First Baptist Church

So many people have come up to me and said, “I am so glad you got back safe from Israel! I was praying that you would be safe!” Both members of our church, and people outside of our congregation have expressed this to me.

I am grateful for each of you. I am surprised at how many people outside of our church knew about my trip. And I am humbled by the concern of so many. My response was and is always the same: “Thank you for praying. I’m glad we got back safe and sound, too.”

Many of you know that tensions were on the rise while our study group was in Israel, particularly after the kidnapping of those three Jewish teenage boys. While we were there, the Israeli Defense Force was conducting a massive nation-wide, house-to-house search for them. It was not learned until after we got back that those boys had been murdered almost right away. Our hearts were broken along with the Israeli people.Read More

I’ve always wanted to go.

I always intended to go someday.

I have desired it with an intensity that I can’t really put into words.

I’ve even cried, listening to other people talking about their trips…but somehow, I’ve never been able to go myself.

Until now.

Five years ago, to my great surprise, the church gave me a 5-week sabbatical, not to include any of my vacation time. It was also to repeat every five years. It was an incredibly generous gift, and frankly, I didn’t quite know what to do with it the first time. A sabbatical should be used to do something special, something designed to recharge your spiritual batteries and renew your soul. Back in February, I raised the possibility with our deacons of postponing this second sabbatical ‘til next year, because I didn’t want to waste it, and I still didn’t know exactly what to do with the time.

But all that changed almost overnight.Read More

On a recent Tuesday morning I drove to the church and walked in, ready to begin the week’s tasks. Ordinarily, after checking in with the secretary to see if anything needs my attention, I go right to my desk, unload my briefcase and open my Bible.

On this particular day, though, I stopped to talk with our cashiers. Then I talked with some ladies who had come in to finish painting one of our hallways. Then one of my colleagues in the ministry stopped by, and we talked for a while. After that conversation, I had a message to call someone; when I returned the call, I had a happy talk with the folks on the other end. In fact, all of these conversations were happy ones that left me feeling charged up and encouraged. (You can’t say that about every conversation.)

As I prepared to leave for lunch, I told our secretary, “It’s been a good morning, but it hasn’t gone anything like what I’d expected. I’m gonna go eat lunch, then come back and take another crack at it.” (She was glad to hear me say that, because I was supposed to have been writing an article for her to put in the next newsletter…this article, in fact. Never antagonize a church secretary who needs an article.)Read More

Not long ago a friend of mine emailed me an article titled I Don’t Worship God by Singing: I Connect With Him Elsewhere. My friend even said something to the effect that he thought we should stop singing in church. I’m not sure what his motivation was; frankly, I haven’t raised the subject with him, and I’m not sure I will.

The article was written by a man named Donald Miller. It was actually a “blog” (short for “web log”, if you didn’t know). It seems that lots of people have blogs these days. Apparently they feel that the world has an urgent need to know what they think about every little thing, or a compelling interest in every little thing they do. The motto for bloggers seems to be: “I believe everybody is entitled to my opinion.” We’re going to have to change the old saying to: “Blogs are like belly buttons: everybody’s got one.”

Anyway, in his blog, Mr. Miller went on at length about how during a recent worship service he attended, in his words: “I wasn’t feeling much of anything.” (And that, after all, is the purpose of church, right? To make us feel something? Or is that the movies? I get confused, listening to people these days.)Read More

It’s been an unusual start to the new year, here at First Baptist Church.

We started off by having to cancel our first services of the year, due to a bitterly cold winter storm being predicted. The Greene County Emergency Management Agency asked that all organizations, including churches, suspend their activities for that Sunday, January 5th. After conferring with one of our Trustees and our Chairman of Deacons, we decided it was probably good citizenship (and submission to a reasonable request from proper authorities; see Romans 13:1)to do as they asked.

So: no church on the first Sunday of the year! My wife said to me that afternoon: “This is kind of a strange parenthesis in our lives.” She was right.

For a couple of days after that, the church building felt like a ghost town. The State Police were still requesting people to limit unnecessary travel, so there were very few folks about. My footprints were the only ones leading up to and away from the church for two days. I normally like being at the church by myself (I can get a lot of things done), but this just felt eerily quiet. Too quiet.Read More

Once again we’re on the threshold of another new year. The sense of time passing faster only increases the older you get. An aging actor was once asked by an interviewer, “What is it like to get old?” He replied, “You eat breakfast every half hour.” When I first heard that, I thought he meant, he ate a lot. Then I realized he meant that it seems like morning comes every thirty minutes. I’m beginning to understand that.

I love the Book of Psalms, and Psalm 139 is one of my favorites. I am especially drawn to verse 16. The King James Version renders it this way:

Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.

The first phrase refers to our growth in the womb. The Hebrew word for substance was used to refer to “the body”. Unperfect means “unformed” or “unfinished”. The idea is that God was watching over you in His providential care from the very beginning of your existence, even before your birth.Read More

I love Christmas time. It was always my mother’s favorite time of year, too. It seems to come hurtling at us faster than it used to, and there always seems to be too much to do and too little time to do it. And I really don’t remember feeling so tired at Christmas time when I was a kid!

But I still love it. I love the Christmas trees (the Reformer Martin Luther was the first to decorate an evergreen tree – with real candles! – based on Isaiah 60:13); I love Saint Nicholas (he was the bishop of Lycia in the 4th century, who was noted for his love for the poor, especially in giving small bags of gold to children); and I love the gifts, which mirror the gifts that the Wise men brought to the Baby Jesus in Matthew 2:11, and which reflect the image of our Creator who “so loved the world that He gave His only Son” (John 3:16; see also Luke 11:13).Read More