Category: Newsletter

I hate saying goodbye to friends.

Our friends David and Judy Atkins are moving from Linton to Missouri. David is assuming the pastorate of a church in a town called Edina. I’m delighted for him; this is an answer to prayer. But I’m going to miss him. In fact, I miss him already.

It has been a source of amusement to me that in more than one place where I have pastored I have had better fellowship with the Assembly of God preachers than I have had with the Baptists. One independent Baptist pastor even tried to lead me to the Lord. (No, I’m not joking.) But the Assembly guys have always been encouraging.

David and Judy Atkins have been at the Linton Assembly of God for these past ten years. I met him as a result of our now-defunct ministerial association, and he and I hit it off pretty well right from the start. Somehow he and I were delegated to be the only signees on the ministerial association’s checking account. I was reminded of this fact when he brought me the battered briefcase containing the ministerial association’s bank statements for the past ten years or so. The account has five dollars in it. The only reason it has that much is that David Atkins himself put five dollars in it some years ago to keep the account active. I think, as the only other signee on the account, I’m going to withdraw it and send it to David and tell him to take his wife out for ice cream.Read More

My wife and I got married on December 26th, 1976. She was 18, I was 20. (Sometimes people ask me, “Preacher, would you tell our kids they’re too young to get married?” And I always say, “I’ll talk to them if you want me to, but I don’t really have any higher moral ground here.”) Not long after we came to Linton in 1997, Rae Anne and I had our twentieth wedding anniversary. (Virginia Miller used to introduce Rae Anne by saying, “And here’s his little wife of twenty years.”) The thought occurred to me: “I have been married to Rae Anne longer than I lived before we got married.” And I took great satisfaction in that thought.

I entered the ministry in June of 1978, not long after I graduated from Bible college, serving a church in Tulsa, Oklahoma as their associate pastor and youth director. The next year I took my first pastorate in rural Indiana, and I’ve been pastoring Indiana churches ever since.

I had been in the ministry for 19 years when in the providence of God we came to Linton and you called me to be your pastor. That was on August 6th, 1997. As we walked through the process of getting to know each other, asking each other questions and praying for God’s guidance, for a time we really didn’t know how God would lead. When, somewhat to my astonishment, the deacons told us they would like to proceed to a church vote in view of calling me as pastor, Rae Anne and I agreed.Read More

Here are some wise words from Bob Weeks. Bob is a former pastor now serving Southern Baptist churches in our area as a Regional Church Planting Catalyst (that means he encourages and helps pastors, churches and new church plants). He has preached at our church twice, the first time giving his testimony of how he came to faith in Christ. He is also helping our church leadership digest and understand the results of our recent Transformational Church Assessment Tool. He has been a blessing to our church, and has become a friend as well.

Bob had this to say about the Hurricane Harvey disaster unfolding down in Texas:Read More

Recently my doctor told me that the only exercise he wants me to do is swimming. Based on my age, wear and tear on my joints, etc., he said that swimming was the only option. And he told me that it would make me feel much better. Apparently even just being in the water is beneficial. “It’s like a massage all over,” he said.

There are much worse things a doctor can say to you than “I want you to swim.” In fact, I like to swim. I love being in the water. The problem is, I haven’t done much swimming in a long time.

We used to go all the time when I was a kid. To me, the best part of our family vacations was when Mom and Dad would take us back to the motel after a day’s sight-seeing, and we’d change into our swimsuits and go to the pool for a couple of hours. Eventually my parents realized they didn’t have to drive all the way to Colorado to keep us entertained, and we started going on weekend trips to exotic places like Jasper, Indiana, to stay in their brand-new Holiday Inn and swim in their pool. That made us kids happy. Back then, we were way more impressed with a swimming pool than Colorado.Read More

Our church is going to hold revival services this September 17^th-20th, from Sunday morning through Wednesday evening. It is the first revival meeting we will have had in twenty years. Let me tell you why we haven’t had a revival meeting in twenty years, and why we are having one now.

When we first came here, my wife and I were immediately struck with the beauty of the building, especially the sanctuary. In fact, the sanctuary, platform and pulpit reminded me an awful lot of the auditorium of the church I grew up in. So in one sense, I immediately felt at home.

But after we came here, I realized that the size of our sanctuary was impressive and beautiful, but it could also be an obstacle to overcome in our worship services. Read More

I recently read something that absolutely astonished me and filled me with joy.

A friend recommended I read a book called Fusion by Nelson Searcy. Searcy is a pastor and author who has written some wonderful things about outreach and how to connect with people in the 20-teens. (It’s a lot different than it was in the 1960s and 1970s.)

What he wrote let me see with new eyes what God is doing in churches all across our country. We’ve all heard so much bad news, some good news is sorely needed. In order to give you the same glimpse I got about what God’s Spirit is doing across our nation, let me quote from Nelson Searcy’s book. He writes:Read More

I thought we could all do with this poem again! – Pastor David

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about,
When he might have won if he’d stuck it out.
Don’t give up, though the pace seems slow –
You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man;
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor’s cup,
And he learned too late, when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out –
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are –
It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit –
It’s when things seem worst that you mustn’t quit.

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My wife and I once visited an old college classmate of mine on vacation. We stayed with him and his wife for a few days and had a grand time with them. He’s a pastor, too, and so we had a lot in common. And as an added bonus, he plays guitar, so we had that in common, too.

He had a couple of wonderful guitars and an amplifier. But he told me he was disappointed in one of the guitars, and the amp, too. He said the guitar, which originally was a beautiful pearl color, had become discolored with age, and was now a dull off-white. He said he was thinking about getting rid of it. And the amplifier made unpleasant sounds like static, and the volume would drop unexpectedly.

I asked him if I could take a look at them. When I saw the guitar, I could see what he was talking about. Its former beautiful white was now a sort of yellow color. But as I looked at it closer, I said, “Can I try something? Would you bring me a damp rag?” He brought me one, and I proceeded to rub the front of the guitar, applying a little “elbow grease” as I did. And lo and behold, after a few moments of rubbing, the beautiful white pearl finish began to shine through.

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