I took my Alabama visitor to dinner in downtown New Orleans the other evening. On the way, I said, “Anyone can take you to Commander’s Palace or the Windsor Grill,” two of the most renowned eating spots in this city. “But I’m taking you somewhere no one else would think of.”

We ate at the Praline Connection.

Now, this city boasts two establishments of that name, one situated near the convention center and housed in a barn of a building with a stage where gospel choirs entertain for Sunday brunch. But I took my friend to the original Praline Connection, the one on Frenchmen Street, two blocks from the French Market. You park on the street in a crowded residential neighborhood, taking care that it’s an actual parking space, and hoping the car will still be there when you return.

In the intersection in front of the restaurant door, a crowd had gathered around a wrecked car. People were talking to the young woman at the wheel. I said to a bystander, “What’s going on?” He said, “Anne Heche. They’re making a movie.” Oh. That’s always fun to watch. You see it a lot in New Orleans. The driver was Miss Heche’s stunt double as it turned out.

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The first time Carl Hubbert came to our church, he filled out a visitor’s card inviting us to call. That week, I sat in his apartment and welcomed him to Kenner and First Baptist Church. I asked, “What kind of work do you do?” He said, “I sell candy for Russell Stover.” I did the same thing you would. I said, “Got any samples?”

He opened the door to a spare bedroom where boxes of candy were stacked to the ceiling. “Take as much as you like,” he said. “It’s dated. After Valentine’s Day, we have to remove this from the stores. It’s still good, but we aren’t allowed to sell it.” I left Carl’s apartment that night loaded down with heart-shaped boxes of chocolates.

A year or so later, the company got smart and opened an outlet in our city to sell the candy Carl had been giving away. For a while, he was easily the most popular man in town. Once he brought boxes of candy to place on the lunch trays of the entire student body of our school. I’m not sure what the parents thought, but that was one cafeteria meal the kids raved about.

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I found this list the other day, written perhaps a dozen years ago. As a veteran of 42 years in the pastorate, I have made my share of mistakes and have compiled a lengthy list of regrets. See what you think of these twenty things I wish I had known early in my ministry.

1. To take care of my family first.

2. To say no without feeling guilty.

3. How to be quiet.

4. How to introduce someone to Jesus.

5. How to get a sermon from a text.

6. How to lead a worship service.

7. How to do a funeral and feel good about it afterward.

8. How to do weddings and give young families a head start.

9. To say ‘I don’t know’ when I didn’t.

10. To apologize quickly and simply without rationalizing or justifying.

11. How to find a mentor.

12. How to help my wife feel good about what I was doing and to find her own role.

13. How to work with the deacons.

14. How to preach without imitating the last good preacher I heard.

15. How to counsel the troubled.

16. How to take criticism without losing my confidence.

17. How to respond to troublemakers the way Jesus would.

18. How to choose staff members wisely.

19. How to be prepared for temptation ahead of time.

20. How to give up jobs in the community to church members so I could stick with my own priorities as pastor.

Take the first one on my list, looking after my family. I have painful memories and my wife carries a scar on her soul from the time we moved from our seminary pastorate 300 miles north into the Mississippi Delta to a larger, more challenging church. I walked out and left her in our new home with boxes to unpack, pictures to hang, and a dozen other chores–and her with two little boys, ages 1 and 4–while I went to the hospital to check on church members. It was a misplaced sense of duty on my part. “It’s a bigger church,” I rationalized. “I have to hit it at a run.”

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I got down the North Carolina map and looked up Siler City. There it lay in the center of the state, about an hour’s drive from the conference center where I would be spending three days. I knew then that I would be taking an afternoon and driving to Siler City to find Aunt Bee.

Frances Bavier had played the aunt to Andy Taylor and son Opie in the 60s sitcom “The Andy Griffith Show.” Over the years, along with much of America, I loved the program more in reruns than when it was fresh. By the late 1980s we were living in Charlotte and I learned that Miss Bavier, perhaps in her 80s by now, had retired to Siler City. I might not be able to actually meet her, but one never knows about these things, and I surely would not if I did not try.

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As a second-grader, newly relocated with our family from the rural South to the coal fields of West Virginia, I felt vulnerable and misplaced. When the children laughed at my backwoods accent, I shut up. On the playground, when the students chose sides for games, being the smallest boy in the class meant I was picked last. When the prettiest girl in the class could never remember my name, I was hopelessly sunk.

I am well acquainted with feelings of inferiority. I know intimately the sense that everyone else is better, stronger, bigger, and smarter. Inferiority complexes are killers–destroyers of hope and joy and vision, striking victims with a paralysis preventing them from taking any kind of action.

That’s why I was surprised to learn that churches have them.

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Recently I heard a church choir offer a hymn of praise to Satan. I’m satisfied they did not know what they were doing, and would not have done so had they thought about it.

As the C-Span cameras focused on the flag-draped coffin containing the body of former President Ronald Reagan in the Capitol Rotunda, the other C-Span outlet replayed the 1973 funeral of former President Lyndon Johnson. We beheld mourners gathering inside a Washington, D.C., church to pay their respects with tributes, a sermon, and several hymns. Then, as the pallbearers ushered the casket from the sanctuary, the choir sang:

A mighty fortress is our God

A bulwark never failing;

Our helper He amid the flood

Of mortal ills prevailing.

But still our ancient foe

Doth seek to work us woe,

His craft and power are great,

And armed with cruel hate,

On earth is not his equal.

A-men.

Only one verse, end of hymn, end of service. I sat there stunned, wondering if anyone else noticed what had just occurred. By singing only the first verse of “A Mighty Fortress” the choir had paid tribute to the devil himself–using Martin Luther’s words, admittedly–and had left the matter there, as though nothing more needed to be said.

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Last Wednesday night in Indianapolis, Franklin Graham spoke before a convention hall filled with Southern Baptists and brought us up to date on his parents. His father, the venerable evangelist Dr. Billy Graham, has endured a couple of difficult surgeries lately, lives in pain, and has trouble getting around. But, he’s gradually improving and expects to be preaching soon. Mrs. Graham–the equally outstanding Ruth–spends her days in a wheelchair, no longer able to walk.

Franklin said, “The other day, Daddy hobbled into Mother’s bedroom and said, ‘I feel so bad. I feel like the Lord is ready to take me home.’ Mother said, ‘That must feel wonderful.'” As we laughed, Franklin said, “He won’t get any sympathy from Mother!”

I feel bad enough to die. When I die, I’m going to Heaven. That will be wonderful.

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