In the Office Again

Do you have back to school blues or are you happy it has started?  For me, I hated school.  I could not wait for graduation May 27, 1971.  It took forever.  I hated homework.  I hated reading.  I hated writing.  I enjoyed history.  I loved math, algebra, electric computation (forerunner of computers) and football.  I wished I had enjoyed dating, but I could not buy a date.  My ex sister-in-law convinced a girl to date me. Did I say I hated school?

With that said, I returned to school in September 1983 at the University of Montevallo.  Having the call of the Lord resonating in my heart, I walked onto the hallow ground and cobbled streets of the Quad, the Tower, and Palmer Hall.  There I encountered Ms. Cobb; her husband was from Demopolis, who asked if she could help me.  I must have looked as a “plowboy” come to town.  I did not know it, but the Lord did because it was orientation.

I was eager to share my exciting call to minister and returning to school to help me be a pastor.  I realized she was one of the liberated people of the eighties and she was not impressed with my call, but she was very helpful.  She taught English and helped me to write when I attended the Harbert Writing Center, a place for those whose English skills were nonexistent.

I was very ignorant about writing and college and Ms. Cobb saw me as a project to teach me the ways of the secular university and launch me into the agnostic twentieth century.  She did enlighten me on Pell Grants.  These grants were money that the government loans to students without having to pay the money back to the government.  Boy, she was nice, liberated woman.

A couple of years later I was going to Palmer Hall to pick up my Pell Grant.  The lines were long with students getting their money.  The line reached from the second floor, down the stairs, through the main lobby, onto the steps, and out into the streets. These were transitional days from punch cards to computers.

It was hot in Palmer Hall.  The temperature was hot, and students were getting hot under the collar due to the slowness of those operating the computers.

I finally reached the top of the stairs and could see the payroll window.  People were angry so I decided to make a joke about computers.  I said in my preaching voice, “Boy ain’t the technological age wonderful in how it speeds things up or we would be here pulling cards all night.”

After that, everyone started telling computer jokes and the line moved quickly.  When I was close to receiving my check, a woman behind the counter said she wanted to talk to me in her office.  She looked upset. How did she know me?  My first thought was, “What I have I done now?”  Trouble follows me as a dirty cloud follows Pigpen.  You know the dirty little follow from the Peanuts cartoon.

With high anxiety, I entered onto “the carpet” of her office.  She closed the door and said, “Thank you for what you did.”  I was clueless as to what I did so I asked her what I did.

She said, “You took what was a very volatile situation and made everyone laugh.  The girl doing the student loans was nervous and the more upset the students became, the more mistakes she made.  Your smile and your humor put everyone at ease.  You took the attention off the computer operators.”

I told the woman that it was better to have a smile and share it than be one to gripe and complain.  It was a joy to get money to follow God’s call upon my life.

Author and Bible teacher Warren Wiersbe writes, Joy takes the burden out of service.  The Joy of the Lord is your strength (Nehemiah 8:10). God loves a cheerful servant as well as a cheerful giver . . . God wants His family to be happy, and this means that each member must contribute to joy.

Leave the Light On and Double Plunkin'

 

It was a Sunday night with six people in attendance at Brierfield Baptist Church.  The six people there were my family of five and Sis Fletcher.  Sunday mornings were a little better but not much.  Instilled in me was the principle:  teach or preach even it there is only one in attendance.  I still hold to that principle, I encourage preachers, and teachers of God’s Word that when there is only one student, then God wants you to have one-on-one time with them.  It is a divine appointment.  It may that God places us there to do some personal ministry.

With that thought, we had a regular service.  During the eight years at Brierfield, there were perhaps six years with no music.  Most people thought we were Church of Christ or a Mennonite congregation, not Southern Baptists because we did a whole lot of a Cappella.

My wife led the music that night, our two older children, Andy, who was twelve, and Angela, who was ten, took up the offering.  I called on Andy to open in prayer and Angela to pray the offertory prayer.  Aaron was a baby that cried AMEN a whole bunch.

People would ask me why bother to have church, why not just go home.  I would reply, we came to worship, and I was teaching the principles of worship to our children.  One particular Sunday, only my five showed for worship.  It was a cold, overcast, rainy morning.  The 1888 building used gas space heaters and I waited to see who would attend that morning before lighting them.  As Baptists do, sometimes there was a mad rush to make it right at ten o’clock.  This particular day it was, as a black friend of mine would say, “It’s just usin’s.” So usins worshiped in the warm car.

We had been at Brierfield for a couple of years, and this was the first of many times that it would be just my five.  The wife looked at me that morning and said, “For the first time, I am discouraged.”

I told her that were less than ten miles from home and in less than thirty minutes we could back in a nice and comfortable home cooking chicken fingers and French fries.  I reminded her that we had thought about becoming missionaries and if we were ten thousand miles away in Timbuktu and no one showed, that would be discouraging.

No one came, we went home, cooked chicken fingers and French fires, she went to bed for beauty rest and I watched kung fu movies and the kids played.

Let me regress back to the Sunday night with Sis Fletcher and my five.  I was finishing a sermon, and about to offer an invitation when a lady entered the church and sat on the back pew.  The Baptist Tradition is for everyone to look behind them when some enters the church.  All of us noticed that the lady was crying.  The Holy Spirit impressed me to preach a short sermon.  I preached a five-minute sermon; a concept that is totally unknown by a whole bunch of preachers and gave the invitation.  I prayed the closing prayer, hoping the lady would come where I could pray for her.  When I finished, the whole church that night, that sounds better than Sis and us, welcomed her.

What she would tell me remains with me until today.  She said, “I was on my way to kill myself and I prayed that if God was listening that He give me a sign.  I prayed to God that the church would be open. I saw the lights of the church, pulled into the parking lot; I sat in the car for a few moments, and then decided to come in.”

We learned that she was from another denomination, and she could play the piano really well and had played for a quartet.  There was only one problem she could not read music.  The way she played for us was we would start singing; she would peck on the piano keys until suddenly she would have the melody.  The walls of Brierfield Baptist became Bapcostal for a few months.  The term Bapcostal comes from the Chiltonian Text and means when a Baptist raises his/her hands and says amen and hallelujah like a Pentecostal, Brierfield is a Southern Bapcostal Church.

She did more than play.  One Sunday morning she had twenty-eight people come to church with her.  Another Sunday there were fifty-four there.  The most I remember was seventy-two.  She would say come to my church were the pastor and the people love you regardless of who you are and what you have done.  She shared Jesus like the woman at the well when Jesus confronted her.

For Christmas that year, we did a cantata.  Now remember, our pianist could not read music, but she utilized every key and petal on the piano.  We did the cantata for a neighboring church.  We got an ovation for it.  I will never forget what a deacon in that church said.  “I think that girl was double plunkin’ that piano like they do in a bar.”   Yeah, it weren’t no bar and she was shining, and it was wonderful.  Because the Brierfield Baptist Church was faithful and had it lights burning, she was letting her light shine by “double plunkin’” and sharing Jesus with her family, neighbors, and strangers.

 

Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did (John 4:29a KJV)

 

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven (Matthew 5:16 KJV).

“Dropping Your Net”

Mom told me that the night I got married she cried all night.  He eldest left home never to return.  Dad said mom cried for several days. I think dad was glad I was gone.  I never understood why mom cried all night until I had children.

Fast forward a few years and I realized why momma cried.  Taking our seventeen-year-old daughter away to college to play volleyball was one of the hardest days of my life.  I knew when she left that my little girl would never come back home to stay.

I was proud that she received a scholarship to play volleyball.  She had prepared and trained since the eighth grade to play and earn a scholarship.  She had an offer from Washington State, which won the National Champion in girls’ volleyball the previous year.  Other offers came from Notre Dame, Annapolis, University of Alabama Birmingham, University of Montevallo, and Samford to name a few.  She chose UAB, which sent her to Wallace State Junior College in Hanceville to prep for two years.  She was moving less than a hundred miles away, but the reality that she was gone produced tears.  I had hurt, a sick feeling, deep in my soul.  There would be days of joy watching her play for the next two years, but I knew she was gone.  Daddy’s influence would become secondary to a newfound freedom and a world that was exotic and appealing as opposed to rural and Christian Chilton County.

As a dad, I tried to instill Christian principles and ethics that would enable my children to make wise decisions.  I had faith that all my children would make wise decisions in everything they encountered.

All three of my children have good ethics, which is something that is missing from the moral fabric of society today.  They have not been perfect, even though I wanted them to be.  All three have thanked me for teaching them how to work and live.

Not many years ago, Aaron, the baby son, thanked me for teaching and enabling him to perform many tasks.  He apologized that he lived in Texas and could not spend much time with me.  He lived at home longer than the other two.

He thought for a long time that he would never find a good vocation or a good wife.  Having found both, he left home.  It was hard to lose my sidekick who had been with me since he was seven.  He is ten years younger than my daughter is, so her moving to college was my segue into taking care of Aaron.

I told Aaron that from the moment of his birth I began to teach him how to become a man.  I instilled him with principles and skills to leave home, discover a vocation, find a bride, and raise Christian children in a world that would constantly grow spiritually darker and would need men and women to share the love of Christ.

Having faith that I did a decent job, allowed me to release my children to find their own way, make their own decisions, and pass their knowledge to my grandchildren and others along their way.

Dr. Scott Bullard, Judson College in Marion reminded me at a Monthly Minister’s Conference that sometimes we overlook some intriguing moments in the Bible.  One such moment we find in here:  And when he had gone a little further thence, he saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in the ship mending their nets.  And straightway he called them: and they left their father Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants, and went after him (Mark 1:19-20KJV).

 

Scott called our attention to the James and John leaving a very lucrative vocation to follow a little-known carpenter.  Scott called it “Dropping Your Net.”

The sons of Zebedee became the “Sons of Thunder.”  In a few moments in time, James would be killed for following a carpenter and John would spend his last days in exile.  The probing question is, “What did Zebedee feel when his two sons left the family business?”  I think he probably had hurt, a sick feeling, deep in his soul.

Had James and John remained fishermen, their influence would have gone no further than filling some stomachs and some wallets.  But, since they dropped their nets and did as the carpenter instructed, they became part of God’s Word to us.  Because of John’s experience with the family business, he could be in the inner courts during Jesus’ trial and left us the first-hand account of what happened.  His time on the Isle of Patmos gave us the Book of Revelation

For each mom and dad that will face the departure of that son or daughter, you are not alone.  One day that son or daughter will thank you for teaching them how to live.  I know I thanked my mom and dad.

 Happy First Birthday to Jack Barrett Hopper!!!!

Aaron teach him well.  It will be a blink of an eye and Jack Barret will be dropping his net.

Good News is Always a Tonic for the Soul

 

One day I thought of something funny, and I smiled.  My son Aaron wanted to know why I was smiling.  Knowing that it was probably not funny to him I said, “I had a thought of a private nature.”  That intrigued him more.

I don’t know why, but I have been questioned many times through the years as why I was smiling.  One time at one of my former pastorates, a deacon with a solemn look said he wanted to talk.  Now, after thirty-four years in the ministry I have learned that when a deacon wants to talk to the pastor, it is not good news.  It is usually after a sermon that did not sit too well with a member, or the deacon, and they want set the preacher straight.  That is why I have always tried to study and preach sound Biblical principles and not preach personal soapbox sermons or be a bully in the pulpit.

The deacon that wanted to talk was also a member of the pulpit committee that recommended me to the church.  I had been what we call “around the block a few times with people wanting to speak with me so I said, “Sure.”  He came to the house for the “talk,” and we spoke outside to make it of a private nature.

One of the church members had a mother that was very sick.  Her mother would die with a few weeks.  The person complained to the deacon that I was insensitive.  She told the minister of discipline, that is the deacon, that I smiled the whole time she was pouring out her heart to me.  Those that know me know I grin, or have a crooked smile, a lot.  People do, as did Aaron, want to know why I am grinning.  There is no reason other than it takes less muscles to grin than frown.  Most people in my lifetime use a very crude adjective to go along with grin.  It is also amazing how many people, including coaches, supervisors, upset friends, and yes, even relatives become very angry when you grin as they are chew you up or tearing you down.  It really upsets folks and they have told me in no uncertain that were going to wipe that “grin” off my face.  I just keep on grinning, which upsets them more.  Even when I try not smiling, my eyes smile.

I inherited my grin, crooked smile, from my mom.  Since I “chased that rabbit,” let me catch it and get back to the minister of discipline.  The deacon said the woman assumed that I did not take her serious.  I said, “WHAT!”  She said I was never serious, to which the deacon asked, “Are you ever serious?”  I said serious as a heart attack.

I told him that I lost my mom after a prolonged bout with stage four, melanoma cancer.  It broke my heart to hear that the woman’s mother was dying.  I told him that I had been around more death as pastor than he realized.

I took a few minutes to explain to the minister of discipline about being serious.  I told him that I had a five-year layoff from a company that had a record of accomplishment without a blemish and when I borrowed money for our house, I received a ninety percent load.  In the first year of that layoff, God called me into the ministry.  I started the University of Montevallo as a twenty-nine-year-old freshman working for minimum wage.  In the spring of my first year, I held my dad’s hand as he died from a brain tumor.  In my senior year, my wife became pregnant with Aaron, and we did not have insurance.  I paid for him out my pocket.  I told him mom died and Aaron was born before I graduated.  I took a stress evaluation while taking a Marriage and the Family course at the university.  Anything over 150 was considered a heart attack candidate.  I scored over 700.

I said, “Yes, I am serious, and you called me to this church with a history of problems and God has led me here to share the ‘Good News’.  I grin because God loves me, and it is the highest honor to serve him and His high calling.”  Then I asked, “Would rather a pastor that grins or one that looks like he has been sucking lemons or a jackass eating saw briers?”

I went to the woman who questioned my seriousness, and we are good friends.  She smiles when we are together.  People comment to me from time, “Are you a pastor?”  I grin and say, “Does it show that bad?”  They say, “You have a glow, a smile and your eyes give it away.

The writer of Proverbs 15:30 has something to say about grinning.  One commentary says, “The light of the eyes” and “good news” corresponds.  The light of the eyes is in the news bringer.  When you see his happy face, you take heart because you know he has something good to tell you.  I like the New Century Version translates it: Good news makes you feel better. Your happiness will show in your eyes.

The Message Bible translates it: A twinkle in the eye means joy in the heart, and good news makes you feel fit as a fiddle. 

The Amplified Bible translates it: The light of the eyes [of him whose heart is joyful] rejoices the heart of others, and good news nourishes the bones.

 

FYI: Members of the above church tell me that they miss my smile.

Wrong Idea What Do With Riches

When we do not wait on God, sin has a way of bamboozling.  Waiting on God on-the-other hand is a time of testing, of increasing faith, and of hoping.  The Bible has numerous examples of waiting on God.  One such event is the Exodus.

The Passover is a watershed event for the Hebrews and Christians alike.  It was a monumental event with good and catastrophic consequences.  It was good that Pharaoh set the Hebrews free and made them rich, but freedom and riches can lead to stupid choices.

Thinking about the event, the Hebrews under Moses’ leadership did as the Lord instructed and made the Exodus at the right moment.  They had faith to get out, but did not have faith to enter the promise land.  They experienced “rags to riches” overnight and had the wrong idea what to with riches.

While Moses was spending time with God, the Hebrews figured that Moses must have gotten lost or God killed him because it looked as though he was not returning.  Having too much time and too much money, they approached Aaron, Moses brother, and instructed him to make them a god to worship since the great I AM and Moses were not around to help them.

To put in perspective the Hebrews’ wealth, Aaron said, “Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me.”  Aaron gathered enough gold to hammer.  Pure gold is very malleable.  I am sure that none of the Hebrews carried a furnace to melt and pour the gold, so the tool that Aaron used was to shape the gold as he hammered it.  Egyptians taught this technique to the slaves.

The idol was of a calf, which the word “calf” denotes a three-year bull.  Idols of bulls were the popular trend.  Bulls represented power and fertility.  This was no small idol.  If the estimated 1.5 Hebrews and mixed multitude each gave one earring, that is a chunk of gold.

When Moses did return, he made Aaron burn the idol, sprinkled it on the water, and made them all drink it.  No pun intended, but that is a lot of waste of gold that could have been used for good.

What can we learn from this?  First, we need to wait on God.  We do stupid stuff when we grow impatient.  Second, be generous toward God’s work.  They, as are we, were generous to give to creating an idol and rejecting God’s way.  Third, walking with God is more important than money and things.

 

And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount . . . And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron.  And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: (Exodus 32:14a KJV).

 

God is generous, always giving.