Only in Church

Church is the place where we worship, preach, teach, sing praises, pray, and fellowship.  It is a sacred place, a safe place, and a sanctified place.  We experience many exciting and wonderful moments with weddings, baptisms, baby dedications, vacation Bible school, and revivals.

There are experiences of salvation, rededication, and renovation.  Singings and homecomings fill the church with attendance, melody, and nostalgia.  Funerals and times of repentance remind us that death and sin are related. 

These times can prompt salvation and forgiveness.  Grace and mercy are characteristics of God and jog our memory to the greatness of God and eternal life through Jesus.  The Holy Spirit moving among the church presents some marvelous happenings.

Reminiscing about church has some things that need penning.  There are some events that are unbelievable and memorable.  I have titled this article: Only in Church.

 

At the Sweet Water Baptist church, the pastor was very passionate about his preaching.  He was very good.  However, one of the members there would close his eyes during the preaching of the sermon. 

Finally, one Sunday the preacher asked why the member closed his eyes.  The member said, “Pastor, I love to hear you preach but I can’t stand to look at you!”

Brierfield Baptist church was having the baptism of a teenage girl.  The girl had broken her arm, and she had a bubble wrap on it.  It was the preacher’s first time to conduct a baptism.  As former pastor at Brierfield, the teenager asked if I would attend her baptism.

I will never forget it.  As she descended into the baptism waters, the blue bubble wrap on her arm was obvious.  As the newbie pastor cited, “I Baptist thee my sister in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” everything went into the water but her arm.

The poor pastor tried several attempts of dunking the teenager, but the blue bubble wrapped arm retained its sin.  The splashing of the waters went everywhere.

An earlier baptism at Brierfield involved sister church Ashby.  Ashby did not have a baptism pool so they barrowed Brierfield’s.  The weather was cold; 14 degrees was the low.  The baptism pool was filled, the heating element was energized, and the water was crystal clear.

Ashby member filled the auditorium, and the baptism candidates lined the passageway to the pool.  As the Ashby pastor entered into the water like John the
Baptist of old he started a tradition.  It was the first polar bear baptism.  The heating element had shorted and failed to heat the water.

The Providence Baptist Church had two men that were notorious for pulling pranks.  One Sunday as the pastor waxed eloquently, one of the pranksters fell asleep.  When the timing was just right, the other prankster nudged the sleeping one and said, “The preacher called on you to say the benediction.”

The poor sleepy man stood up and closed the service.  The preacher pronounced to the church to have a good afternoon since there was an early benediction.

Baby dedications are wonderful occasions.  I had twelve babies to dedicate one Sunday at the Gallion Baptist Church.  Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and everyone else flooded the church in anticipation of the dedication.  Baby dedications are more for the parents and the congregation.  The only way the baby will know of the moment is through the parents and the church.

I took each child and lifted them toward God.  I had individual prayer and words of encouragement for each.  When I lifted Chloe high into the air I started to speak when I noticed a big bubble of baby slobber hanging from her lip.  It was like watching an eye drop dangling before it drops in your eye.

Suddenly the big glob fell into my mouth.  The whole congregation gasped, with a variety of different moans and words.

The only thing I could do was to swallow it which the congregation did another set of phrases.  I said, “Dew drops from heaven from one of God’s little angels.”

I performed a wedding at the Brierfield Historical Park at the Mulberry Baptist Church.  The church had been moved from deep in the Bibb County woods and remodeled making it ideal for weddings and other venues.

As I conducted the ceremony, the little feller that was the ring barrier began to run his hand up the leg of the groom.  The groom tried to motion the little boy back, but he was not deterred and had a big mischievous grin.  I tried not to laugh, the groom focused on the vows, and the bride was scared stiff.

The pastor of Union Springs Baptist Church, my home church was and continues to be a great puppeteer.  He has great movement when preaching.  He has what my professor of preaching, the late Calvin Miller, said is balanced movement.  The pulpit always is the center of his movement.  The pulpit is and always must be the center of preaching the Bible.

The late RG Lee was one of my pastor’s favorites.  He quoted him often.  One Sunday as my pastor moved like a caged lion keeping the pulpit center, he crept closer and closer to the edge of the stage which was about three feet high.  He finally did it.  He stepped off the stage saying, “R G Leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

He landed on the floor and never missed a beat.  He slowly returned to the stage and behind the pulpit.

 

I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD.  Psalm 122:1 KJV

Runaways

Someone once asked me about school.  I told them that I hated school.  I love to learn, I just hated school.  I loved math and history, tolerated science, hated English and spelling.  Then they asked me about my grades.  I said that I hated school so much that I made straight A’s, was a Beta Club member, and president of the Beta Club my senior year of high school. 

When students told me they hated school I inquired of their grades.  Usually, their grades were bad and most had failed or taken summer school.  I would say, “You must really love school to fail and take the class again.” I said if they really hated school they would make A’s.  They would quiz, “Why?”  I replied, “You graduate quicker.”  

I often spoke at high school Baccalaureates, college students, civic organizations, and preached since 1983.  When introduced as Dr. Hopper, I got rounds of laughter and sometimes ovations.  I would tell them that the D R stands for Documented Redneck.

I would tell students that I started school in 1959 at Beloit Kindergarten in Beloit, Illinois and graduated Beeson Divinity School at Sanford University in Birmingham, Alabama in December 2002.

Hopper tradition proves we deplore school.  Mom went to the seventh grade and quit to hoe and pick cotton. Dad went to the eighth grade and quit to cut and load, by hand, pulpwood.  My younger brother, Glenn, and I we were school runaways.  My sister Diane and other brother David were not as bold and daring as Glenn and I were.

When I started kindergarten in Beloit, it was mandatory, and I loved it.  My teacher was a beautiful young blonde and reminded me of Beaver Cleaver’s teacher on the television show “Leave it to Beaver.”

I got to finger paint, go to the creek, and catch tadpoles.  The best part was it was only a half day.  There was no homework, tests, or any pressure.  It was wonderful until I started the first grade a Beloit Elementary.

In first grade I had the oldest and meanest teacher.  She had to be at least a hundred years old and was a robust Yankee tyrant.  This first grader from central Alabama did not speak as did the other students.  I was a shy introvert, and she was a fun making bully.  She shamed my Southern drawl, criticized my reading, and analyzed by inability to skip with both feet.

After school started, I saw my teacher at a sporting event.  When I saw her in that old gangster car, an old Buick with bullet hole fenders, I was terrified.  Momma worried and warned us about the evil ninety miles to the east in Chicago.  The St. Valentine Day Massacre happened many years before, but momma still fretted.  I thought that that
Gangster Yankee teacher was going to kill this little Johnny Reb.

We lived three or four blocks from the Elementary school.  I would walk to school and eventually I got fed up the “Attila the Hun” and sometimes I would enter the breezeway of the schoolhouse and return home crying.

When the snow came, I would walk to school in the snow.  On extreme snow days day would drive me to school.  He would put me out and I could beat him back to the house hiding under the kitchen table for long periods of time. 

In March of 1960, we moved back to Alabama the Beautiful.  My cousin Floyd took me to school in Jemison.  My teacher was a Ms. Shirley, and she looked a lot like the one in Illinois.  I was terrified.  She made fun of me because after three years up North, I picked up the Yankee brogue.

To complicate matters, I asked to be excused to go the restroom.  Welcome to the South and outside toilets.  I had an outside toilet at home, so it was no big deal although the inside ones in Illinois were nice.  Returning to the classroom, Attila the Hun’s sister asked me a quest on the subject I missed will in the toilet.  I could not answer her, and she made me sit on a stool in the clothes’ closet with a dunce hat.

The school is six miles from home so I couldn’t walk home.  But the school bus circled with a quarter mile of the house so I would get off the bus and walk home.  We had only one vehicle, so I got to stay home claiming various ailments.

After being threatened within the inch of my life by momma I did not pull the ailment scam.  I did get off the bus where I normally escaped but it was on the way home.  I felt sick but I had cried wolf so many times did not believe me. 
Turns out I had the mumps.  Momma sure did feel bad.

I honestly do not know had I got in the second grade, but I did.  I had Mrs. Nellie Glasscock for second grade, and she was like a sweet grandmother.  In the third grade we did not a permanent teacher until Christmas break.  God blessed us with a beautiful blonde angel named Mrs. Avis Harden.  I went to making excellent grades.  She was inspiration for the rest of my schooling.

My brother Glenn was a first grader when I was in the ninth grade.  Most of the teachers we had had taught mom.  They were old.  Glenn would run away from school.  He made across the railroad tracks or a mile or so from school like an escape convict appended and returned to prison.

My fondest memory is ninth grade civics class.  Danny Pike, a friend sat behind me.  Mrs. Miller was cousin to the Huns and was very strict.  Danny had a special touch to get my attention fearing the wrath of Mrs. Miller.  He whispered, “Your brother is at the door.”  There was my little brother with saddest face and expression that said, “I want to go home.”  I was his last hope.  Glenn will be sixty-five this October.

Glenn was head and shoulders taller that his first-grade cell mates.  When his ancient teacher threatened to give him a baby bottle he was not as quick to make an escape.  We finally told momma years later about her baby runaway.  I think she was more sympatric than angry.

 

Jesus’ parents were relieved when they found him in school.  He ran to school where the Hoppers were runaways.

 

Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover.  When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom.   After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it.  Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends.   When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him.   After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.  Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers.   When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” Luke 2:41-48   KJV