Reflections of a Retired Pastor

  I’m writing this during the night of Good Friday, thinking of what Christ’s followers might have thought on that eerily quiet night. Some have called the day following Good Friday, “Silent Saturday.” It was the Sabbath; it was a day that would typically have little activity. But this Sabbath is different; it was especially quiet. The disciples had the advantage of being closest to Jesus, sitting under His most intimate lessons, yet still didn’t completely understand. The events of Holy Week underscored their lingering questions and misunderstanding. All of their hopes were shattered. The One on whom they had hung their hopes was dead. They could be targeted next as visible followers. So they locked their doors, huddled in hiding, pondering what next. What do they do now? What’s going to happen to us? The past 24 hours were horrendous. Did they even sleep? Could they? Would every noise outside startle them with fear? We have the benefit of knowing the “It’s Friday but Sunday’s com...

  I’m writing this late night on Palm Sunday as I have been reflecting throughout the day. If you are a Christ-follower, raised in church, you are not only familiar with the story of the Triumphal Entry but maybe so familiar that you unintentionally gloss over the narrative. That’s why I think it’s beneficial to connect the stories with the Church calendar in real time as if we were there ourselves. We are familiar with the crowd, the disciples, the soldiers doing crowd control duty, and, of course, Jesus. But have we noticed the hidden characters that day? Let’s look at a few. Imagine if you can, someone showing up in your driveway and starting to hotwire your Buick. Yikes! “What do you think you’re doing?” you yell at the perpetrators. They reply, “Jesus needs it,” to which you respond, “Oh, okay.”  Not likely to happen in our culture today but it did back then. We don’t know the name of this generous owner but we do know that it was a donkey, not a Buick. Another hidden cha...

Watching the development of my four-year old granddaughter is truly a blessing, seeing her responding to her parents instilling basic values such as saying “Thank you.” I’m impressed that at mealtime she is encouraged to say what she’s thankful for as part of saying “grace.” Sometimes we have to stifle a chuckle at some of the things she mentions. You probably have similar stories in your family. The perplexing thing is why this early training seems to wane over time. The words thanksgiving and thanks occur in approximately 100 Bible verses and we are told to give thanks 73 times. Is this possibly because we need to be reminded? Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in  Christ Jesus for you .” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 NKJV) Many people today seem not to be thankful. They get wrapped up in grumbling and complaining about what is wrong in their lives. Sometimes the sense of entitlement permeates ...

I remember very clearly my call from God to vocational ministry but  there were  earlier indications that God had his hand on my life. I remember having “church” in our living room making my sister and her baby dolls be the “congregation.” I also remember sometime later using the ironing board as a pulpit when no one was around and preaching sermons from Rex Humbard’s monthly magazine. This was probably a decade before I formally began my Bible College education.  As these obscure memories came to mind recently, I began to think of how God knew His plans for me long before I did and how he directed my paths through circumstances and mentors who spoke into my life. I wasn’t a perfect preacher boy during that decade but God had His hand on my life and led people to impact my life. I remember a Sunday School teacher who took me fishing and spent most of the time patiently untangling fishing lines that we students kept messing up.  His love for people made an impact on t...

I may have missed it in Bible College classes. My grades indicated that I missed several things. Back then, soul winning was emphasized more than discipling. In one of my classes we had to go door to door in the college neighborhood and share the Four Spiritual Laws. (I wonder how many times those neighbors had to hear that pitch over the years.) Yet the Great Commission specifically said to make disciples not converts. The original language even meant to do it “as you are going,” in other words “as a way of life.” What then is a disciple? A disciple is a convert who has been taught by a discipler to obey all that Jesus has commanded us and then he duplicates what he’s been taught, and goes out and teaches others who teaches others, etc. even to the fourth generation. Expecting someone to disciple others without being discipled himself can lead to spiritual abuse, warped doctrine and even worse. Where does this fit into Ephesians 4:11 gifts to the church, commonly referred to as APEST?...

When I was told that I had cancer, I told the Lord that I wanted to be an example to others how Christians can face adversity. Over the course of my ministry I have seen many Christians who reacted like they should be exempt from adversity, even to the point of struggling with their relationship with God. I’ve also witnessed the opposite; a super-Christian type of reaction to the point of almost denying their reality. Understand, I am not putting myself in a position of judging their relationship with God. Each of us deals with life in our unique way. But in this post I feel that I need to be very honest with myself and others who have been following my journey. I am on my second regimen of chemotherapy, following a protocol of radiation and chemo before surgery, a radical surgery a year ago, a recurrence of stage 3 cancer that metasticized and is not curable, and several months of setbacks. Terms like “lifespan” and “fighting for my life” have taken on new meaning. Everyone who’s ever...

Every year as Spring approaches we are treated to some thunderstorms. My dad used to say that these first booms of thunder were to “wake up the snakes.” I’m not sure that was to be comforting to me or something else. But it is something that I’ve never forgotten from my dad’s “wisdom.” Initially we might be inclined to think of snakes in the Bible in a negative context such as the serpent who tempted Eve or John the Baptist calling the Pharisees and Sadducees a brood of vipers. Jesus called the scribes and Pharisees “serpents, brood of vipers!” in Matthew 23:33, “How can you escape the condemnation of hell?” But the Bible also seems to use the serpent in a more positive way. In the Old Testament Moses was instructed to put a serpent on a pole for healing, an image you can find today in most medical facilities. God used the serpent as a teaching object lesson with the rod of Moses.  It’s also believed that people associated serpents with wisdom. Jesus sent His disciples out as sheep...

The sovereignty of God is an attribute that most Christians would not deny or debate. That God is sovereign is a basic tenant of the theology of God yet do we truly understand how it relates to our relationship with Him and how we live out our Christian life? For me, I had a “theological head knowledge” but it took years for it to become personal for me.  Sovereignty can be secularly defined as  a :  supreme power especially over a body politic;                  b : the  freedom from external control; and c :  controlling influence. As it applies to God, it simply means that God has supreme authority and does not need any external input. Do  we really believe this? Does He have supreme authority over us? It could be argued that He relinquished dominion over the earth to mankind to subdue it. And Satan is permitted to have limited influence over some things on earth. Think of the story of Job for instance and...

I can’t remember exactly when I first sang this little song, “ I Have Decided to Follow Jesus, ” but I’m pretty sure that it was around a bonfire with a youth group, probably the last night of youth camp or something like that. We probably sang “ Kumbaya ” at the same event. You might also identify with a similar experience.  I’m not making light of these events but I do know that I didn’t fully understand what singing those words meant as I’m afraid is true of many of us in our comfortable Christian culture. The history of this little song comes from a man in India whose family were the first converts of a Welsh missionary. He refused to denounce his faith as his wife and two children were literally killed in front of him because he refused to denounce his faith. His response was “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back.” Given one more chance, with his family lying dead at his feet, he responded, “Though none go with me, still I will follow,” before he too was killed. The...

I have a friend with Gideons International who has called me periodically for years to ask how they could pray for my ministry. Anticipating retirement in a couple years I shared with Bob that he could pray that my desire would be fulfilled to finish well, whenever that will be. I recently ran across a song by a southern gospel group, Greater Vision, that seemed to encapsulate my desire better than I could otherwise describe it: “Only two words will fulfill me/When I see His face/For there’s eternal meaning/In this one little phrase/When this life is overAnd the next one’s begun/I want to start with Well Done!” I finished my pastoral ministry at the end of 2022. I hope I finished well in God’s eyes. But my ministry is not over yet. I didn’t know back then that being diagnosed with cancer would coincide with my transition to retirement. Barring a supernatural intervention of divine healing, my doctor says I probably have 2-3 more years, more or less to serve the Lord. My prayer desire s...