Recently, in the article “Why We Came Today,” I shared on the subject of Fellowship inside the congregation, suggesting it draws 90 percent of first-time visitors to your church. They’re looking to worship God, yes, and they want to learn the Bible and have a safe place for their children to grow, all of that. But if you stripped away all the other considerations, all the secondary concerns, what you would be left with is that most are looking for friends, people who are genuine and Christlike and loving, the kind of family they would choose for themselves.

They’re looking for fellowship.

1) They probably have never articulated it in so many words. They’re likely to say, “We’re looking for a church home.” And how will you know when you find it? “It’s something you just know in your heart. It’s like being in love. You can’t explain it, but you know it when it hits you.”

How many churches have you visited before ours? “This one is the fourth.” Or fifth or tenth.

And you’ve not found what you were looking for? “Some were unfriendly. In two, no one spoke to us. And not a single one has contacted us since. That shows they don’t want us, and if they don’t want us, we certainly don’t want them.”

Is that too harsh a judgement? “Maybe for you.”

They’re looking for fellowship.

2) The members of your church do not know that’s what the newcomers are looking for. Consequently, in our desire to woo them in, we provide all the wrong programs.

They want ministries and activities for their kids, so we hire a college boy to come in and get them going. They want children’s programs, so we provide them. They want a nursery for their little ones and a gymnasium for the family. They want a great music program and impressive sermons.

We buy robes and organs and drums and carpets and cushions. We do all these things and still they do not come. And we get angry at them. “The people today just aren’t spiritual like they used to be.”

One pastor told me, “If we could just get carpets on the floor, I know the community would come.” He did, but they didn’t.

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Drove to North Alabama on Friday, attended the every-two-year-cousins-reunion on Saturday, preached at New Prospect Baptist Church in Jasper on Sunday, and drove home on Monday. How did your weekend go?

Our “cousins” reunion never really took off until we decided to bite the bullet on the Saturday before Memorial Day in 1994 and stage the event at the old home place, 5 miles out in the country from Nauvoo, Alabama. Until then, we had moved around–one year at a park in Birmingham, another year at a cousin’s lake place out from Jasper, that sort of thing–but with varying degrees of success. The year we held it at the old home place, it felt so right, everyone agreed this is the way, and here is the place.

Reunions are easy for the family members who live “away,” such as I do. Our family has a rule that out-of-staters don’t have to bring anything but themselves, in appreciation for their long drive and the high cost of gasoline. So, thanks to the hard work of the locals, we distance-cousins walk in and it’s all laid out there: a long table loaded with eats, coolers filled with iced-down-drinks, and the night’s bonfire ready for a match, circled by folding chairs from the church 3 miles down the road.

We call it a “cousins” reunion. One hundred and five years ago John Wesley “Virge” Kilgore and wife Sarah Noles Kilgore moved to this section of land. He laid off the buildings and erected them with his bare hands. The house still stands, where all his nine children were born. Across the yard lies the blacksmith shop. A little further down stands the barn. The newest building, constructed for his 1948 Packard, is the little garage.

Grandpa died in 1949 and Granny passed on in 1963. No one has lived here since. But everything still stands.

“All the buildings are unpainted. Wonder why that is?” someone said. My mother, born inside that house on July 14, 1916, said, “I don’t know. But what color would you call the house now?” After several suggestions, she decided, “Motor oil.” She was right.

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Recently, I wrote here about the wonders of the internet. But there’s a downside too, and I had a reminder this week.

Wednesday morning, on my drive into the office, I found a message on the cell phone that had been left the night before. A man who left no number where I could return his call said, “Take my name off your website and quit writing about me. You are ruining my life.” Everytime a prospective employer googled his name, he said, it came up on my website where I had written some slanderous thing about him. “I want it stopped.”

I felt like replying, “How can I be writing about you when I don’t even know who you are?” But without a number, I couldn’t return his call.

Then, I hit the wrong number on the phone. Instead of saving the message, I deleted it. And promptly forgot his name. This was not going well.

Later, I called the phone company to see if there is any way to retrieve a deleted phone message. Not after that transaction has been closed; the message is gone forever.

Thursday morning, I called Marty, my son who is a genius about a lot of things, especially involving the internet. Could he find the article in question? I told him what I remembered about the man’s name.

An hour later, Marty e-mailed. “I found it.” The article had been posted on this website on October 13, 2006. I had referred to a newspaper item in which this guy–no way am I printing his name!–was arrested for molesting his juvenile sister, and the article dealt with a judge lowering his bail so that he walked free. That’s all it was, except that in the comments which followed, some over several months time, I was lambasted by friends of the accused for slandering him. If they had left contact information, I would probably have said, “Take it up with the editor. I was just quoting the paper.”

But still, it’s no big deal to remove his name from that article.

Anyway, we took it off. Marty says it takes Google a week or so to drop the link to our website, but he’ll see if they can speed it up.

A sobering thought: type a guy’s name on your website and the world’s most popular search machine directs everyone there to see what you wrote on him.

Taking gossip to new heights. Taking slander to new lows. The power of the printed word at warp speed.

Okay, change the subject. The most bizarre accident occurred in New Orleans this week.

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Veteran pastor Bob Anderson tells this one on himself. A Sunday School class was having a backyard cookout and they wanted the preacher there. However, Pastor Bob had an earlier engagement–a wedding, a committee meeting, something–and would be late in arriving. Finally, he finished whatever he was doing and drove across Baton Rouge to the cookout.

He found the neighborhood, then located the street. He knew the couple hosting the cookout and was fairly certain he knew which house they lived in. Fairly certain.

Since everyone would be in the back yard, Bob did not bother to knock, but opened the front door and let himself in. He made his way through the foyer and living area and walked into the kitchen where an unfamiliar woman stood at the sink. He stared at her and she at him. Through the window behind her, Bob could see there was no one in the back yard. He was in the wrong house. This was not good.

What do you say in a moment like this? Nothing has prepared you for such a moment, and the words erupt from your throat in a kind of spasm. Pastor Bob Anderson blurted out, “I’ve come for fellowship!”

He told this story in chapel at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary one day maybe three years ago. When the laughter subsided, he told the students, “You will be interested in knowing that that lady and her family started coming to my church and became wonderful members.” A tribute to the woman’s courage and to the pastor’s recovery, if you ask me.

I’ve come for fellowship.

We might as well write that out and hang it around the necks of every visitor to your church next Sunday. No matter all the reasons they think brought them there, the people who enter your worship center have come for fellowship, believe me.

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Candlewyck Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, sent a group of volunteers to our city recently to work on rebuilding in cooperation with Operation NOAH Rebuild, the local arm of the North American Mission Board. David Reese was the team leader. On their return, he wrote a report to Dr. Bob Lowman, the director of missions for the Metrolina Baptist Association.

It’s very special, and may encourage some of our readers to mobilize a church team to head this way.

“Bob, I wanted to take a moment and fill you in on Candlewyck’s experience being a part of Operation NOAH Rebuild. The accommodations were really unique in that we stayed at a flooded out church that has been converted into dormitory style housing. The rooms were small, but they were intended for sleeping in and that was fine. The food was absolutely the best, we honestly didn’t have one bad meal and there was always plenty. The volunteer cooking team was really great, especially after a hard day of work. They just shared themselves with us and encouraged us tremendously.”

“The mission itself was very life-affecting to all of us. Some on the team had been to South Africa and we felt like we were back walking in the squatter camps only with paved roads. The houses are still in extremely bad conditions and in many cases the spirit of joy seems to have been drained from the people there. It was hard to drive through the communities and to still see the markings on the buildings that represented the inspections for bodies after the storm. I think the one that got to most of us was a church where 18 people died. It is hard to imagine that the people of New Orleans have to see these reminders every day.”

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Recently at a gathering of ministers and spouses in our denomination, one of the couples related an incident that broke the group up. I did not ask their permission, so will tell it as I recall it and use fictitious names.

Hank and Trish were visiting overnight in the home of friends. Sometime that evening, the hosts mentioned how unsatisfied they were with the arrangement of the living room. Since Hank and Trish know many things, home decor among them, they looked at each other and proceeded to rearrange the furniture in that room–without so much as “by your leave” from the hosts, who sat there dumbfounded. “There!” they said when finished.

“Apparently,” Hank laughs, “they didn’t like what we did because the next time we visited them, the room had been put back exactly the way it was before.”

Trish adds, “By the way, anytime we come to visit you, you’ll want to have a large furniture dolly handy.”

Funny story.

Now, being both a Christian and a Baptist preacher–they’re not mutually exclusive–I have learned that a story that connects inside me is a sure sign the Holy Spirit is sending one my way. Here’s the application of that little tale.

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An Update from New Orleans

First Baptist New Orleans

A former president in his mid-80s is entitled to do whatever he wishes with his time. So it wrinkled my brow to see President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalyn, on their knees affixing boards to a porch in the Upper Ninth Ward this week.

I decided, watching them work, that this presidential couple really believe they are changing the world with these small acts of kindness. Looking around, I saw many of the hundreds of volunteers who graced our city this week pausing in their own work to observe this famous man and woman accomplishing their humble service. These young faces, eyes shining, are portraits and symbols of faith and hope. They come to our city with the express purpose of lifting our spirits, holding up our arms, and joining us in the grunt work that moves our community forward.

Former presidents in their 80s seem empowered to say whatever they wish, as President Carter has demonstrated over high-level objections. They also appear empowered to do whatever they wish. And driving nails to build decent and safe houses for working people is just what this president wants to do.

He and Rosalyn are all smiles as they greet people, grab their tools, and hit the deck with gusto. They request routinely that admirers not interrupt their construction time so that they can get something done.

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I submit that the most wonderful “undiscovered” Scripture verse is Psalm 17:15. It is the final word of a psalm in which the writer is bemoaning enemies who torment his existence, disregard God altogether, and run their lives by gutter ethics. These men, he says, want only what this life can offer. He calls them “men of this world whose portion is in this life,” and says they are satisfied too easily. They are content “with children and leave their abundance to their babes.”

Now, notice the next sentence, and be struck by the contrast of what will satisfy him.

“But as for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness;

I will be satisfied with your likeness when I awake.”

I remind our readers–a diverse group if ever one existed–that this is the Word of God, a wonderful insight found in the inspired Scripture, and therefore to be valued as something far beyond the ravings of a beseiged yet hopeful individual. Psalm 17:15 contains a three-fold promise (at least three) of what we may expect after we close our eyes for the last time and thus end our earthly pilgrimage, as the old-timers used to put it.

Last night I drove to the funeral home and stood by the casket of 80-year-old Catherine, a forty-year member of the church I belong to and pastored for nearly 14 years. She was as fine a Christian lady as I have ever met. The mortician and his staff had done well by her, she looked as lovely in death as she had in life, and the family was pleased. But she was lifeless. Today, Catherine’s family and friends shall gather and pay tribute to her life, and remind ourselves of the hope that she held in Christ and we will shed our tears. Because she is gone.

Gone from here, yes, but not “gone.”

Standing at the little podium in that funeral parlor, I might do as I have done before and point to the exit signs above the doors. “It’s an exit from here, but an entrance into the next life.”

I love the line one of our internet friends left on this website this week. When her nearly-one-hundred-year-old uncle died, his wife, a youthful 92, said of him, “He’s in heaven right now. If he isn’t, they might as well plant it over with johnson grass.” (Ask any Alabama farm boy. The most useless vegetation on the planet.)

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Here’s what happened today. That would be Thursday, May 15, 2008.

Dean McKinley Dacus emailed. She started by saying that she came to know the Lord in a youth revival at our church in May of 1968–precisely forty years ago–and that I had baptized her. She was 14 and the only member of her family in church. Her father went to Heaven in August of that year and I did his funeral. So, she’s reminding me of this. As though she needed to.

I said to her (via e-mail of course), “Dean, over these years, I have thought of you so often.” I gave her a couple of reasons that I’ll not put here, then added, “I asked you once, ‘Do you have someone to talk with about these things that are worrying you?’ You gave me an answer I’ve never forgotten. ‘I didn’t before. But now that Jesus Christ is in my life, I do now.'”

Now, put yourself in this pastor’s place and imagine a kid from 40 years ago reconnecting with you. How good do you think that feels? A little foretaste of Heaven.

Dean mentioned that after I left at the end of 1970, Hugh Martin came as pastor of the church (that would be Emmanuel Baptist in Greenville, Mississippi) and how blessed she feels to have had two such terrific pastors in her life at such a young age. I passed that on to my dear brother Hugh Martin up in Philadelphia, Mississippi, so he can connect with her too. (more about Hugh below)

Isn’t the internet wonderful! This generation is the first to be able to do this.

I am constantly being amazed and surprised by someone from the past discovering our website and reaching in to the present and making a connection.

I had an e-mail a few weeks ago from a church secretary in Florida who had found this website. She said, “You might not remember me, but you’ll never forget my husband.” When she told me why, I agreed that she was right about that. Here’s the story.

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