I’m sorry for the people who were hurt in this, but I love a bizarre story, and this ranks among the strangest of the new year.

In Clarence, New York, not far from Buffalo, 47-year-old Tom Montgomery worked in a tool factory. He and his wife have two teenage sons, and I suppose old Tom was bored. That’s when he went online and pretended to be someone he wasn’t.

On the internet, he told the 18-year-old West Virginia beauty he was a Marine just back from Iraq. Mister Macho man. Good looking, muscular, tough, all that.

Tom went to the young lady’s website and found she was everything he hoped: beautiful, smart, and interested in him. Well, she was interested in him the way he described himself.

They began chatting back and forth as people do these days. The middle-aged man romancing the teenager through cyberspace. As I got the story, the young woman was unnamed for reasons that will appear below.

At work, Tom would brag to his co-workers about this sweet young thing he was stringing along. One of the men who heard his tales was Brian Barrett, a part-time factory worker and full-time student at Buffalo State College where he hoped to become a teacher. Nice guy, everyone says. Give you the shirt off his back.

One day, Tom’s wife found an e-mail from the sweet young West Virginia thing and figured out what her man was doing. She blew the whistle and sent a note to the teen informing her that Tom was most definitely not a Marine, not just back from Iraq, and not anything at all like he was presenting himself.

At some point along the line, Tom had told the West Virginia girl about his co-worker Brian Barrett. For reasons not clear, she managed to go online and track Brian down and introduce herself. They began emailing each other also.

Gradually Brian and Tom became rivals for the affections of the young lady. The bizarre thing about that is that neither of them had met her and neither even had plans to drive to West Virginia and meet her. But a rivalry grew up between them.

Last September 15, Brian got off work and was sitting in his car in the plant parking lot when someone drove by and pumped his body full of lead using a 30 caliber gun.

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There’s something about the football mentality of Americans, particularly men, that makes us apply lessons learned on the gridiron to the rest of life, areas that do not compare in any manner whatsoever. The church, for instance.

“If we could just get us a pastor like Bill Parcells.” Bear Bryant. Vince Lombardi. Joe Gibbs. Fill in the blank.

“Well, all I know is that Tommy Bowden came into Tulane–always a doormat in college football–and within two years, had led them to an undefeated season and a bowl game and national ranking. Don’t tell me it’s not about the coach. And if you can do it in football, you can do it in the church. All we need is to find the right pastor.”

Take Sean Payton. First year coach of the New Orleans Saints. First year as an NFL coach, period. And now named “Coach of the Year” in professional football by the Associated Press. He received 44 votes, with the second-place coach, the Jets’ Eric Mangini receiving only 3. Pretty convincing. He is most definitely a leader, a general, a motivator of men, a winner.

But he’s not a pastor.

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If you were to get down a map of the city of New Orleans, you could locate the Ninth Ward as a section of town just under Gentilly, behind the French Quarter, bounded on the South by the Mississippi River, and on the East by St. Bernard Parish. The infamous “lower” Ninth is the portion between the Industrial Canal and the St. Bernard Parish line and is where the levee by the Industrial Canal blew and did so much jawdropping damage.

The portion of the Ninth Ward on this side (i.e., the downtown side) is the Upper Ninth, and that’s where the Baptist Crossroads Project was focusing in the year 2004. It’s a spotted area, in the way much of New Orleans is, nice homes adjacent to slums, good neighborhoods a block from high crime areas. Originally, the Baptist Crossroads plan was to buy up forty blighted lots–vacant lots or condemned buildings–by paying the back taxes, then clean off a space and, under the direction of Habitat for Humanity, build forty new homes. Help forty families turn their lives around.

It all started with one statement from our mayor, an instance where he said something right.

David Crosby and I were among a large group of pastors invited to breakfast with Mayor C. Ray Nagin at the Fairmont Hotel one morning early in 2004. At one point in the middle of his message, Hizzoner said, “Studies have proven that home ownership is the most important factor in lifting a family out of poverty.” He said that and went on with his talk. David never heard another word. He was caught, snagged, hooked, as surely as if the Holy Spirit had thrown him a line with a lure and jerked it, setting the barb, and was reeling him in.

When we walked outside the hotel, David said, “Joe, we ought to build some houses.” I said, “What?” (No one ever accused me of quickly picking up on subtle nuances from the Holy Spirit.)

That was the inception. Out of that idea, the Baptist Crossroads Project was born. At first, David simply shared the dream with various friends and church members. And then Byron Harrell called.

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Nothing points up how out of touch I am with current culture in this country like reading a list of the top-selling CDs of the last year. Or the top ten movies. Or the best-selling novels. I don’t recognize any of them. And this current crop of popular singers–who are they? I hear their music on the radio and it all sounds alike. And the gospel music sounds like the rock stuff.

I’m trying hard not to be an old fogey about these things. I buy CDs of Alison Krauss and Union Station, the best blue-grass band ever, and they’re not ancient. I love Neil Young, but he is. My favorite is the songsters of the big band era; “old” goes without saying.

Now, I’m not against going to a movie occasionally, if it’s the right kind. Lately, there have been some good ones out there. Late Thursday afternoon, I bought a ticket to see “The Good Shepherd,” a story of the old OSS and the beginnings of the CIA. After an hour of this movie, I found myself puzzled to the point that I left.

I wondered who, for instance, decided that the best way to tell a cinematic story is to cut it up in bits and pieces and disorient the viewer? In that movie, a scene from 1961 is followed by one from 1939, then we cut to 1945. Back and forth. None of it made sense. Do these people not know you tell a story by starting at the beginning and going forward to a conclusion? Or would that be too simple, too juvenile? Did Kurt Vonnegut create this fractured-storytelling business with “Slaughterhouse 5”? At least his made sense, eventually.

I wonder what is the process movie-makers employ when they decide, “Let’s make the hero a sad, silent, miserable type. And let’s give him an unhappy home life. Let’s have his child be emotionally abandoned and overwhelmed by sadness. Oh, and let’s make the United States as unscrupulous and murderous as its enemies.”

Perhaps the biggest questions of all are: why do movie critics rate these shows so highly? and why am I paying good money for this?

“I don’t need this,” I rationalized, and walked out and went home to supper.

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Ask any director of missions and he will tell you one of his biggest challenges is strengthening the connection between his pastors and other ministers. Even after the incredible post-Katrina blessings we’ve enjoyed, we still have to work at building the fellowship.

Wednesday, as our weekly pastors meeting resumed following the holidays, as the pastors entered the room, they sat alone or with the person they came with, usually at a table by themselves. But we encouraged them to move together, then played a little game we used to open Lay Evangelism Schools with.

“Where did you live at the age of 4 and how did you heat your home? Start with the person with the shortest hair and answer that question.” In two minutes, each table was finished. Second question.

“At what point in your life did Jesus become more than just a word to you?” That took longer and some began opening up. Third question.

“What is your biggest prayer request for the pastors and churches of New Orleans?” After they answered, we prayed, table by table, taking all the time anyone wished.

“My prayer,” I told them, “is that our ministers will be in this city because God put you here, not because you feel you have no other choice.”

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Here is the picture from the ‘Old Friends‘ post you read about:

And my somewhat enhanced version:

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Gradually, the local picture becomes clearer. Less smokier, shall we say.

The statewide ban on smoking inside Louisiana restaurants went into effect January 1. Some local eateries are hollering that they will lose business, although no one has explained who they will lose it to. As much print as this change is receiving, you would never know that the law has no teeth in it, that lawmakers are counting on the public to enforce the ban. Anyone acquainted with human nature has to be skeptical.

Keith Manuel and Bob Moore are leaving. Keith, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in the Algiers section of New Orleans and one of our leading ministers for over 7 years, will be joining the staff of the Evangelism Department of the state Baptist convention. Bob, associate pastor of the First Baptist Church of New Orleans, is moving to a Montgomery, Alabama, church in a similar capacity. Both are fine men who will leave major holes around here.

Calvary Church is hosting a reception for Keith and Wendy Manuel (also Keith, Jr., Jeremy, and Hannah) this Saturday afternoon, January 6, at the First Baptist Church of Belle Chasse.

Keith promises that with his new state-wide duties, he will be back this way often and we have not seen the last of him. Since Katrina, he has developed newswriting talents and taken photos of the New Orleans area that have appeared in publications everywhere. Yet, prior to the hurricane, he didn’t even own a camera. Necessity was the mother of this creativity. Baptist Press has run many Keith-Manuel-articles on local people.

David Crosby is back. The ten-year pastor of the FBC-NO has returned from a three-month sabbatical. Over lunch Tuesday he said half seriously, “The bad part is everyone expects me to have come back rested up.” For several weeks, he and Janet visited friends and family in other parts of the country, but over the past month, they’ve been back here doing funerals and weddings and meeting with church leaders, although his staff has been preaching. He returns to the pulpit Sunday, January 7.

My first question to him was, “After three months away, did you find it hard to come back?” The answer was no, that he was ready. I told him I’d just taken two weeks off and did not want to come back this (Tuesday) morning. But, I got out of bed early, did my usual morning routine and was in the office on time. An hour later, a pastor called needing my assistance and soon I was glad to be back in the saddle.

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It’s Sunday night–New Year’s Eve–and I find the sound of fireworks down the street oddly comforting. They sound like “normal.”

My first acquaintance with neighborhood fireworks came on a mountaintop in West Virginia in the late 1940s. Our neighbors, the Howells, went all out on the Fourth of July and New Year’s and provided a treat all the children would never have had otherwise and no doubt recall to this day. The six McKeever offspring would get upstairs in our bedrooms and open the windows, providing a ringside seat since the Howells lived only three houses away. I’d never seen anything like it. The poverty in a coal-mining camp in those days was something to behold, and even though no doubt the “adults” in the camp called Affinity pooh-poohed the Howells’ spending that kind of money only for it to go up in smoke and bangs, it was a wonderful occasion for the kids.

That to me made it a good investment.

When we moved to the New Orleans area in September of 1990, it never occurred to us that locals would do anything more than the residents of Charlotte, NC, or Columbus, MS, where we had lived for the previous two decades. New Year’s Eve was a shocker. Driving home late that night from a friend’s house where we had gathered for supper, you would have thought a heavy fog had settled in. It was the smoke from fireworks. And the noise–every kind of noise, from the house-rattling boom of rockets to the sharp blast of bombs to the rat-a-tat ear-assaulting bang-bang-bangs of hundreds of firecrackers at once. Forget about trying to sleep through that. Just let it run its course; next day’s a holiday anyway.

Oddly enough, here in Jefferson Parish, fireworks are illegal. Each year Sheriff Harry Lee makes public pronouncements about his intentions to arrest violators. He might as well be trying to hold back the sunrise.

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“Saddam Hussein escaped justice,” someone said on NPR radio this Saturday morning. This murderous Iraqi dictator was found guilty of the 1982 murder of 148 Shiite Muslim civilians and sentenced to the gallows, a sentence that was carried out promptly last night.

The question lingers, “But what about the hundreds of thousands of others he slaughtered? Shouldn’t he have to pay for those deaths also?” But this raises another question: “How?” All he had was one life and that one was taken. Biggest question of all: “So where is the justice in this?” Answer: We may not expect absolute justice on this side of the grave. On the other side, well, that’s another story.

They said Saddam’s last words were “God is great.” I take that to mean he uttered “Allah Ak-bar,” the phrase which is so much a part of Islam.

My word on this is: A few seconds after Saddam’s neck snapped, he began to understand just how great God truly is, and not in any way he anticipated.

“It is appointed unto man once to die, and after that the judgement.” (Hebrews 9:27)

The way I read Holy Scripture, Saddam’s troubles have just started. You would not want to be in that man’s shoes.

This, incidentally, is why Scripture makes so much of the death of Jesus on the cross, that act by which He paid the complete price for every sin ever committed. Every sin, every one, forever. Yes, he died for Saddam’s sins too. It’s why believers make so much of the mercy and salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

If we all got what we truly deserved, we would be in the same predicament as Saddam at this moment, awaiting our appointment with the Supreme Judge of the universe from whose righteous decision there is no appeal.

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Recently, we told on this website a story we titled “The Brown Bag Christmas.” We specified very plainly that Carrie Fuller had shared with our Sunday School class this story from her own family, and we clearly spelled out that the small child in the story is her own grandmother. What is fascinating about that is that soon afterwards, I began receiving e-mails from people asking, “Did that really happen?”

I was glad to see that other websites and some publications picked up the story and adapted it to their purposes and reprinted it. Most chose to leave out the Carrie Fuller connection. The bad thing about that is that this wonderful and authentic story now lives in cyberspace and just like thousands of other tales which may or may not be true, this one is now circling the earth without proper identification. People will read it and think, “Just another Christmas myth,” and let it go at that. And I hate that. I grant you it’s a nice story and perhaps not of earth-shaking magnitude, but this whole thing symbolizes a larger issue for me.

People need to know whether a story is true. Someone inside us wants to know. Did this happen? Are these people real? Can I count on this? Or did someone just make this up?

They used to ask John F. Kennedy, Jr., whether he remembered his father and if he recalled playing around the desk in the Oval Office. He said something like, “I have a hard time knowing whether I’m actually remembering those things or I’m remembering something I’ve seen a hundred times on television.”

A half-dozen years ago, Fred Rochlin published a book (“Man in a Baseball Cap” by HarperCollins) containing stories of World War II which he had shared with his family over the years. It’s a typical war story, well-told and interesting, but the small book ends with an admission I’ve never seen anywhere else. Here it is verbatim.

“I remember flying from Dakar in the Senegal across the Sahara Desert through the Zagora Pass into Marrakech, Morocco. We were low on fuel. We landed at this dusty town, Timbuktu, mud huts, everyone speaking French. American Air Force fuel depot. Thousands of barrels of fifty-gallon, one hundred octane aviation fuel. We had cold beers. Refueled, took off, flew through the Zagora Pass, through the Atlas Mountains and into Marrakech. I remember all this with pristine clarity.”

“It never happened. I checked my old navigator log. We didn’t land to refuel. We flew right through the Zagora Pass. And we wouldn’t have refueled at Timbuktu anyway. Too far away from the course of our flight. So, where did that memory of that dusty French African town come from?”

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