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).