating than chapter 19 for a variety of reasons.

CAUTION: The first lesson we encounter right off the bat is not to construct a doctrine or our theology on an isolated event, no matter how intriguing we find it.

In Ephesus, Paul encounters some disciples of John the Baptist who have had no teachings since the death of that wonderful servant. They’ve not heard of Jesus and know nothing of the Holy Spirit and Pentecost. So, Paul teaches them, then baptizes them “in the name of Jesus.”

I’ve known for religious groups to build an entire interpretation of how the Holy Spirit comes and works just on this story. Not a safe thing to do. In fact, most commentators on Acts will point out that, just as Jesus said in John 3 the Holy Spirit moves like the wind — you do not know where it came from or where it will go from here, but you simply see the effects at the moment — the Lord works in various ways and uses various methodologies throughout Acts.

A little later (19:11-12), we see people healed by handkerchiefs taken from Paul’s body. Take that verse out of the Bible and half the evangelists on television would go out of business.

FUNNY: The little story in Acts 19:11-16 may be the funniest thing in the New Testament. Granted, the Bible was not given as a comedy routine and anyone reading it seeking humorous material are pursuing a fool’s quest, but it does have its moments.

Paul has been mightily used of the Lord in Ephesus for miracles of exorcism and healings. Seven sons of a Jewish priest named Sceva watched him and decided they could do that. They found a demon-possessed person — apparently they were plentiful — and gathered around him. One said, “I know how to do this. I’ve seen that Paul fellow work.” As they all laid hands on the poor fellow, the leader of the seven sons intoned, “We command you in the name of Jesus whom Paul preaches to come out of this man.”

The demon inside the man said, “Jesus I know and Paul I know, but who are you?”

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