Recently in the message I wrote concerning the bottom-dwelling U.S. economy, I told the story of Randy and Charlene McCall, our neighbors in Columbus, Mississippi, who, after he lost his job managing factories some years back, bought a ServiceMaster franchise and did well. I did not ask their permission to tell that, but knew Randy had shared his story at the national meeting of the franchisees of that company, and felt confident he wouldn’t mind my using them as illustrations. Well, I found out a little more today….

In the early 1990s, the McCall’s franchise grew to be the largest in the USA, and that’s out of a total of 4500! These days, my buddy Randy putters around the house, the way self-respecting retirees should, and their son Chris–my son Neil’s best friend from childhood onward–runs the company and is maintaining that exalted ranking.

Randy reminded me of something I had forgotten but should not have. He writes, “Do you remember me making a copy of the first major account proposal I bid on in Columbus (it was Weyerhaeuser) on the church copier? You and I prayed before I presented the proposal. Well, for some reason I was more confident in that proposal than I had a right to be and got the account. The rest is history. Thank you.”

Then, true to form, this friend uses up the good will he had just established. Commenting on plans for me to preach at the First Baptist Church of Columbus next Sunday, he writes, “Charlene and I are scheduled to keep the nursery, so I sent out an e-mail to all church members asking if anyone would rather sub for us that Sunday than hear your preaching. We had 436 volunteers.”

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Tuesday morning I was telling my 92-year-old mom in our daily phone call about my flight to Virginia the day before. I said, “Mom, the flight from New Orleans to Atlanta took one hour and 5 minutes. The flight from Atlanta to Newport News took one hour and 10 minutes.” She said, “Goodness. Why do they go so fast?”

I laughed, “That’s the whole point of airplanes–to get us where we’re going as quickly as they can.” She said, “It sounds scary.” I said, “You try not to think about it.”

Sunday, my son Neil and I logged 625 miles round trip for a quick visit to Columbus, Mississippi, for the funeral of our dear friend Paul Cockrell. The church was packed for the celebration of this dear brother’s life. One man said, “If ever there was a saint in this church, it was Paul.”

“I never saw Paul Cockrell without a smile on his face,” someone said. I thought, “But it would be a serious error to think of that as untested faith or shallow optimism.” This man had walked through the fires of suffering. Over 30 years ago, I preached the funeral for his wife Helen. Then, some 15 years ago, preached the funeral for their daughter, also named Helen, who died after a long illness. The family had known as much difficulty and grief as any I know.

Paul knew about broken hearts and shattered lives, yet he chose to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ who said, “Let not your hearts be troubled…..Believe in me.”

The fellow at the funeral home told me Paul had planned his funeral service himself. He wanted the present pastor Shawn Parker, previous pastor Bobby Douglas, former staff member Ed Nix, and me (pastor before Dr. Douglas). I said, “I’m confident that if Dr. Woodson and Dr. Franks were still alive (the pastors before me, going back to 1921), he’d have put them in the service too.”

What that reveals is that this was a man who always loved his pastors. And, frankly, to me that says more about him than it does us preachers.

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1) Saying No.

Edmund Wilson was a well-known writer and literary critic of a generation ago. When he grew tired of people constantly asking his advice or input, he composed a postcard which he mailed to everyone seeking his counsel. “Edmund Wilson regrets that it is impossible for him to: read manuscripts, write articles or books to order, write forewords or introductions, make statements for publicity purposes, do any kind of editorial work, judge literary contests, give interviews, take part in writers’ conferences, answer questionnaires, contribute to or take part in symposiums or

These days, something new is in the ecclesiastical air: pastors are insisting that “I have the right to be political from my pulpit.” It’s a freedom of speech thing, they say.

The IRS responds that you certainly do have that freedom, so long as you dont mind giving up this little thing called Tax Exemption.

Methinks some pastors are about to find the cost for exercising this freedom is more than they want to pay.

My father has been in Heaven for almost a year now, but he had a perspective on this issue that some of our pastors could benefit from.

One Sunday, Dad drove 50 miles and attended the church my brother Ron pastored in Graysville, Alabama, just north of Birmingham. This was some 10 or 12 years ago, during the Clinton presidency. Ron had a well-known guest evangelist in that day and Dad wanted to hear him.

Later he told me what happened.

“The preacher got in the pulpit and spent half his time slamming the liberal Democrats and cracking jokes about President Clinton.”

Now, my dad was a lifelong coal miner–he worked in the deep pits of Alabama and West Virginia until forced to retire at the age of 49–and a confirmed union member. That almost automatically made him a Democrat, too, at that time. But anyone who thought Carl McKeever was a liberal needs to find some new definitions for his political lexicon! Dad was anything but liberal, and had a low tolerance for fools, whether in politics or any other part of life.

After letting his report on the visiting evangelist’s folly sink in, Dad said to me, “What if there were unsaved people sitting in that church that morning and they happened to be Democrats? How would they have reacted to what that preacher said? They won’t listen to a thing he said about Jesus because they were so upset at what he said about their politics.”

He added, “That’s why a preacher has no business bringing politics into the pulpit.

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I’ve mentioned that once May 1 rolls around and I find myself unemployed (aka, “retired”), I plan to finish writing three books I’ve been working on the last year or two. One of them has to do with Christian fellowship.

Or to be more exact, the lack of it in our churches, the need for it, and how to get it.

On the home page for this website, you can click on a long series of articles on prayer and leadership and Romans, but so far we’ve not collected the numerous writings that are scattered throughout on the subject of Christian fellowship. As with so much of what I write, it’s rather random and unorganized and happened to be what was on my mind at the moment.

To turn it into a book, that’ll have to change, and it will. Recently, however, I’ve actually gone back over the last several years and looked at each article to pick out the ones dealing with fellowship in the church. I might have missed some, but here is what I found:

July 27, 2004 — “What Every Pastor Needs: A Good Buddy”

May 23, 2008 — “Why We Came Today”

May 27, 2008 — “Where Everybody Knows Your Name”

May 31, 2008 — “The Greatest Church Growth Principle”

June 20, 2008 — “What Fellowship Looks Like”

June 20, 2008 — “The Most Basic Element is

Mary Hazel was a longtime member of one of my churches and a retired school-teacher. As her pastor, I was always glad she was retired because she was easily the most negative person I ever met and it gave me a tiny bit of comfort to know she was no longer afflicting her pessimism upon the next generation.

In the hospital or nursing home, her food was terrible. Mary Hazel’s daughter was mean to her and her nurses were rude and uncaring. She was in pain all the time and the doctors didn’t have a clue how to help her. Her friends would not come to see her. Nothing was right in her life.

On and on it went.

One day, I decided to bite the bullet and try something with Mary Hazel. I pulled the chair up to her hospital bed and said, “I want to say something. I’ve been your pastor for eight years and you know I truly care for you.”

I had her undivided attention, although her guard was up as though she was expecting the worst news possible. I said, “Mary Hazel, there is a reason no one comes to see you. You are one of the most negative people I have ever met. Nothing pleases you. You complain all the time. People don’t like to be around complainers.”

There. I said it, then sat back waiting for the explosion.

All she said was, “Doctor McKeever!!”

I thought of giving her that wonderful line from Proverbs 27:6, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy.” But I didn’t.

Mary Hazel did not want to hear anything further I had to say. And in case you’re wondering, she went right on with her critical spirit and negative words.

Mary Hazel is in Heaven now, and knows all the reasons she had for giving thanks and rejoicing in the Lord during her earthly days. But she can help us to get it right.

Here’s how.

Inside each of us, there is a Mary Hazel calling attention to all the reasons why we should be feeling bad. The economy is in terrible shape. The war in the Middle East shows no sign of ending. I’m getting older; I’ll never be as good looking as I once was; as I age, my body will grow weaker and sicklier. The presidential race is bitter and I don’t prefer either candidate. My church is having trouble; I don’t know where that pastor is leading us; my next door neighbors make too much noise. I’m not sure about my grandchildren. They’ve taken prayer out of the schools and now they’re trying to take Him off our currency.

You get the idea. (Note to my pastor and grandchildren and neighbors: I’m not talking about you. You’re wonderful. I’m just trying to make a point here.)

If you’re looking for reasons to complain, you can always find them. As Rosanne Rosannadanna used to say, “It’s always something.”

However.

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My lawyer friend Devona Able tells of her daughter instructing her little brother on the way to school one morning. For some reason, they got onto the subject of hunting season. “You cannot kill baby ducks,” big sister explained. “Or mama ducks either. But you can kill daddy ducks.”

She went on to expound her understanding of the Louisiana game laws. “The baby ducks are still growing up, and the mama ducks are taking care of the baby ducks. The daddy ducks…well, they’re just extra.”

Devona writes, “Too often, we treat our husbands and fathers as unnecessary, and they’re sometimes quite willing to settle into the role of an extra.” She adds that in actuality, they have been given the “leading role” in the family by the One who wrote the script.

“I have a funny story for you,” Tom Hearon said over the phone. He was prepping for tomorrow’s oral exam for his doctorate at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth and took time out to put in a phone call to “my old dad.” (Explanation: Margaret and I “adopted” four Mississippi College students in the early 1970’s: Mary Baronowski, Gary Pearce, Bill Garrett, and Tom Hearon. We love them like they were our own and pray for them often. It’s a great arrangement–they never write for money and we never send them any!)

Tom’s father died last summer in Jackson, Mississippi, and his mother just passed away last week. I hugged him over the phone, then listened to his story.

“Dad died on a Tuesday. My brother Doug flew into Jackson and the next morning we went by the funeral home. The man wanted to know,

One is losing a pastor, one is about to gain a pastor, and a third is adjusting to a new pastor.

Sunday morning, John Faull resigned as pastor of Kenner’s Williams Boulevard Baptist Church to accept the invitation of the FBC of Norcross, Georgia, to become their shepherd. He has given some five years to leading Williams Boulevard, and if you have kept up with events, you know these have been some of the most momentuous in our history.

Brother John took upon himself a difficult assignment some five years ago: following Buford Easley, who led that church over 30 years. There’s an old preacher saying that you should never follow a pastor who either died or went to the mission field; in the minds of many, you’ll never measure up. But Brother John’s desire has always been to go where the Lord sends him. He grew up in metro New Orleans and moved here from Atlanta, and did a superior job in trying circumstances.

Now, he’s moving back. We’re grateful for Brother John’s ministry among us and wish him and his family the very best.

Sunday morning, I worshiped with Lakeside Baptist Church in Metairie. Located a block off Veterans Boulevard deep inside Metairie, this church has struggled for as long as I have known them, nearly 2 decades. But good things are about to happen to them.

Sunday, they are voting to call Adam Gillespie as their new pastor.

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An absolutely fool-proof way to stress yourself out is by staying glued to the television newscasts about the economy. “Wall Street dropped another 700 points today!” “Here is our panel of experts to tell you why the news is just going to get worse!” “Big Plants, Inc., is laying off another 4,000 employees!”

Oh great. Just what I needed to hear.

That’ll send your blood pressure through the ceiling, no matter your situation, but particularly if you are a heavy investor in stocks.

You’re not? Don’t be too sure, friend. If you have a retirement account with some agency somewhere, you might be one of those (like me!) who is being severely affected by the free-falling stock market. The headline on the front of Friday’s Times-Picayune asked, “How Low Can It Go?”

Frankly, I don’t want to know.

Twenty years ago, when the market did a sort of “correction”–we’ll be generous and call it that–I recall someone asking either Ted Turner or Donald Trump, one of those big boys, “You lost a billion dollars. What do you have to say?”

He answered, “It was a paper loss. I’m not selling anything today. I’ll still be here tomorrow and first thing you know, I’ll have it all back.”

And that’s precisely what happened.

My neighbors, Bill and Sandra, are both retired from long careers in the commercial world, and this is scaring the daylights out of them.

A news report this week indicated that 80 percent of Americans admit the economy is stressing them out.

The funny thing–did I say “funny”?–about this craziness in the economy is that we’re told the actual businesses of America are just fine. What is driving the roller-coasterness of Wall Street is a little thing called fear.

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