Smoking Barrels

Back in the late Eighties, Bobby Watts and I went to Macon, Georgia for a gathering of local unions to negotiate a new name for our union.  It was an independent union.  The meeting was most interesting and entertaining.  Discussion was lively and heated from time to time, but we settled on an agreeable name, United Workers of North America.

I enjoyed meeting new people, staying in a new city, and eating at a restaurant where I had never been before. 

The restaurant was very clean, filled with antiques, and an abundance of gifts.  Bobby and I got our menus.  Best I remember Bobby had visited the restaurant before.  I was new as a union officer and “green as a gourd” as country folks say.   I had not been to all the exciting places that Bobby had, and I looked to him as a seasoned union member for his wisdom.  He helped navigate me in the name change forum.

Being a country boy, I was used to good home cooking and wanted to try something new.  The menu had some of the same foods momma and my wife cooked and I knew the restaurant food would not be as good as theirs.  My eyes found the baby back ribs and a “pine rosin” baked potato.  I had never baby back ribs but had eaten plenty “hawgs” boney ribs since we raised hogs.

I had never had a pine rosin baked potato but knew the taste of rosin from wearing it after loading pine pulp wood.  I had always eaten the “tater” peeling, but I found the rosin soaked a little repulsive and distasteful.  The inside was good. 

The restaurant where we ate that night was Cracker Barrel.  I have eaten at Cracker Barrel when traveling with disaster relief teams.  I was a good choice because of variety for our team.  My favorite dish is Mama’s French Toast.  As went ministered to those stricken by disaster, eating at Cracker Barrel allowed us to debrief and have more fun than a barrel of monkeys.

I say that because Cracker Barrel has been headlining news lately.  It started with changing the Cracker Barrel logo.  My vocation and ministry have taught me that change means resistance and sometimes corporate folks are out of touch with reality.  What works on paper sometimes will not work.

Personally, the product is what drives the consumer.  The ambiance helps.  Granny Hopper was a great cook, especially her gumbo.  She was so poor that she scraped the bottom of the barrel to make it.  He décor was not Fifth Avenue acceptable but the wood stoves that warmed the gumbo, cornbread, and biscuits were delicious.

The lady in change of the re-branding and marketing of the Cracker Barrel logo fiasco wound up over a barrel.  She must have forgotten who the clientele was.  I feel that it is part of the culture war that has crept its way into church worship, fashion design and essentially all walks of modern life lock, stock and barrel.

The silent majority that can only take so much purple hair, ripped jeans, and every other anti-culture was ammo let this lady of change let um’ have it with both barrels.  Stock in Cracker Barrel fell faster than corporate lady would have if she had gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

Ms. Corporate forgot Liebig’s barrel which states that growth is controlled not by total resources, but by the scarcest resource.  A barrel is just as strong as its weakest part, usually the staves.  It is not the abundance (or lack) of food that draws customers but the good taste (quality) of home cooked meals. 

Several times I have received my Momma’s French Toast burned or cold after waiting a very long time.  The food is gotten bland, and you have to ask for items such as cornbread and biscuits.  Bad food and bad service reminds me of the old saying, “One rotten apple spoils the barrel.”

The effort to change the Cracker

Barrel logo may or may have been futile effort to move an apple for change but turned over the apple cart.  Stockholders and good old country folks alike found Ms. Corporate and her cronies like shooting fish in a barrel.

The logo change cost millions of dollars and the response cost even more millions.  Free publicity could have the effect of the “Pork Barrel” or the “Bankruptcy Barrel.”   All this change could be politically motivated as was the “Bud Light” beer barrel fiasco trying the culture change to achieve WOKE and broke.

All the news makes one wonder did the board have a small barrel (keg) of beer while sitting in whiskey barrel seats and using a barrel (syringe) administering a synthetic drug before making their decision.

As of this article, Ms. Corporate and the strategy listed to the little old ladies with blue hair and the old timers that wore ragged blue jeans as kids and decided not to change the Cracker Barrel logo.  I remember the barrels of pickles and crackers, hoop cheese, tubes of baloney, and a six once Coke.  There were powder barrels (kegs) and double-barreled shotguns.  There are venders that wore empty barrels draped across shoulders for advertisements. 

Thinking of all that has happened could be a barrel of laughs.  It reminds all of us to listen to those that have experienced life and learn from their mistakes.  Ms. Corporate and the board remind me of my daughter Angel that used to say, “Daddy I want to learn from my own mistakes.”  I told her that she will but life is better if we learn from the mistakes of others.

 

And king Rehoboam consulted with the old men, that stood before Solomon his father while he yet lived, and said, How do ye advise that I may answer this people?  And they spake unto him, saying, If thou wilt be a servant unto this people this day, and wilt serve them, and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will be thy servants for ever.  But he forsook the counsel of the old men, which they had given him, and consulted with the young men that were grown up with him, and which stood before him:  And he said unto them, What counsel give ye that we may answer this people, who have spoken to me, saying, Make the yoke which thy father did put upon us lighter?  And the young men that were grown up with him spake unto him, saying, Thus shalt thou speak unto this people that spake unto thee, saying, Thy father made our yoke heavy, but make thou it lighter unto us; thus shalt thou say unto them, My little finger shall be thicker than my father's loins.  I Kings 12:6-10 KJV

That Must Have Been 20 Years Ago

 

I looked up on the wall of the office one morning and made a startling discovery.  I have been in the ministry over thirty years.  The date on my Certificate of License is dated 27^th day of February 1983.

Moments earlier, I read an article in the Cooperative Farming News, From Pastor to Pasture: That Must have Been 20 years Ago!  Glenn Crumpler, author of the article said he heard a family member say of an event, “That must have been 20 years ago.”  He said that when as a kid he could not imagine how someone could remember something that happened twenty years earlier.  Ironically, he said that happened 45 years ago.  Life is short.

Thirty-one years ago, I would hear preachers say that they had been in the ministry 20, 25, 30, and 40 years.  I remember thinking that is a long time and that I wish I could be in ministry that long. Well, I is there!  That’s not correct subject-verb relationship, but it is true.  Time does fly.  Life is only a vapor!

Ministry has made significant changes in the last thirty years.  When I was pastor at Gallion, a person from the community came to church for the first time in twenty-five years.  After the morning service he told me that church had changed some much since his last visit.  He said he thought he had been to a nightclub instead of a church.  I looked puzzled at him.  He said that the music of the worship service and the humor in my sermon were like that of a comedy club.

I understand his rationale.  The last Christian youth concert I attended I commented that when I was a teenager momma did not allow us to attend rock and roll events at school and now we have them at churches.

Speaking of changes, one night at an Association event, someone asked if she might make a suggestion.  We are always open to suggestions because as Association Ministry Directors, Pam, and I would always evaluate our events.  This person suggested to us that we not  schedule association events that interfere with sporting events.  This question happens more often that you might think.  One time before, I was scolded by a member of one of our churches for having an event during Spring Break.  Bethel Baptist Association ministered in six different school districts, which at that time did not observe spring break at the same time.

Back to the sporting conflict or may I say spiritual conflict.  I learned in thirty plus years of ministry as a pastor, that any event the church schedules conflicts with some activity outside the church.  I assured the questioner that we do our best to dodge as many possible conflicts as we can.  We would never have any ministry events if we tried to dodge conflicts.

My concern here is when did a sporting exercise for a child take precedence over spiritual training?  A majority of student athletes will never use their sporting exercises in the professional arena, yet most parents spend more money and time at the ball field than in studies and time for God. 

When did our communities become consumed with sports and recreation?  I played football, baseball, basketball, and volleyball while growing up.  My dad loved sports and enjoying watching my brothers and me play ball.  Dad taught us that it was a game and that work and chores around home and school came before sports.  Sports were extracurricular events.

I have walked home, around seven miles, after practice to slop pigs and load firewood many times.  I have missed games because dad and mom were at work and I did not have a way to go.

Coaches, schools, and clubs would never allow practice or games to interfere with church events.  Coaches would always allow players to leave early if there was a revival or church event that an athlete needed to attend.  This is not the case today.

The issue at the association event was not with the interference with the athlete playing an event, but with priorities.  I am burdened that parents do not see spiritual development as more essential than worldly development.  I want to weep when I see dads taking their boys hunting or fishing instead of to worship on Sundays.  My dad was a lost man, but he prohibited us to go hunting or fishing on Sundays.  Dad taught priorities.

Before I became a pastor, I volunteered to attend an association brotherhood training event.  The event was on a holiday, but because I worked rotation at the cement plant, I was not off and was scheduled midnights.

My midnight shift allowed me to attend the workshop and not miss work.  Before leaving to attend the workshop, I received a call from the plant that the second shift man did not show and I needed to come in four hours early, six o’clock pm.  I told the second shift foreman that I could not come in early.  He wanted an excuse.  I said that I had committed to our church brotherhood director that I would attend the workshop and I was taught to keep my commitments.  He reminded me that that I was turning down double time and half pay because I was being called out on a holiday.  I reminded him that my commitment was greater than the pay.  I am not bragging, but speaking of commitment and priorities.

Association Ministry Directors, Pam, and I had a yearly planning day where we try to avoid conflict.  We publish this calendar as early as possible where Church Executive Lay Members can share them with their churches.  Conflict is inevitable, commitment is inconvenient, and choice is a matter of priorities.

Not long ago someone inquired of my commitment.  I quoted sports writer and poet, Grantland Rice’s poem “Alumnus Football”:

For when the one great Scorer comes

To mark against your name,

He writes -not that you won or lost-

But how you played the game.

For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day (II Timothy 1:12b KJV).

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.