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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The primary failure of 9 pastors out of 10 in the Southern Baptist Convention–I have little knowledge of any other denomination; I have no figures to back this up, but I believe it with all my soul–is the lone ranger syndrome. Their ministry is a solo act.

They’re trying to do the work of the Lord alone.

Now, they have their staffs and they have their family and church members. But it’s not the same as having two or three or four preacher buddies.

What most pastors do not have is a few good friends in the ministry whom they meet with regularly for fellowship, prayer, study, confidential talk, accountability, a round of golf, a good meal, and rest.

A preacher needs a friend with whom he can hang out.

That omission has seriously limited the ministry of almost minister I know. It surely weakened my service for the Lord.

I think of two critical times in my own ministry when I needed a few good buddies in the worst way.

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My heart was so full during the 90 minute service in the Leavell Chapel of our New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary Tuesday morning, I couldn’t decide whether I needed to get alone and have a good cry or move off by myself for a prayer time. I did neither, but followed the service by greeting members of the Leavell family and friends old and new who had come to honor this esteemed friend.

“Dr. Leavell was a hundred-percenter who gave all he had to the Lord and the people around him,” said Dr. Chuck Kelley, successor to Landrum Leavell in the president’s office at NOBTS.

The memorial service contained several surprises for me. I was thrilled to see Larry Black leading the hymns. This veteran minister of music–over 30 years at the FBC of Jackson, Mississippi, and a dear friend–is clearly the best we have at leading a congregation in worship and praise. Don’t let the white hair fool you; he’s younger now than at any time in his life and keeps getting younger. These days he serves as the interim minister of music at the FBC of Richland, MS. Over several decades, when Dr. Leavell preached revivals, Larry often led the worship music.

Clay Corvin, long-time vice-president for business affairs at NOBTS, did what Clay does best: read a poem of tribute which he had composed. The last part of “One Man” read….

“He was our preacher, teacher, leader and friend

Strong guts, no quit

He hated dirt, debt, and the devil

One man–Landrum Leavell II

We love him.”

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Monday night, the North American Mission Board held an appointment service in our city, the first time in anyone’s memory and perhaps the last for a generation. I wish all our people had been there. It was beyond inspiring.

I worried a little about whether enough of our people would attend to keep the building from appearing too empty, but shouldn’t have given it a thought. When you commission 108 missionaries and count their families in the audience, then add to that the trustees and staff of the NAMB who are present, you don’t need too many locals to pack out the place. The lovely First Baptist Church of New Orleans was filled–with people, with joy, and with love.

I wondered what this appointment service would be like. Three decades ago, while serving as a trustee of the old Foreign Mission Board (now, International Mission Board), I attended many such services in which our new missionaries gave testimonies and were commissioned. It was much the same, and every bit as great a blessing.

There are differences in IMB and NAMB missionaries. For one thing, in the case of an international missionary, the person(s) being commissioned has almost always never been to the country which is about to become their home. The NAMB missionary, however, has usually been laboring in their particular ministry for several years and only recently came under the auspices of the NAMB. A NAMB missionary, too, may receive only part of his/her financial support from this national missionary organization, and some from other sources–a local church, the association, the state convention, or even their friends and supporters. Each entity rightfully claims him/her as their missionary.

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The Barataria Baptist Church is located in the town of Jean Lafitte, named for the infamous pirate whose headquarters were hidden in those wetlands and who assisted General Andrew Jackson in defeating the British at New Orleans early in 1815. The pastor at Barataria is Eddie Painter, a down-home son of Mississippi who has brought his wife and teenage daughter to live among the people down there in the swamps.

I’ve told on these pages how Eddie wasted no time in connecting with the people of this fishing village: he bought himself a boat and some crab traps and went into business for himself! He moved into the pastor’s residence next door to the church and commuted to the seminary, perhaps 25 or 30 miles upriver and across town. Eddie is 40 years old and sports a salt-and-pepper beard.

Under Eddie’s leadership, the church has been prospering. A few months ago, they went to two morning worship services–the first time I recall that happening at Barataria. And then Hurricane Gustav hit.

Most of us in and around New Orleans had little damage from that hurricane and from Ike which followed on its heels.(I’ve mentioned how two of our churches–Williams Boulevard in Kenner and Memorial in Metairie– lost roofs and had interior damage to parts of their facilities.) But the town of Jean Lafitte was completely underwater.

The church is built up somewhat, so they had no flooding of the building, but lost portions of the roof and had some water damage inside. Next door, however, the pastor’s residence was drowned and suffered total loss of furniture and appliances.

Eddie tells me they managed to get his family’s clothing out before it was ruined. The minister of youth–Matthew–suffered lots of water damage and total loss.

Sunday, I drove down to Barataria Baptist Church to worship with this congregation. They were holding only an 11 a.m. service, which was filled. (Eddie says the bathrooms are out of commission and will have to be rebuilt, so they’re unwilling to ask the congregation to stay beyond the time for one worship service.)

How to describe this congregation….

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If you love all things Cajun or most things Louisiana, you will enjoy “Poor Man’s Provence,” the new book by Rheta Grimsley Johnson.

First, a little about Rheta.

We met nearly 30 years ago when I was visiting with her (then) husband, Jimmy Johnson, the editorial cartoonist at the Jackson (MS) Daily News. Jimmy was in the process of leaving the paper to begin his own comic strip, a fantasy of everyone who ever picked up a pen and doodled. At his home, he showed me the new strip, “Arlo and Janis.” (Some of our readers see this strip in your local paper; alas, it does not run in the Times-Picayune.) That’s when I met Rheta.

Rheta Grimsley Johnson was a features writer for the Memphis Commercial Appeal. She traveled over the South interviewing characters. Really. Sounds like a dream job for a writer. And that’s how she came to interview me in Tupelo in the Spring of ’82 when I was preaching a revival at Calvary Baptist Church there. (Not that I’m a character, you understand.) Somewhere around here, I have a clipping of that article. Being written about by Rheta Grimsley Johnson is akin to being mentioned in a sermon by Billy Graham.

In the late 1980s Rheta wrote the authorized biography of Charles Schulz, the cartoonist, called “Good Grief.” I own a copy and have it dog-eared from all the great stories it contains. (www.alibris.com can find you a copy cheap.)

And now, Rheta has written “Poor Man’s Provence,” the subtitle for which is: “Finding Myself in Cajun Louisiana.”

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The most bizarre thing is happening: my 92 year old mother has become intensely interested in the presidential campaign this year for the first time in anyone’s memory. Is it because her husband of nearly 74 years died last November and this is the first election she’s endured without him? Dad watched it all and had convictions on everything and everyone. (I still recall sitting by the radio with him listening as Harry Truman campaigned against Thomas Dewey in ’48.)

Dad was the dyed-in-the-wool labor Democrat and Mom the Republican-because-that’s-how-I-was-raised. Now, without Pop to interpret the debates and comment on the political shenanigans, she keeps up with them and wants to discuss them with her children. She thinks women are jealous of Sarah Palin and that’s why they’re not supporting her.

As I say, it’s totally strange and unlike anything we’ve seen from her all these years. And, we think it’s absolutely wonderful.

How many 92-year-olds do you know who don’t have a clue which century they’re living in? We’re more than blessed and know it.

Watch yourself, Governor Sarah and Senator Biden; Lois is watching.

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