Weathering COVID-19 Storms

 

As the football season draws to a close and the football bowl season starts, we know that it is the holiday season.  It is a time of giving thanks, celebrating Christ, ending another year, and making new resolutions.

Family gatherings, festive merriment, and financial exertions will deplete our good nature, drain our energy, and depress our banking accounts.  Each of us will enter the New Year tired.

Take a moment to reflect on the game of football.  It has been said that at a college stadium, there are twenty-two players in need of rest and ninety thousand spectators in need of exercise and that is at the game not counting the hundreds of thousands that are watching on television.

The truth is that the hustle and bustle of the holiday season is everything but a time of Holy day reflection.  Most everyone will start the New Year tired and exhausted.  As my daddy would say about vacations, “Son, I got to go back to work to rest.”

If you are like me, there are times when I have been tired and in need of rest when the unexpected happens.  Suddenly, totally exhausted we must find energy to continue.

While attending the University of Montevallo, I found myself in that situation on several occasions.  One of those times, I was working full time at the cement plant, taking a full course (12 hours) at the University, and pastoring the Brierfield Baptist Church.  I worked rotation shifts at the plant and had to swap my day shifts and evenings for evenings and midnights.  Truman, the co-worker that I swapped, loved the conditions.  I needed to do what I thought would help me live my call in the ministry.

After working a Saturday midnight, I went home, took a nap, got up, showered went to church, preached, ate dinner, took a nap, went to church, went home, and went to work Sunday midnight.  Monday morning I showered at the plant, and went to classes at the University.  My last class was physical education, a course in tennis.  I played tennis with an eighteen-year-old girl who beat me every time we played.  I was thirty-five and running on caffeine having not slept much since starting midnights.

I got home needing to get some rest before working Monday midnight.  Getting ready to sleep I got a call from the cement plant to report to work.  The evening shift man did not report to work and there was an emergency.  I tried my best to convince them that I had no sleep and could not work.  I was an oiler on the cement kilns.

Have you ever noticed how plant safety or any other employee rules go out the window in times of emergency?  The evening supervisor told me that if I needed to sleep, I could sleep in the control room.  Sleeping on the job meant termination on normal days.

I went to work and pulled a double, working the evening shift and the midnight shift.  I was tired on Tuesday morning.  I took a good hot shower at the plant and went to two classes at the University.  When I got home Tuesday afternoon, I died for a few hours.  By the way, I did not sleep on that double shift.  I worked for those sixteen hours.

Life is full of times when trouble comes when needing rest.  We have all been there.

After a very exhausting day of ministry and work, Jesus instructed the disciples to cross the Sea of Galilee.  While in route to the other side, a violent storm arose.  The area in which the disciples were caught in the storm was not an area where storms usually occurred.  It was dark and the boat tossed back and forth causing the disciples to panic.  It is bad when veteran fisherman panic.  Jesus was asleep in the bottom of the boat, but He got up to serve.

There is a lesson for us.  The disciples forgot that hope, Jesus, was in the boat.  They wanted to rest but they had to serve, wanted to rest but had to work, wanted to rest but had to pray, wanted to rest but had to continue, and wanted to rest but had to glorify God.

And the same day, when the even was come, He saith unto them, Let us pass over unto the other side.  And when they had sent away the multitude, they took Him even as He was in the ship. And there were also with Him other little ships.  And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full.  And He was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake Him, and say unto Him, Master, carest thou not that we perish?  And He arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.  And He said unto them, why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith?  And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, what manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him? (Mark 4:35-41 KJV)

 

With the COVID 19 storm robbing people of hope, remember Jesus urges us to go to the other side of the sea.  This COVID 19 storm will pass.

 

Change and the New Normal

May 18, 2013 Union Springs Baptist Church of Randolph, Alabama celebrated 100 years of ministry.  The church celebrated by reminiscing through testimony, pictures, song, and preaching.

April and May in the South is a time for decorations and homecomings.  Union Springs does neither.  I will never forget while in Seminary hearing some preacher friends speaking of Decoration Day.  They were not too fond of them.  Having grown up in a church that did not observe this day, I had to ask what Decoration Day was.  I did not want to appear dumber that I am, I tried to listen long enough to try and figure out what it was.  I finally garnered enough nerve to ask my friend Hugh.  Hugh, very blunt and needing a few more classes on tact, said, “Worship of the dead, dummy.”

I did not know what worship of the dead was.  Hugh and others gave me a quick lesson the 1001 ways that churches celebrate Decoration.  They could not believe that my home church did not observe it.

Union Springs stopped observing Homecoming in the mid 1960’s.  The first time I remember a celebration was a 75^th Anniversary and then a 90^th one.  There have been plenty of changes.  I remember that in the Seventies the church voted to hide the Peavey speakers behind some speaker cloth because Peavey looked too rock and roll.  The only musical instruments were the piano and the organ.  Guitars, drums, taped music, and trumpets were prohibited.  To applaud after a special was sacrilegious.  To raise a hand, say amen or hallelujah guaranteed a stern look and grunt from a deacon or two.

That era is gone after one hundred years.

It was good to see some changes, but the biggest change was people.  Yeah, women with two first names such as Betty Mae, Betty Jo, Betty Jean, Sara Nell, Patsy Ann, Mary Jane, and Judy Kay were there and folks talked of Fannie Ruth, Kitty Sue, Dorothy Faye, and Ruby Nell’s passing when seeing their pictures.

Many have passed in 100 years.  I remember Brother Arch Crumpton.  For many years he and the preacher were the only men in the church.  Brother Arch would walk to church, about four miles, start a fire in the pot-bellied stove, return home, and bring the family to church on a wagon.  The church honored his daughter Myrtle at the Anniversary as the oldest member of the church.

I remember having Ms. Myrtle as my junior (I think that would be 3^rd and 4^th grade today) Sunday school teacher.  I remember stepping over stacks of boards used for flooring the newly built Sunday school room in her class.

Had it not been for the faithful women of Union Springs Baptist Church, there would be no church today.  Myrtle Hayes, Callie Plier, Adderene Pate, Tommie Mitchell taught me the Word of God.  I remember while in Seminary, classmates would ask, “Where did you learn that?”  I responded very slowly, “S U N D A Y  S C H O O L.”

As men were saved, guys like Bill Langston and Heedy Hayes taught me missions through the RA’s (Royal Ambassador).  Union Springs was one of the top supporters of the Cooperative Program, the Alabama State Board of Missions, and Chilton Baptist Association.  Union Springs was very instrumental in preparing me to be a Director of Missions.

I remember international, North American, and state missionaries sharing their work during times of worship.  I remember crying the night Union Springs showed the movie, Bill Wallace of China.  We got so involved in missions that we had a crew of men travel to the Mobile area to repair a roof of a church destroyed by Hurricane Fredrick.  One of our members, Wayne Dutton, went on a building mission’s project to Bogotá, Columbia in 1980 and set in motion the beginning of building mission trips that continues today.  Union Springs helped initiate the Chilton Baptist Builders.

My involvement with the Chilton Baptist Builders led to my call into the ministry.  My first recall of being at Union Springs was when we first moved back to Alabama from Illinois in 1960.  The little white church did not have Sunday School rooms, but they did have wires, which crisscrossed the auditorium.  Red curtains help to separate four areas designated for classes.  I do not remember who preached or the sermon topic, but I remember singing a song about a worm and a cross.



Alas! And did my Savior bleed
And did my Sovereign die?
Would He devote that sacred head
For such a worm as I?



Union Springs called me as an RA leader, a Sunday School teacher, and as a deacon.  Union Springs licensed me to preach, and ordained me into full time ministry.  They gave me a scholarship for college and members such as Tac, James, and Callie helped finance me early in my ministry.  I am fortunate to have been part of the 100 years of Union Spring’s ministries.

The Psalmist says it best when I am asked, “Where is your God?”



When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday Psalm 42:4 KJV.

I wonder what the new normal will be after the COVID - 19 virus has run its course and people start to gather again.