The New Adventures of an Old Preacher

Okay, I will admint that this actually is an old bulletin article, but I am posting it because football season is here (yeah!) and because I have been in a story-telling mood lately. Hope you enjoy this old adventure of mine. 

It was a majestic, cool autumn Sunday as my roommate, Les Ferguson Jr., and I headed to the fine town of Brookhaven, MS. I was a sophisticated, learned (or so I thought) college senior off to preach at the Brookway Church of Christ.

 We rolled in and the morning went well. We were warmly welcomed and my preaching was positively received. I felt great- on top of the world! After worship we were invited to one of their shepherd’s home.

We had a tasty meal and nice fellowship. I was full, happy and ready for some football. I got their permission, turned on their television and prepared to settle comfortably in for the game. This is when the fun really began.  

The first thing I noticed was not the game, but a big thick line at the bottom of their screen. It did not distort the picture, but it bothered me. I remembered a similar problem with one of our sets at home which we had solved by pressing a reset button located in the back of the set.

I relayed this to my host family and volunteered to see if such a button existed on their TV. It did. Feeling rather triumphant I pressed it. Sure enough, the big thick line disappeared off the screen, but so did the rest of the picture! And as frantically as I tried, it never, ever came back on! All of my college sophistication left me. I felt ten inches tall. Talk about being humbled. Eventually they had to purchase a new television set.

My football fever was fixed completely- but not like you may think.  It was fixed with forgiveness. This family was exceptionally gracious to me. I offered to buy the new set, but they wouldn’t even consider it. They just forgave this young, full-of-himself-preacher-boy.

It was a lesson for a lifetime. I saw a glimpse of God’s grace that day.  We all make stupid mistakes. Sin grabs us all on occasion. We all press the wrong button sometimes. But God understands and offers through his Son to fix it for us. One verse comes to mind:            

 “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive our sins” (1^st John 1:9) 

 What a tremendous guarantee! God fixes with forgiveness. As a young preacher I’ll never forget being let off the hook for a major mistake. As a child of God I can never forget the mercy and grace of a God so willing to forgive.  

Give this God a chance to fix your mistakes. His reset button really works!  

This is my tribute to a man who had a great deal of influence on my life and ministry.

His name was Kelly Johnson. He was almost into his ninetieth year when I met him at the Pine Grove Church of Christ in rural Itawamba County, Mississippi. I was their new preacher and he was a church patriarch- and as it turned out one of the best friends any preacher could hope to have.

He was one of the most unique men I have ever encountered. He “courted” his wife, Miss Lilly, for over forty years before they married. (She only relented when, exasperated,  he finally gave up and began visiting the parlor of another woman!) His family traced their roots back generations in the Church of Christ. Pine Grove had actually been originally known as Johnson School House Church of Christ. He was a man of the land and absolutely loved to garden. This is the backdrop of my story.

I quickly learned that it was expected of the preacher to garden with brother Kelly. It was not open to discussion, so I obliged. Turns out that brother Kelly did not believe in such modern innovations as a garden tiller. Nothing but a jenny mule would do. So there I was planting and hoeing as brother Kelly gee and hawed that mule up and down the rows. He only gave the reins over to me once and that was just for the length of one row. “You haven’t been preaching long enough” he proclaimed.

We worked a rather large garden on his farm in the country but he also had a garden at his home in Fulton. For that nothing but the jenny would do either. So we built wooden sideboards to fit my old long-bed GMC pickup and I drove into town with brother Kelly and the mule sharing the bed. Nothing in my college work ever prepared me for this kind of ministry. But that was just the beginning.

Not long after that trip I got a call from him. He asked me to drop by his farm, retrieve the sideboards and meet him at the courthouse square in the middle of town. The jenny had escaped the Johsnon yard for the greener pastures of the courthouse lawn and the city officials had not taken to it very well. So I met him there and we- much to the delight of all the amused onlookers (who all were well acquainted with brother Kelly)- loaded the ole gal back in my truck for a return trip to the farm.

Brother Kelly is in the presence of God now. Our adventures live only in my memories. To me he was a great man- great as the Bible defines it- a servant. And one of the best friends this preacher has ever had.

And when I think about trying to measure up as a man to him, I think his assessment of me still rings true. I  just “haven’t been preaching long enough.”

This week I have been engaged in planning a fall sermon series on the Ten Commandments. Part of this process always involves creating interesting and maybe even provocative sermon titles. Sometimes this can be challenging, other times it just flows. Here are mine:

• Everlasting Ethics (intro)
• The Primary Priority
• No God, but God
• Holding on to Holiness
• It’s God’s Time
• Heaven in Your Home
• Loving Life
• Sacred Sex
• Stealing Steals
• The Ethic of Honesty
• Character of Contentment
• Summing up Sinai

Developing these titles got me to thinking about sermon titles in general. Some sermon titles are classic such as What Must I Do to be Saved? Others have been based on misinterpreted Scripture such as Almost Thou Persuadest Me to Become a Christian (sorry, but this is not an accurate rendering of that verse).  While others use alliteration like my old pal John Dobbs’ Gehazi the Greedy Glut. And still others are just plain silly such as Sliding to Hell on Your “Buts”.

My guess is that every preacher has a few sermon titles they would like to forget. I’ll confess. In the hubris of my youth I preached a sermon entitled Three Reasons to Commit Fornication.  The reasons you ask? First, it feels good, second, everyone else is doing it, and third, it will send you to hell! In some circles I have yet to live this one down. lol 

So, what do you think about sermon titles? Any stand out in your memory? Any you would like to hear?

The beach was great. We had fun relaxing by the pool and the surf. Actually caught a few fish too! Thanks for stopping by in my absence. Here are my lastest thoughts- for what they are worth.

Worship is a big deal topic in my circle. Everyone seems to have an opinion about worship- on how it should be and what style connects best. Unfortunately on occasion these opinions have boiled over into church strife and even division.

So, since so many others have given thier two cents worth, I thought I would chime in too- specifically about our corporate worship times. As you will quickly discover, this is not a theological treatise.

I will start with what worship is not:

• Worship is not about me- my preferences that is. Certainly my worship should be focused in my heart and therefore is about me joining in with my spiritual family in praising God. But too often it seems worship becomes more about my preferences- the songs I want, the style I favor, the timeframe I like, the order I prefer- than anything else. When this happens we have lost the proper God perspective and have forgotten why we came to worship.
• Worship in not an evangelistic tool- The church growth industry got us to buy into this one. “Just do worship right and the people will come.” we were told. Somehow I cannot find this in Scripture. Sure the Acts church- at one point- had favor with the people, but worship was not God-designed to put the church on display, but to honor and revere him. This approach puts undue and unfair pressure upon the worship participants and creates a perfomance-based worship style- which leads to the next point:
• Worship is not a perfomance- In my opinion those of us who lead worship can fall into this trap. Again- it becomes about me and how I performed my role. Heaven gets lost in this approach.
• Worship is not to be bound in the past- “We have always done it this way” can be a death-blow to a rejuvenating, uplifting worship. There are very few details revealed about the exact worship practices of the New Testament church. Obviously it reflected its time and culture. So should our worship. Our praise language should speak in ways that connect to our time and place.
• Worship is not the everything that defines us- For too many Christians the hour or so they spend in corporate worship is it. Maybe this is one reason why the subject of worship has become so volatile. Our Sunday worship- if reflective of an active daily spiritual life of the church body- will simply be a coming together in an adoration celebration of the God we are so activily serving during the week. In this setting we will each consider others better than ourselves and rejoice that we have this time to be with one another. Thoughts of song selections and worship styles would take a back seat to thoughts of honoring God and loving each other.

With all that said, worship is- in my opinion- the time when God’s saints gather to honor him, celebrate his grace, remember his Son’s gift, offer up to him the fruit of our hearts and lips and embrace and encourage our fellow worshippers.

As Paul addressed the divided and worship- confused Corinthians he made it clear from the beginning what he was about: Christ and him crucified.

If we can be about this in our churches then our worship will mirror that. God will get all the praise and we will be glad when they said unto us, let us go into the house of the Lord!

There you have it- my feeble two cents- and as you can tell, that is about what it is worth. So I need some investments from you. What does worship mean to you?

The Dodds are enjoying one last summer week before school restarts. We are at a condo on Pensacola beach playing in the sand and the surf.

Taylor starts kindergarten next Monday and Jordan begins Gateway preschool three days a week, so we are taking one last break.  Unfortunately we have no Internet connection at the condo.

Thanks for stopping by. See you here next week!