Dr. David Hankins, executive-director of Louisiana Baptists, was part of the delegation which met in New Orleans Tuesday to put the finishing touches on plans for the annual convention which will take place in our city in mid-November. Over lunch at Deanie’s in Bucktown, he told the group about his son Adam who finished his residency at our Charity Hospital just before Katrina hit. Charity, you may or may not know, is the state-owned downtown medical center which receives all the cuttings and beatings and killings. Or, it did before Katrina. The storm inflicted great damage and the hospital has not reopened.

“Did you learn anything working in the emergency room at Charity?” Father Hankins asked Son Hankins, the M.D.

He did, he said. “Three things in particular. I learned to wear my seat belt, not get on a motorcycle, and never buy my wife a forty-five.”

So, what have you learned in your “residency”?

In reading a book on 1940 England recently, I received a reminder that the makeup of my church and yours is a microcosm of society in general. Case in point.

On May 10, 1940 (six weeks after I arrived in the world), as newly chosen Prime Minister Winston Churchill was forming his cabinet, former Prime Minister Lloyd George sent word that he would be willing to serve under Churchill, so long as he could retain the right to criticize.

To no one’s surprise, Churchill did not go for that.

Then, a few months later, Mr. George sent a similar message. He had a particular office in mind which he coveted. The price Churchill would pay for the prestige of having Lloyd George on his team would be that he would be free to criticize.

Whatever was the man thinking?

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The late and legendary W. A. Criswell used to tell of the weekend he visited Manhattan. On Saturday night, his group attended the Broadway play “Hello, Dolly.” It was light and bright, happy and spirited, and left them with a song in their hearts and a lift to their steps. On Sunday, they visited a cold church where the songs were unsingable, the members were unfriendly, and visitors felt like intruders. The contrast between the Broadway play and the frigid church was so stark, Criswell said, “If they’d given an invitation, I would have joined ‘Hello, Dolly’!”

I had a similar experience on my first visit to Cincinnati some thirty years back.

On Friday night, I attended a baseball game at the old Riverfront Stadium and saw the Reds play the way only the “Big Red Machine” of the 1970s could play. Everyone around me was friendly, they were enjoying themselves, and they included me in the mix. At the end of the game, they were all shaking my hand, saying how good it was to have me in the Queen City, and inviting me back. Bear in mind that I was alone and had not known a soul in the city. It was a charming experience.

On Sunday, I attended a worship service across the river in Covington, Kentucky, that was a clone of the Manhattan church Dr. Criswell attended. Cold, formal, irrelevant to anything in my life.

Thereafter, when I have reflected on that experience, I have adapted Dr. Criswell’s line and said, “Had they given an invitation, I’d have joined the Cincinnati Reds!”

What made the difference? Figure that out and you will go a long way to determining why some churches are growing by leaps and bounds and others are dying on the vine.

I’ve not spent hours sorting this out, and your opinion on this is as good as mine, but a few things seem clear. With both “Hello, Dolly” and the baseball game, we were watching professionals do what they did best. These were people who had devoted their lives to their craft and took it seriously. They were well-trained and highly prepared. Every detail of their presentation–whether the songs and acting of the play or the baseball game’s announcers, organ music, seating comfort, and the hot dogs–had been gone over time and again and made as good as they could make it.

And the church? My opinion about dead, cold churches will color my analysis, of course. You get the impression that the worship leaders care little about what they are doing, that they are bored as well as boring, that their main purpose is to get through the service, and that someone actually enjoying what they present is the farthest thing from their minds.

I used that little word “enjoy” on purpose. It’s a lightning rod and draws the ire of many a “pure” worship leader. “We’re here to worship God, not enjoy the service.” Mostly, I agree. However, I’ve noticed that when I worship best, I get a lot out of it myself. And I’ve also learned that if my emotions are not involved and my intellect challenged, if this is just an act my body is performing and words my mouth is uttering, I may as well have stayed home for all the good it’s accomplishing.

The huge question, the massive consideration that must be dealt with by every church staff team planning a worship service is this: how and at what point do we engage the congregation?

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In a sentence, they tell you things you could find nowhere else.

Case in point, the Times-Picayune for Sunday, June 22, 2008. The best story is a front-page feature, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

When I have chided my young pastor buddies for not subscribing to the daily paper, they have come back with, “I read it on the internet,” and I have been silent. But having been to nola.com and read the portion of the paper which is on-line, I tell you it’s not the same. They’re missing a lot of fascinating material.

They’re missing the comics and the puzzles, of course, both staples in my morning routine. And they’re missing the kind of fascinating tidbits that pop up in other places throughout the newspaper, and which never get posted on the ‘net.

Take the wedding announcements. Being a longtime pastor, occasionally I’ll see people I know there. And then, once in a while, I’ll scan the articles themselves, don’t ask me why. Today, I found this….

Michelle Lynn Autin was married on May 17th to Brent Bernard Branigan. The third paragraph was made up of one fascinating sentence: “The bride carried creamy white hydrangea, stock and roses, wrapped with her great grandmother’s linen handkerchief a gift from her grandmother, Theresa M. Hindermann, that included her grandfather’s onyx rosary, antique doubled side charms, that pictured her grandfather, George J. Hindermann, Jr., great grandfather, Joseph T. Mangerchine, Sr., great grandmother, Thelma M. Mangerchine and her beloved pet Tigger, bound together by strands of crystal.”

Whew. The bride was carrying all that. Wonder if she was using a wheelbarrow.

Underneath that article was one announcing the wedding of Mr. Courtney Baine Robinson of New Orleans to Miss Kristen Michelle McKeever of Fort Worth. Her parents are Mr. and Mrs. Urbin C. McKeever, and no, I do not know them. Just found it interesting. We see others by our name so seldom.

No doubt they’re wonderful people.

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I visited Indiana Jones one day last weekend. Sat in the theater with 100 strangers and watched Harrison Ford portray this comic-book character in breathless adventure after hair-raising adventure. When we walked outside into the sunshine, we all felt we had spent time with the man, but none of us had any sense of time spent with one another. In a movie house, there is no fellowship. It’s about spectatorship.

In the 1940s, things were different. Often, before the main feature, an emcee would come out onto the stage and lead the crowd in singalongs, get people out of the audience for little contests with small prizes, and in general, connect members of the movie audience with one another. No more. We grew out of that, got too sophisticated for such antics, became too busy. Those of my generation and a little older look back to those days with fond nostalgia.

Churches are becoming more and more about spectatorship. Turn on your television and watch the mega-churches being preached to by their celebrity pastors. Five or ten thousand people pack into giant auditoriums. They sit and listen, they respond as the preacher asks, and they get up and leave. They are hampered by their sheer success from fellowshiping with each other. We cannot imagine the pastor announcing to eight thousand people, “John Jones’ class will be having a cookout in Dwight Munn’s backyard Friday night and you’re all invited.”

Meanwhile, the church a half mile down the street from the megachurch, the one that has sat on that block for the last fifty years and only recently watched as the ever-growing congregation-on-steroids bought up a hundred acres and moved in and began sucking all the members out of neighborhood churches, that more normal church watches and wonders what it has to do to keep its members and gain a few more, and makes all the wrong decisions.

The “normal” church–as opposed to the giant spectator congregation–begins to invest in screens and projectors and high-tech innovations. That must be what it takes to draw people in, they think, and they must be right.

But drawing crowds in may be missing the point.

If the fellowship is missing, something vital has gone out of the life of a church.

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Acts 2:42 tells us the believers in the Jerusalem church were engaged with each other in four ways:

1) The apostles’ doctrine — which means they were studying the Word. Without a written New Testament, the apostles were relating their personal stories of Jesus to the new believers. In our gospels, we have much, most, or possibly all of what they shared.

2) Fellowship. More about this below.

3) Breaking of bread — they were eating together.

4) Prayer — they were praying with one another.

Let’s draw a bead on the second element, fellowship. The Greek word, as everyone on the planet has heard by now, is ‘koinonia.’ It’s a good word and basically refers to something that is shared. We sit at the table together and share a “common” meal. “Common” means we all partake of it. When I was in college, the big living room on the first floor of the dormitory was called the common room. Likewise, we have words like community, commune, commonality, and communication.

My Greek professors–all of whom are in Heaven and presumably none of whom read this blog–might not appreciate my free-wheeling take on “fellowship” or “koinonia,” but I think of it as simply “hanging out.” To “fellowship” is simply to spend time with others without an agenda.

We don’t do much of that any more. Not in life in general or in the church in particular. But it’s one of the best parts of life.

Each afternoon at the McDonalds a few blocks down the street from my house, the old guys meet for coffee and fellowship. Their wives are glad to get them out of the house, their adult children are glad Pop has some friends, and the men themselves may look upon it as harmless chit-chat, but the idea is the same. Hanging out.

I spent two hours hanging out at church this morning. Here’s what happened.

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Someone said to me once, “The Bible doesn’t say a whole lot about the interworkings of believers with one another.” What was surprising about this is that it came from a godly deacon who knew his Bible as well as anyone in the church. I knew he was missing something.

I said, “Remember all those ‘one another’ commands in the Bible? Those are directed toward the Lord’s people. And by ‘one another,’ they don’t mean everyone in the world. They’re talking about how we are to treat other believers.”

The other night, I scanned the New Testament from Matthew to Revelation–no computer either and no concordance; did it with my Bible in a motel room in Indianapolis–and made a list of every ‘one another’ command I could find. I counted thirty-one.

These are elements in Christian fellowship, expressions of God’s will for the members of your church and mine.

Since we’re putting them in order, that explains why the first one is John 13:14 (or, at least, it’s the first one I found).

“Wash one another’s feet.” John 13:14

“Love one another.” That’s given most memorably in John 13:34-35, but is found at least a dozen times throughout the New Testament. It surely must be the most important element in our relations with each other.

“Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.” Romans 12:10

“Give preference to one another in honor.” Romans 12:10

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One day this week I was entering the local library to drop off some recorded books I’d carried to Indianapolis. At the same time, a young mother was coming in from the parking lot, fanning herself with the palm of her hand. I commented, rather inanely, “So, do you think it’s hot?”

She didn’t smile. “Rather,” is all she said.

Five minutes later, we happened to be exiting at the same time. I said, “Well, we can be thankful for A/C.” She said humorlessly, “I don’t have air-conditioning.”

I said, “Excuse me. I’m sorry.”

My assumption was that she was doing the same thing I was, rushing from an air-conditioned office to an air-conditioned car, and from there to an air-conditioned library, back again, and later into an air-conditioned home. That in this modern age when every building and vehicle seems to be cooled, she was without such a taken-for-granted blessing never occurred to me.

A little reflection shows the error of my assumption. On these blisteringly hot evenings when residents of some neighborhoods are sitting outside, visiting with each other, I have been known to glance in their direction and wistfully comment, “How nice. They’re spending time together.” That they’re outside because the inside of their houses is smothering never occurred to me.

Assumptions. They can be embarrassing, as in the case above. Or, they can be deadly.

Craig Ratliff pastors the St. Bernard campus of Celebration Church, built on the location of the former site of First Baptist Church of Arabi, whose buildings were ruined by Katrina and later demolished. At our Wednesday pastors’ meeting, Craig shared some aspects of his growing ministry.

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If all goes as planned, pastor, your visit to our church this upcoming weekend will result in a unanimous call from the congregation for you to become our next shepherd. You will return home, make your announcement to your church family, and put your house up for sale. A month or so later, you will preach your first sermon in our church.

You will find a lot of things once you begin your ministry among us. You’ll find our people receptive and responsive. We’ve been over a year without a pastor–we’ve had the very best interim possible in Mark Tolbert, but he would be the first to admit, “it ain’t the same”–and we’re ready.

You’ll find this church to be a lot like the one you came from, and probably the one before that. Since congregations are made up of frail beings from the complete spectrum of humanity, we’re not unlike all those other churches. This means you’ll find the vast majority to be good folks who require low maintenance, but a certain percentage at each end of the range will require more of your attention. At one end will be those who try your soul, who are never satisfied, who are takers and complainers and demanders. God puts them in the church to keep the pastor humble.

At the other end you will discover the sweetest people on the planet, those who look for ways to serve, who are grateful for anything you do, who bring you the occasional pie or flowers or a book. God puts them in the church to keep the pastor from quitting.

A pastor friend wrote back to his former church, “The most surprising discovery we’ve made since arriving here was to find the very same people we left behind. Only, they have different names.” I expect you’ll find that to be the case with us.

In spite of all our attempts to put no expectations on you and your family, I think it’s fair to warn you we do have several.

1) We expect you to be yourself.

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Trying to get back into the saddle at the associational office after being gone for some 10 days is tough. Fortunately, not a lot on the calendar this week.

First Baptist Church of Kenner is agog over the upcoming visit from the prospective pastor this weekend. He will meet with various groups on Saturday, including the senior adults at lunch, various individuals in the afternoon, and the entire church for a dinner that night, followed by Q and A. He’ll preach Sunday and then the congregation will express their sense of the Lord’s leadership (also known as “voting on him,” a poor choice of terms).

Church administrator Danny Moore said Tuesday, “The congregation is so excited about his coming, I think they’re ready to ‘vote him in’ right now before they’ve even met him.” In my conversation with the pastor today, I told him what Danny said, and for a moment considered teasing him with, “You’ll have to do a lousy job to blow it this Sunday, because everyone is so ready for you!” But, he doesn’t need any more pressure. I’ve been in his position a few times and the hardest thing you have to do is keep the focus off what the congregation wants and keep it on pleasing the Lord.

I dug out Cal Thomas’ op-ed column from Monday’s Times-Picayune since its message has followed me around the last two days. He was commenting on Barack Obama’s religious faith, wondering if he is indeed a Christian as he claims. Thomas’ authority, he’s quick to point out, is an interview Obama gave to the Chicago Sun-Times’ religion editor Cathleen Falsani in 2004. She was writing a book, “The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People,” for which she interviewed Obama.

“I’m rooted in the Christian tradition,” she quotes Obama. Then, he says one of those innocuous things that only an outsider to the Christian faith would utter: “I believe there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people.”

That is tantamount to a medical doctor stating his belief that all remedies for physical ailments–everything from modern medical science to the incantations of medicine men to the ignorant drillings and potions of witch doctors–are equal in value and similarly effective. I don’t think so.

Falsani went on to say that Obama believes “all people of faith–Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, everyone–know the same God.”

The only person who can utter such a statement is someone unfamiliar with any of those “gods.” The more you find out about them, the quicker you see how incompatible they are.

Cal Thomas, a devout Catholic if I remember correctly, concludes, “Evangelicals and serious Catholics might ask if this is so, why did Jesus waste His time coming to Earth, suffering pain, rejection and crucifixion? If there are many ways to God, He might have sent down a spiritual version of table manners and avoided the rest.”

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Dear Grandson,

Before long, you’ll be getting your drivers license. That’s a day you have long anticipated and the adults in your life have long dreaded. It’s a bittersweet moment, signifying in a sense that you are coming of age and taking a giant stride into independence. Your mom and dad are hyperventilating just thinking of that.

This is a great time to be a driver in some respects. The cars are better, safer, and easier to drive than at any time in history. They’re also more expensive and the insurance you will need to carry will cost enough to buy a second car. The price of gasoline has always been a factor, but never more than now. In our neighborhood, the cost per gallon has risen ten cents in the last week. When I was your age, three of those dimes would buy you a gallon. Dark ages, right?

Actually, I got my drivers license in the summer of 1957, exactly 51 years ago. In those days–just to show you how this driving business has changed–you were required to take the test in a car with a standard shift. And you were not allowed to use the electronic turn signals; you had to stick your hand out the window and signal to other drivers your intent to turn, slow down, or stop. Of course, there were no seat belts back then, no air bags, and the tires regularly blew out. As I say, the cars are much better now.

However, beloved grandson, there are some urgent matters I feel a need to call to your attention about driving.

The highway is a dangerous place. And yes, so are the streets and avenues. Powerful cars, high speeds, and frail humans can be a deadly combination.

Now, at this point you’re thinking, “Grandpa, I’ve ridden in cars all my life. I know about these things. I’ve seen a dog run out in front of the car and Dad slam on the brakes. I’ve seen wrecked cars where someone had been drinking and ran a red light and people were hurt. I am well aware of the danger of driving.”

Does this mean you’re going to forget this foolishness about getting a drivers license? I didn’t think so.

So, let me continue, even if you want to roll your eyes and leave the room. Please stay with me just a few more minutes.

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