Category: Newsletter

As I write this, it is late afternoon on the second day of Vacation Bible School here at our church. You would be within your right to think. “Well, big deal: it’s summer, and churches all over America are having Vacation Bible Schools.” But this one is different for us. This is the first Vacation Bible School we’ve had in over ten years.

That’s a rough figure; I haven’t looked it up. But it is definitely in the ballpark. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a Vacation Bible School here at First Baptist, Linton.

Now, we have done other wonderful things. Our Board of Christian Education, along with a lot of volunteers, have put on block parties, weenie roasts, hayrides, and events with bouncy houses. We have put on concerts, hosted free meals for the community, and even tried our hand at some, ahem, acting. (Understatement alert: Nobody was in danger of winning any Oscars.) We’ve put in lots of work, and had lots of fun together doing these things.

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   Not long after my wife and I got married, we were buying a few things at a small department store, and I made an impulse purchase. I saw a small yellow-and-black multi-purpose screwdriver in one of the displays. It was kind of a long tear-drop shape, and you could unscrew one end of it to reveal five assorted screwdriver blades inside. You chose a blade, inserted it in the other end, tightened it down, and presto-chango, in just a few seconds you had the right size screwdriver for whatever you needed. It wasn’t a great tool, but we didn’t have hardly any tools at all, at that point in our marriage. I remember thinking that it probably wouldn’t last long, but it might be useful until we could get more and better tools.

   That was 45 years ago. That little black-and-yellow screwdriver is still in the utility drawer in our kitchen. I can’t begin to count the times one of us has reached for it and used it to tighten a doorknob, take something apart, or put something back together. It has outlasted many of the other tools we’ve purchased over the years. It has more than paid for itself, many times over, and has proven to be more useful than we ever could have imagined. When I die, I hope someone throws it in my casket and says, “Who knows? He might need this.”

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There is the usual, accepted way of doing things. Then there is God’s way. And as often as not, they are not the same.

When I came to the church, I had preached here several times before anyone even asked me for a resume’. When my wife and I got one together and gave it to the deacons, I was surprised one Sunday morning to walk into the sanctuary just before the service and see three or four little old ladies intently reading a copy of it.

But I’m glad we got to know each other before you ever saw my resume’. I think it was better that way. For that matter, I’m glad my family and I got to know the church in person instead of reading a description of it. Some intangible things you just can’t put down on paper.

Someone—I honestly think it was Kermit the Frog in A Muppet Christmas Carol—said, “Life is made of meetings and partings. That is the way of it.” And God has a way of arranging those meetings and partings to suit His own purposes.

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I went to see the movie Jesus Revolution last night. It was really good. I don’t often sit and cry during a movie, but I did this one. And I wasn’t alone. I overheard one older lady tell someone as she left, “I cried like a baby!”

Jesus Revolution tells the story of the beginning of what came to be called the “Jesus People” movement, when thousands of young hippies in the late 1960s-early 1970s became Christians. They were sometimes referred to as “Jesus Freaks”—because a hippie was a “freak,” so a hippie who believed in Jesus was a “Jesus freak”.

I was especially interested in this movie for three reasons. First, because it stars Jonathan Roumie, who plays Jesus in The Chosen television series about Jesus and the disciples. I absolutely love The Chosen. I think it is the most excellent portrayal of a Biblical story I have ever seen. And I wondered if I could believe Jonathan Roumie in Jesus Revolution, since he is so convincing playing the part of Jesus. Well, he must be a pretty good actor, because I never once looked at him and thought, “No, that’s Jesus!” His portrayal of hippie evangelist Lonnie Frisbee is so good, I never thought of him as anyone else.

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I grew up going to church with my family. We sat together in church, me and my brothers and our parents, and our grandparents. There was a nursery for the babies, and parents could take their little children out into the foyer at the back of the church if they needed to. But this was in the 1960s, and the idea of “children’s church” really hadn’t caught on yet. Once children got to be five or six years old, we sat in church with our families.

Of course, the kids got squirmy and bored…or at least, I did. I would look around the church auditorium and imagine what it would be like if Batman or Spider-man swung down from the rafters or the balcony. I’d look around and stare in amazement at the ladies with their beehive hairdos piled on top of their heads, or at the usher who had a really long neck and reminded me of a giraffe. I loved it when my grandma would whisper, “DAVE! YOU WANT SOME CANDY?” She could whisper in church louder than most people talk. And usually she handed me a piece of hard candy wrapped in cellophane. I would try to unwrap it quietly, but inevitably I earned a frown from my mother and a terse “Shhh!” To keep me quiet they gave me a pen or pencil and something to draw on. So I would sit in church and draw pictures.

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About ten years or so ago I had a real word from the Lord. At least, I’m pretty sure I did. In fact, I’m 99.9% positive I did. I’m not charismatic or Pentecostal, and I don’t hear voices. But one night God spoke to me clearly and powerfully through His Word, the Bible. By the way, that’s how God usually speaks to us today. It isn’t that He can’t or occasionally doesn’t communicate to us in other ways. He can do what He wants. After all, He’s God! But if you think God is speaking to you through your circumstances, or a feeling or an impression, or maybe even a dream you’ve had, you’d better evaluate it carefully in light of the Bible. And if it contradicts anything the Bible says, then it isn’t God speaking to you. If the Bible says not to do something, and something is telling you to do it anyway, don’t listen. It ain’t Him.

Anyway, this was back during the hard time when my mother-in-law was dying of A.L.S. (“Lou Gehrig’s disease”). In order to help take care of her mother, my wife would drive up to her parent’s home in rural Franklin and spend Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday there, cooking and cleaning and helping her mother and father. It was the right thing to do. Rae Anne was obeying God and honoring her father and her mother, just as God told us in the Ten Commandments.

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(This month we have a guest columnist: my youngest brother, Curt Tyra. Curt is an engineer for Allison Transmission, has served as an elder in Gray Road Baptist Church in Indianapolis, and is one of the finest men I’ve ever known in my life. When I grow up, I want to be like him. Curt wrote this article for Gray Road’s newsletter, and I thought it was worth sharing with you. And yes, I got his permission. I told him I might even give him credit. So here’s the article. I hope you find it as thought-provoking as I did. – Pastor David)

The old hymn that my grandparents sang said, “When the saved of earth shall gather over on the other shore, And the roll is called up yonder, I’ll be there.”  The roll call imagined in this song would be from a perfect listing of the true followers of Christ.

Contrast this roll with the membership roll of any local church, and you will find yourself confronted with some harsh realities.  While the membership of a given church may be made up of many true believers, the reality of our experience and the testimony of Scripture is that unbelievers can slip into our fellowship unnoticed.

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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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