Category: Newsletter

On October 23^rd, the church gave a Pastor Appreciation Dinner for Rae Anne and me (also known as the Glorification of the Worm Ceremony). After the dinner, our Chairman of Deacons, Wally Liechty, made a presentation to me on behalf of the church. He handed me a gift bag containing an insulated coffee tumbler with Isaiah 41:10 (one of my favorite verses) printed on the side. And down in the bag there was a generous gift card for me to spend at the Open Door Christian Bookstore. It was in the amount of $250, in honor of the twenty-five years we have been together as pastor and church.

And I admit that my heart fell inside of me when I saw the gift certificate. The first thing that flashed into my mind was the six stacks of books I have sitting around my study, that I have absolutely no room for on my bookshelves. I thought, “What am I gonna do with more books?”

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It still seems like only yesterday to me that I walked into the church building for the first time. But it wasn’t.

It was April 6, 1997, when Rae Anne and I first came down to First Baptist Church in Linton. I had been invited to preach in the Sunday evening service. I was just “filling the pulpit” as a guest speaker during the time when the church was searching for a new pastor.

The deacons invited me back to fill the pulpit a few more times. Then the deacons asked if I would be the interim pastor, and preach both Sunday mornings and evenings until a new pastor was called. Then they asked if I would allow them to put my name before the church as a candidate for the position of Senior Pastor.

Then on Wednesday, August 6, 1997, four months after I had first come down to preach for you, the church voted to call me as the new Senior Pastor. The vote was 140 to 7, a 95% call. I had asked God that, if He really wanted us there, the vote would be an overwhelming majority, so there wouldn’t be any doubts. There weren’t. The chairman of deacons called me and said, “Well, you’re our new pastor.”

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In the classic 1942 black-and-white film Casablanca, characters played by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman both tell a piano player named Sam to play their favorite song. The song was “As Time Goes By,” and contains the phrase, “You must remember this…”. The line is never said exactly this way in the movie, but the famous quote is: “Play it again, Sam!”

I once read an interview with Amy Grant. She had just recorded an album of hymns, and she told the interviewer, “I’ve heard lots of sermons over the years, and I don’t remember any of them. But I do remember all those wonderful old hymns we sang when I was growing up.” Well, excuse me, but that’s not a fair comparison at all. You might hear any given sermon once (assuming you stay awake all the way through it). But we’ve sung those old hymns over and over and over, until many of us have them practically memorized. A hymn is probably sung in a church twice a year at least, maybe more often than that. Let a pastor try repeating the same few sermons twice a year, and the deacons will be meeting to discuss the problem.

Besides that, you’re not supposed to remember the sermon. You’re supposed to remember the Scripture.

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This is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, but I’ve been reluctant to write about it for several reasons. First, because I’m not sure how many people will actually be interested. Second, because the discussion can get technical and “deep in the weeds.” You can quickly get into the nuances of Biblical interpretation, and the Greek language of the New Testament. And third, because, on a personal level, nothing I’m about to write will give you a warm fuzzy feeling or help you get your locker open. So those are the reasons you shouldn’t read this article. If any of that resonates with you, you should stop reading now.

On the other hand, I hope you do read this, for several reasons. First, because I hope it will reassure you about our church. Second, because while I’m going to try hard to not get “deep in the weeds,” I will suggest some resources for those of you who might want to investigate this topic some more. And third, because not everything in the Bible is intended to give you a tingle or a set of easy steps to solve life’s mundane problems. A lot of it is intended to help you think clearly and to know what you believe. As Linus from the comic strip Peanuts pointed out, sound theology has a way of giving us great comfort.

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I used to have a buddy named Dave Hoskins. He was a Baptist pastor here in the area. We used to run into each other at Markle’s Music store, because he played guitar, too. Dave was a funny guy, outgoing and full of life. He was about ten years younger than me. I still can’t believe that he died several years ago. He was diagnosed with brain cancer, and it all went south for him really fast. Life is short, folks, and there’s no dress rehearsal.

Anyway, Dave was always telling me things to make me laugh. (I love people like that. Kinda makes up for the other ones.) One day he told me somebody called his church and asked, “Does your church sing off the wall?” He said he was initially confused, and wondered if the guy had heard some of their church members sing. Then he realized the man was asking if they used hymnals or sung the words off of a screen. Apparently, this man didn’t like “off the wall” singing.

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There’s a short poem about money I heard a long time ago that I’ve never forgotten. Here it is:

Money talks; that’s no lie.

I heard it once; it said “Goodbye!”

But let me reword it a bit, like this:

Time flies; that’s no lie.

I heard it once; it said “Goodbye!”

Actually, I don’t think time says “Goodbye” at all. It just rushes by without so much as a “See you later!” It really is astonishing how fast it goes.

Now, I couldn’t convince my 5-year-old grandson of this. If he’s waiting for something good—his birthday, or Christmas, or for his daddy or mommy to come home after being away—then to him, time passes excruciatingly slowly.

But the older you get, the faster time seems to go. You’re a kid. You’re a teenager. You’ve graduated from high school. You’re married. You’re having babies. Before you know it, your babies are teenagers. Then they’re graduating from high school. And then, wait—what?—they’re getting married? Now your kids are having babies? And that makes you…a grandparent? How did this happen?

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I once heard a man explain why he and his wife had started a new coffee house. They were Christians, and the man explained that they had been attending what he called “traditional church”. Then he said that he made an amazing discovery: “traditional church” is not in the Bible! (He didn’t say so explicitly, but it sounded like they stopped going to “traditional church”.) So, he said, they started the coffee house as a place for their community to meet. The coffee house seems to be a grand success; and, he said, they had met more of their neighbors in the few months the coffee house had been open than they had in the entire time they went to “traditional church” before. Well, glory, hallelujah! (Oops…maybe they don’t say that in coffee houses. My bad.)

I hardly know where to start.

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I’ve just read a great book. It’s called The Case for Heaven by Lee Strobel. Strobel is one of my favorite authors. He was an atheist who worked as an investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune. His wife Leslie became a Christian, and it upset him so much he set out to disprove Christianity and “rescue” his wife. But after months of researching the evidence and interviewing experts, to his dismay he found himself convinced, and he became a believer in Jesus, too. He wrote a book about his faith journey called The Case for Christ. He has since written The Case for Faith, The Case for the Real Jesus, and The Case for a Creator.

In 2011, Strobel had a life-threatening incident that landed him in the hospital and brought him face-to-face with the prospect of his own death. He survived this crisis, but it caused him to consider what happens after we die more seriously. As a Christian, he of course believed in heaven, but he hadn’t given it much thought. After he nearly died, he wanted a clearer idea of what the Bible has to say about the afterlife, and to know if the many accounts of near-death experiences (NDEs) had any validity at all, and whether they supported or contradicted the Bible’s teaching. So, he embarked on yet another months-long investigation, researching and interviewing experts all over America and Great Britain on the subject of life after death. The result was his latest book, The Case for Heaven.

I devoured it in about four days. It’s fantastic. Let me give you the high points.

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