"Celebrate, Celebrate"

Celebration is an important part of our lives.  If you are like me, you celebrated the Christmas Holidays and the beginning of a New Year.  I was so enthralled in celebrating the New Year with four wild grandkids, that I went to bed way before the ball dropped in Times Square faintly hearing some fireworks exploding in the neighborhood.  Being from rural red-neck Alabama those sounds may have been the illegal discharging of firearms by my neighbors. I decided long ago not to be outdoors to see the fireworks in case it was falling lead.  I wanted to celebrate life with four wild children on New Year’s Day.

According to an article that I read years ago, there are numerous fatalities from celebrating by shooting at the stars during times of celebration.  There is a right and wrong way to celebrate.  Random firing in the air for celebration can cause a lifetime of regret. 

My daughter had a volleyball teammate whose brother did jail time for shooting in the sky during a Halloween haunted hayride.  When the 22-caliber bullet ricocheted hitting a small girl in the neck.

The shooting of fireworks is extremely dangerous.  In high school I had a classmate that returned from the Christmas Holidays missing his middle finger from throwing a “cherry bomb” firecracker.  My daughter also bounced a bottle rocket off her cousin’s granddad’s head in celebrating New Year’s.

We do a lot of celebrating.  We celebrate birthdays, holidays, weddings, anniversaries, victories, achievements, grand openings, graduations, retirements, and funerals.  We give cards, flowers, money, watches, certificates, pins, and plaques.  But, how many times do we celebrate God in worship.

It would behoove the church to celebrate the blessings of God rather than the church’s tendency to murmur and gripe.  For some reason churches forget the great things God has done and dwell on things that God has not done or that we think He should have done.  All one must do is see how quickly the Hebrews started complaining when they exited Egypt.  I like to paraphrase like this, “Where two or more Baptist are gathered there will be murmuring and fussing.

Celebrations have two extremes.  I remember reading an editorial in the Clanton Advertiser many years ago of an irate mom concerning here child’s graduation from kindergarten. According to the irate mom, there was not enough celebration because the principal and teachers were so thoughtless of the great achievements of little ones graduating the vicious and demanding academia of kindergarten.  She wanted caps, gowns, and pomp and circumstance, along with a boring speech, REALLY!  Let the kids have cake and ice cream and be thankful they will be entering the academia of the first grade.  Years later, I attended my grandson’s kindergarten graduation and I realized it was more for the parents, not the kids, as the teachers and aides pushed and commanded the children to act like the graduating class of Harvard Law School. 

After the extraction of last tidbit of information drilled into the child’s head, teachers and aides cut them loose to be kindergartners.  They ran and were excited about the cake, ice cream, potato chips, and punch and could not wait to get out of the caps and gowns.  Now that was a celebration. 

Then there is the extreme celebration and often taunting of the athlete who gets a penalty of excessive celebration upon a great achievement of running a touchdown all by himself.  Last time I played; I remember that ten other teammates helped the overly zealous running back score.  If we celebrated, we had to do pushups.

What about celebration on the Lord’s Day?  Is our role the one of the irate mother who thinks there should be more or are we the zealot who fellow parishioners want to throw the penalty flag?

Do we know how to celebrate God?  Is a worldly celebration more important than one for God?  How many editorials do the local newspapers write for churches celebrating or lack of, God at worship?  Is not the work of God more powerful than anything man has done?  Are we afraid to worship?  Do we really understand why we gather on Sundays?  Do we know how to worship?  Are we following tradition, or do we follow the examples of God’s Word? 

In Psalm 22 David wrote a mournful psalm that Jesus quoted while own the cross.  In Psalm 23 David wrote of the gentle shepherd that would help in times of need. In Psalm 24, David knew how to celebrate God’s majestic and triumphant presence.  The Ark of the Covenant had been returned to Jerusalem.  The people were ready to celebrate the presence of God.  David realized that when the heart is prepared, the desire to worship God becomes an integral part of our lives providing direction and focus.

Our moments together at worship are a time of celebration.  In our getting and giving, in our saving and spending, we remember that all belongs to God.  Seduction by the genius of Madison Avenue marketing and advertising distorts celebration by taunting us with pleasure from material wealth. 

God created it all and He is redeeming it all.  Celebrating God is recognizing His redemption.  We celebrate life because Christ lives.  Celebration is conditional.  Celebrating is acknowledging that everything is God’s.  He created us to worship, He redeemed us to worship, and He instructed us to worship. 

There are moral qualifications for worship.  We come with blameless conduct (clean hands), we do right with right motive (pure heart), we are to be faithful to God and to neighbor, and we are to be truthful in dealings.

The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.  For He hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.  Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in His holy place?  He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully (Psalm 24:1-4 KJV).

Write today’s worries in the sand.  Chisel yesterday’s victories in stone – Max Lucado

No Money, No Motivation, and No Morale

It is funny how things pop back into your mind.  Sometimes it is something you may smell, it is a word, or name spoken, or it is an event unleashing a flood of memories.

The other day a load of pine timber passed.  Suddenly, I was transported back to the pulpwood days of growing up in Chilton County.  Stumbling through the woods, tripping over vines, and falling over stumps with a ten-inch stick of pulpwood on your shoulder is comical now, but frustrating back then.  I did learn to fall gracefully without injury.  It was great off-season training for football.

When a truckload of pine lumber passed me the other day, I thought about all the houses that I helped Brother Bill Langston build.  Building houses was much more fun than loading pulpwood and carpentry paid more too.  Lumber is much cleaner than pulpwood.  Shoulder loading pine timber from woods burned annually results in smutty necks and arms that are very hard to clean, especially when you wash yourself in a washtub or pan.  Pine rosin from pulpwood and fresh sawed lumber is hard to remove.  Usually, you wear it off.

I received a call the other day informing me that a member from the first church I pastored passed away.  The family of AC Oaks wanted me to have a part in the funeral service.  It is important when a member of a church that you pastored thirty years ago wants you to say a few words.  I feel fortunate in that every church I pastored, I left it on good terms and could return.  I know that there are churches that do not want former pastors back and there are pastors that do not want an invitation to return for any reason.  Thirty years in the ministry seems like yesterday.  When I first started, it seemed unattainable.

AC was a true friend and mentor at the beginning of my tenure.  As I met with his wife Peggy and their children I immediately thought of all the good times I shared with them.  I had the privilege to commune with them more time than I could count.  Fellowship, the church we all ministered, was a small church of about fifteen in attendance. 

I remember the first Sunday I met the Oaks family.  I attended school with AC’s children and was attending the University of Montevallo with his daughter-in-law.  I had seen AC on many occasions, but I never had met him personally until that first Sunday I was at Fellowship to supply. 

After supplying for three Sundays, Fellowship extended a call to me to be pastor.  It was a challenge and opportunity to live out my calling.  The church had been in existence for a short time.  Fellowship started the Baptist way, a church split.  Sixty-eight members left a neighboring church and started a new church in an old and outdated Methodist church.

Full of enthusiasm, members of Fellowship dug a basement beside the old church.  It did not take long for the excitement to turn to an exodus.  When the money ran out, it took the motivation and members with it.

I became their third pastor.  There was no money, no motivation, and no morale.  The church was three months behind on the church payment, the butane gas was empty and the gas company would not refill, and the electricity was in the process of disconnection.

AC and family were pioneers.  That is what a member of the Alabama State Board of Missions called the remaining members.  AC was dedicated to Fellowship and was an emotion man.  I think that his frequent bouts with sickness personified his emotions.  I thank God for his wisdom and leadership.  In less than three years, Fellowship Baptist Church paid all delinquent bills, purchased a new piano, waterproofed the abandoned basement, and had two thousand dollars n a building fund.

I remember one Sunday that the old church was so cold that there was frost on the piano.  We had a modified Sunday School and Worship and everyone went to AC and Peggy’s to thaw.  Another time there was a blizzard during an associational brotherhood breakfast and before the men could attend morning worship, we cancelled church.  AC and I went to the church to be there incase someone came that morning.  The church was near Interstate 65 and we thought someone might be stranded and need a place to weather the snow and ice.

There are plenty of stories.  One we celebrated at the wake was the cantata we did.  We had more in the cantata choir than were in the audience.  We laughed about cantata, but we performed it for the Lord and five church members.  AC thought the cantata was great.

One morning a young girl rode a small motor scooter round and round the church.  We played that the scooter stop annoying us.  God honored the prayer and the scooter quit.

AC supported me when I was a novice pastor.  He encouraged me in the ministry and we talked many time through the years.  I thank God for AC and our relationship.

When I think of Fellowship Baptist Church and AC, I remember Paul’s words to the Church at Philippi: I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now; being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ: (Philippians 1:6 KJV)