Category: Newsletter

I was born and raised a Baptist. As a boy, I heard things like: “Baptist born & Baptist bred; and when I die I’ll be Baptist dead!”; “If I find one hair of my head that’s not Baptist, I’ll pull it out!”, and other memorable quotes from Baptist preachers. I really like what Evangelist B. R. Lakin once said, though: “I used to be proud of being a Baptist ‘til I found out how many of us were in the penitentiary!”

There are Baptist distinctives, and I do believe them. If I didn’t, then I’d go join up with a group that did teach what I believe. I’m not one who thinks that denominations are necessarily a bad thing. I think genuine Christians can acknowledge each other as real followers of Christ, and still disagree over matters of church government, how baptism should be administered, and exactly what the Holy Spirit does, etc. . When we disagree on things like that, it’s probably best for us to find a group of other like-minded Christians with which to worship and work. It’s like athletes who love baseball, playing on different teams, with different coaches, practicing in different ways, but all for the love of the game. Only, with us, it isn’t a game, and it’s all for the love of Jesus.

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I was born and raised a Baptist. As a boy, I heard things like: “Baptist born & Baptist bred; and when I die I’ll be Baptist dead!”; “If I find one hair of my head that’s not Baptist, I’ll pull it out!”, and other memorable quotes from Baptist preachers. I really like what Evangelist B. R. Lakin once said, though: “I used to be proud of being a Baptist ‘til I found out how many of us were in the penitentiary!”

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Last week a faithful servant of God went to his reward. Glen Lockwood had been a Pastor to my family for almost four decades. Other people called him Glen, but I never could. To me, he was always Pastor Lockwood.

In the late seventies my family left the church I’d grown up in up in because the services had become too political. My parents found their way to Gray Road Baptist Church on the south side of Indianapolis, where Glen Lockwood was Pastor. It wasn’t long until they’d made Gray Road their new church home. And the longer they sat under Pastor Lockwood’s ministry, the more their respect for him deepened.

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I admit that I own several guitars. Some people don’t understand this. I have guitar-playing friends whose wives tell them, “You can only play one at a time!” But they don’t understand that each guitar has its own sound and feel, and they are like different tools in your tool box. I suggest that they respond to their wives in kind: “Honey, why do you have so many pairs of shoes? You can only wear one pair at a time!” So far none of them has taken my advice.

My wife has always been incredibly understanding about my guitars. When we met in high school, my guitar playing was one of the things that attracted her to me. (A guy needs all the help he can get.) My wife is a musician, too, and she loves music as much as I do. And besides, she says it keeps me off the streets.

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My grandfather had a dread of nursing homes. He’d seen too many people he knew who had to go into one…especially his sister Allie. 

Allie was my great-aunt. I’m not sure how it started, but once to make her laugh I stuck out my tongue and blew “raspberries” at her. She got such a kick out of it that I did it every time I saw her or talked to her on the phone. She actually would be disappointed if I didn’t blow “raspberries” at her. 

Aunt Allie developed dementia and had to be put in a nursing home. For a while she still laughed when I blew “raspberries”. But after a while even that didn’t make her laugh anymore.   

My grandfather saw all of that, and he began to say to us, “Don’t ever put me in a nursing home!” And we never wanted to. 

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I recently bought what’s called a “Reader’s Bible”. It’s an edition of the Bible that doesn’t have verse divisions or footnotes of any kind. The chapter divisions are there, but in very light print, out to the side of the Biblical text. The idea is to allow you to read the text free from distraction, much like someone in centuries past might have read the Scriptures from a scroll.

This is a great way to experience God’s Word, and one I would recommend to you. I first did this on vacation last year when I took a copy of The Reader’s Gospels with me, and read all four Gospels in two weeks. You tend to read longer portions at one sitting, and it’s easier to see the flow of the text, especially in the narrative portions of the Bible.

Now let me tell you why I’m going to stop doing this.

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I still miss Ginny Franklin. I still hear her feisty, playful voice in my memory sometimes. I’ll say, “Well, I’m trying.” … and I’ll hear her say, “Yes; you’re very trying!” Or I’ll say, “I’m going to go.” …and I’ll hear her say, “Go-right-ahead…gourd-head!” Virginia Franklin was the first person to make my wife and I feel at home in the First Baptist Church of Linton. She was a corker!

One Sunday after church, she took my wife and me out to lunch (again!). This time, we were joined by Max and Katie Slough. Max was the long-time pastor of the Glenburn United Methodist Church; I’d known him before, and we became reacquainted when we moved to Linton.

Sitting there over what was left of our lunch, I breathed a huge sigh and commented how tired I was after the morning’s services. Max responded, “Of course you are! You preached this morning; virtue has gone out of you, just like when Jesus healed.” He was referring to three references in the King James Bible: Mark 5:30, Luke 6:19 and Luke 8:46.

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Recently I read again an article that described how our church began. I keep a file on the history of our church, and it contains various bulletins, newspaper articles and records from our church’s past. This particular article was written in 1963 by one of my predecessors, Reverend Dale T. Heinbaugh, for the 75^th anniversary of our church’s founding. Reverend Heinbaugh was the pastor of First Baptist Church of Linton from 1960 to 1969. I shared this with our Sunday night crowd recently, but I thought it needed a wider circulation.

I had been told, and had told others, that our church was started in 1888 by the Olive Branch Baptist Church, which is just west of the Linton city limits. That is both true and not precisely true. What actually happened is told in the following excerpts from Pastor Heinbaugh’s article.

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