“Then I told them about the desire God had put into my heart.”
-Nehemiah 2:18
Today it seems little. Important, yes, but H-O scale. But on that day, it was larger than life – even larger than health. And a lesson awaited that was life-changing.
From the time I was 15 years old, I knew that God was leading me to be a pastor. I also knew there would be a pathway to get there, and five years later, I was still on that pathway. I was about the graduate from college. For a year I’d had the privilege of serving at my very first church, full-time in the summer, and on the weekends during school. The people there were gracious and really patient. It had been a wonderful experience. Now, as I was about to graduate from college, both the church and I were preparing to move on.
Because I was a July graduate, and had blown through college in three years, I decided to lay out a year before going to graduate school. When the church caught wind of it, they were delighted to meet with me on a Sunday night and offer me a full-time position. They offered me more than twice what I had ever made in a year (if I told you how much it was, you’d laugh). I said it sounded good; just let me take the week and pray about it, and I’d let them know the next Sunday. I left town that night assuming that the next year of my life was set.
Just one slight problem. [click to continue…]
I expected to learn some things and be reminded of some things when I made my first trip to Thailand. I was not disappointed. To put an exclamation point on our trip, here are some things I learned along the way…
You may think you know what humidity is, but you’re wrong.
My wife had one unending childhood adventure.
Churches everywhere are made up of humans, with human needs, human potential, and human flaws.
Pastors may not speak the same language, but the leadership issues they face are the same worldwide.
It’s amazing the trust you can gain with a sincere smile. [click to continue…]
Doc Johns wasn’t a doctor; he was a pharmacist. But ever since Bo Brannon ripped his eyelid on a pretty mean briar while playing Capture the Flag at night on an old lake bed and proceeded to bleed like a stuck pig, Marion J. Johns became known to us as “Doc.” As Bo was howling at the invisible moon, sure that life as he knew it was over, somebody in the Boy Scout troop said, “Let’s take him to Jeff’s dad… he’s a doctor!”
So Doc it was. Bo lived; his gaping wound by night was just a pretty ugly scratch by day. And Doc Johns – then the Assistant Scoutmaster, had a new name. [click to continue…]
It’s time to clear the air. To let the cat out of the proverbial bag. I’ve carried the secret, along with a select few other people, for long enough. Integrity demands that somebody, after 30-plus years, say something. I guess it’ll have to be me.
Okay, deep breath, here goes:
There is no Earl Trimbley.
Okay, exhale. I’ll pause here to let that sink in… I know it’s a shock. Now here, the late Paul Harvey fans (not his real name, either), is “the rest of the story.” [click to continue…]
Interested in getting a head start on your firewood for next winter? I once heard of a unique way to drop a tree. It seems some villagers in the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific have learned how to conquer the really big ones. If a tree is too large to be felled with an ax, the natives cut it down by yelling at it. (I’m not making this up. I read it in a book, so it must be true.) Just at dawn these woodsmen with special powers sneak up on a tree and suddenly scream at it at the top of their lungs. They do this every day for 30 days, and the tree dies and falls over. The theory is that yelling kills the spirit of the tree. According to the villagers, it always works.
Felling by yelling. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Crazy enough to be true.
I’ll have to admit, though, I’ve never seen it happen. I’ve never yelled at a tree (and I wouldn’t tell you if I had). Not for thirty days. Not for one day. Furthermore, I’ve never seen anyone else yell at a tree. So I can’t say by experience that hollering works on trees.
But it does work on kids. I have seen that happen.
Works on spouses, too.
Some people yell at their cars or their washing machine, and it doesn’t seem to do much good. But I’ve seen it drop a few pastors. And I’ve seen it kill the spirit of a friend or two as well. [click to continue…]
It all started with an idea in the mind of a four-year-old. Cassie certainly wasn’t the first kid to set up shop as a lemonade business. But she’d read about it or seen it on some cartoon or something, and she was inspired.
We were living in Birmingham. Corner lot, pretty busy street. But that didn’t deter Miss Entrepreneur and her twin sister. They were out to make some money, and had just been given a sure-fire way to do it.
What do you say to a born dreamer, with stars in her eyes, and a plan for making her dreams come true?
“Okay.”
You say, “Okay.”
That’s what Mamma said, and she went about helping the twins prepare for their first business venture. There was a table to set up, a sign to make, and, of course, a pitcher of lemonade and cooler of ice to prepare.
And there were the pigtails. I’ll never forget the pigtails. [click to continue…]
It took more than 25 years, but I finally met Jesus at a wedding. And when I did, I made peace with weddings in general. I’d like to tell you how.
For years I have made the statement that I’d rather do a funeral any day than a wedding. Yeah, yeah, I know that sounds twisted, vile, and patently un-American. But from a ministry perspective, there’s no comparison. Unlike weddings, at the funeral:
- The family will actually listen to what I have to say.
- Nobody has spent years fantasizing and obsessing about how this will be the perfect day.
- The cost, even with caskets and cemetery plots, is usually less.
- Long-term success is assured – deceased persons don’t have a 50/50 chance of changing their minds at a later date.
- Prospective candidates aren’t inundated with supermarket magazines modeling the latest casket fashions.
- There are no attendants who are required to buy swishy dresses or rent tuxedos.
- People don’t “experiment” by cohabitating with the casket for a year or two to see if there’s a fit.
- Photographers don’t roam freely about the service, or dominate the entire reception.
- Expenses can be offset by life insurance. (Try telling your insurance agent you need wedding coverage.)
- People actually give some thought to life after the ceremony.
Simply put, marriage is made in heaven, but weddings (aka American Idolatry) are made in hell.
An Idea Born of Necessity
All that changed a couple of years ago, however, when I was doing premarital counseling with two couples who had a similar problem. [click to continue…]
(And other lessons learned from The Senior Ladies Exercise Club)
I couldn’t help but overhear.
The way I figure it, the whole block could have overheard.
I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions this year, but I did make a lifestyle change (hey, I’ve done it three days in a row – that ought to count for something). Yes, friends, I’m back in the gym.
I’m still trying to figure out the best time of day to work out. I think people like my associate, who works out at 4:30 every morning, need to work on a different kind of health, if you know what I’m sayin’. So yesterday, I show up about mid-morning, to find the parking lot completely full.
Not a good sign.
Well, maybe they’re all in a class or something, I hoped to myself, as I headed to the cardio room to resume my Couch-to-5k training schedule. To my chagrin, the place was packed. Every treadmill taken. And it was only when one became available and I nabbed it that I realized – I’d been sucked into the vortex of the Senior Ladies Exercise Club. They probably have their own name for it; that’s just my name for the Twilight Zone I was in.
The last time I was this surrounded was when I was asked to speak to a room full of women-only about Things Husbands Wished Their Wives Understood. They were a great group, really sweet and highly motivated. Didn’t matter – I was scared to death.
Anyway, there were three ladies on treadmills to the left, and what seemed like 93 to the right. [click to continue…]
(A Turning Point Story)
Glavine
It was something out of a Looney Toons episode. The kind of thing you’ve heard about happening, never assumed would happen to you.
It happened to me.
I had gone away on a far journey and entrusted all my worldly goods to my wife and three kids, telling them we’d settle accounts when I got home.
Well, not exactly.
September 13, 2001 – Do the calendar math. It was a surreal and vulnerable time. I was actually out of town on a consulting trip, when I got a call fairly early in the morning. My twin daughters were calling, breathless with excitement. Somebody had gotten the bright idea to leave a cardboard box in front of our house with two kittens inside.
“Daddy, can we keep ‘em, pleeze? We’ll take care of them, and feed them, and clean up after them. We promise.”
I wanted to kill them. [click to continue…]
(A Turning Point Story)
If being a pastor is like living in a fishbowl, then being a pastor in Abbeville was like swimming in a churning aquarium.
Beneath a florescent light.
That never goes out.
Now this is no mystery to the folks there; fact is, I think some of them are pretty proud of it. We’d laugh about it when we weren’t crying about it or stamping out the latest edition of “I heard from a reliable source.”
I knew this wouldn’t be a typical assignment when I went for an interview weekend and Bobby Joe Espy opened the Q & A session by asking, “Preacher, how thick is your hide?” I don’t remember what I said – something lame about leading with my heart. But I remember that this was the first time I’d ever had a chill in my chest.
Now every small town presumes to know everybody else’s business, but here it was elevated to an art form. Here people knew what you were doing and told you about it. After they told somebody else about it first, of course. They told me when my lights were on too late at night, or too early in the morning. They told me when the grass behind the, uh, privacy fence was too tall. And they told me every single time anybody had something to say that was of a critical nature. In Abbeville they called it like they saw it. And sometimes if they didn’t see it, they made it up.
Don’t guess my hide was very thick.
David Peterson was a great friend, which was helpful, since he chaired the committee that brought me and my very young family to the Wiregrass region of southeast Alabama. [click to continue…]