TO DIE IS GAIN.....

This past month has been such as to get me thinking about death--particularly about my death, impending as it is. (Heb 9:27) I am not being maudlin, nor am I morose, but I am certainly MORTAL.

Of course, in its wanderings my mind strayed soon enough to Philippians 1 and Paul's comment "to live is Christ, to die is gain" Really, what a thing to say! Frankly, for me, the second clause is easier than the first. I have no doubt that my death will usher me through a doorway to inexpressible joy and eternal blessings. And, I grow weary of this world. The political situation in this country is ugly and offers no sensible hope for improvement in the near term, rather going from bad to worse. That doesn't weigh on me too heavily, however, not nearly so much as the decline of the church. (See my previous blog article for some of that)

All the forces of the flesh continue to hammer away at the professing church and more and more inroads are made, undermining once-sound bodies with one form of theological HIV or another. The "American Church" stands aloof from the persecuted church in China, Africa, Asia and elsewhere.....seeming impervious to persecution and martyrdom. Unfortunately, the reason it is untouched is that it is not an offense to the world. So long as this "church" goes along, it gets along. Millions warm a pew for an hour or two on Sunday morning, then spend the remaining 166 hours of the week living the most worldly, Godless lives, totally indistinguishable from the non-church going, non-Christ-claiming population.

Paul said the only reason he would stay in this world was for the benefit of his flock-- " I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith,..." I do not mean to equate myself with Paul in any way except to say that I feel like that with regard to the ministry I have. So long as I am useful, able to minister the Gospel to my inmate brothers or elsewhere, I am content. It is disconcerting to think of being physically unable to do anything like what I consider ministry. This is at war with my intellectual understanding that God has people paralyzed in hospital beds, incapacitated in nursing homes, etc, all for His glory. Me, I'd rather just go on..........(not that He's going to ask my opinion)

Albert Barnes' listed 7 ways in which it is gain for a Christian to die:

1. The Christian will be freed from sin. (Hallelujah!)

2. He will be freed from doubts.

3. He will be freed from temptation.

4. He will be delivered from his enemies.

5. He will be delivered from suffering.

6. He will be delivered from death.

7. He will be immediately and eternally ushered into the presence of our Savior. (which makes the other 6 almost irrelevant)....and if we ever get accustomed to His presence, we will also be in the presence of all the saints of all the ages, forever!

So, understand me when I say with Paul:

My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.
(Philippians 1:23)

Death is the crown of life:
Were death denied, poor man would live in vain:
Were death denied, to live would not be life.
Were death denied, even fools would wish to die.
Death wounds to cure; we fall; we rise; we reign!
Spring from our fetters; fasten in the skies;
Where blooming Eden withers in our sight.
Death gives us more than was in Eden lost,
The king of terrors is the prince of peace.
(Edward Young
Night Thoughts, iii.)

PASTORAL HERMENEUTIC? (part 3--conclusion)

When I started this series, my intention was to frame it like the old preacher's joke: "3 points and a pome" (poem to you literate folks). The first two posts took forever and intervening posts have come and gone; frankly, I've lost momentum on this train of thought.

Except for the "pome" The poem was the dramatic conclusion to the sermon, the moment of pathos where all the intellectual brilliance and spiritual power of the 3 points landed with a thud in the hearers' hearts, breaking those hearts and driving the hordes to the altar of repentance, rededication, and reconciliation.

So I've been haranguing pastors for haranguing their congregations, demanding obeisance and other forms of blind following; exhorting the sheep to fill the coffers so the $25 million dollar pile of bricks can be properly maintained and the million dollar payroll continued without interruption.

Now I want to shine the spotlight on myself for a few words. I was a pastor once. November 2009 will mark the 30th anniversary of my ordination to the Gospel ministry. At that time, I was serving as interim pastor for a little country congregation who had, in their deranged state of mind, decided to call me as their pastor.

I was painfully reminded of that experience a month ago when I met a pastor-friend not quite my age but who started younger and probably has about as much time in ministry as I have....30 years or so. After a handshake, the first communication from him was: "I'm really disgusted with my congregation. I don't know if half of them are even saved." (as an aside: I feel that way about most congregations.....the number of church members who are really saved has to be low)

But, I didn't say anything, just let him rave on for a few minutes about how his congregation did this and didn't do that, and now it was summer and attendance was down from 100 to 50-60, etc, etc, etc. What I was tempted to ask him was this:

How much time do you spend praying for those people?

Have you ever, I mean ever, wept over them, their apparent coldness, their lack of spiritual growth?

See, he sounded just exactly like I sounded, and acted, 30 years ago. I went into that little country church and told them "what for". The next week, I raked them over the coals because they had not changed......."What is the problem? I told you a week ago how you should live, and still you are unchanged!"

I rode my hobby horses all over their turf. I had come out of the independent Baptist world into this Southern Baptist association and I spent half my time condemning the SBC and urging this congregation to leave the association and go independent. I had 5 deacons, one of whom showed up for the services faithfully. Three others were there most Sunday mornings but never at night or on Wednesday. One showed up for Easter or something like that. One day I had them all in a Sunday a.m. service and called them to the front of the congregation and gave them "down the road" Now, every one of these men was older than I, and had grown up in that church. But I told them to either "deac" or hit the door!

I am sickened by my past behavior and attitude. I'm grateful to God that His longsuffering permitted me to even live through that kind of behavior, let alone continue in ministry to this point where, finally, I have some sense. So, it was really disturbing to hear this "senior pastor" talking just like I used to be 30 years back.

I doubt God will ever put me back into a pastorate. In many ways, I consider myself a "pastor" to my inmates but it's not quite the same since I am restricted by rules and regulations about exactly what I can and cannot do regarding their families and so forth. I know that my heart is more of a "pastor's heart" today than ever before.

If I were a pastor, and I say this to those who do serve as pastors, two things: If you don't have a heart which is broken over the souls of the folks who face you every Sunday, get out! They do not need you to lecture them, harangue them, scold them, or fleece them. Secondly, if you do have that heart, you will do this without me telling you--just preach the Word faithfully and trust God to do His work in their heart. If He does it instantly, praise the Lord; if you preach there 20 years before you see change, praise the Lord. During those 20 years you'll have spent most of your time on your face before God praying that He move upon those folks because you 1.) love Him and want to see Him glorified in their lives, and 2.) because you love them and want to see them transformed into the image of His son.

Anything else that happens is secondary at best, probably less important........new buildings, new carpeting, doubled membership, all the stuff the world uses as a measuring stick. The greatest joy a pastor can have is seeing his folks changed by the power of God.....I wouldn't trade that for 3 twenty-five million dollar buildings and a television ministry.

ON MINISTRY (Part 2--The Point)

I wrote that lengthy, detailed article about Carolyn's surgery and hospital stay for two reasons: to get myself in motion writing and to provide some background for this, the main point, if anyone is interested in detailed background. Feel free to skip it.........lol.

What I want to write about is suffering, and caring for those who are suffering, those who are helpless, and what I have learned about those things during the past 3 weeks. This was my wife's 12th major surgery so in some ways it wasn't exactly a new experience for me (or her!). In a more important way, however, it is a remarkable experience, a life-changing lesson. My greatest fear in attempting this is that I shall fail to communicate verbally something that is so purely experiential.

As we anticipated this surgery and all that comes with it (anticipated most of the stuff, anyway), I had this intellectual grasp of what I would be doing. I've done it before. You have a helpless patient, a pain-racked patient, and it's someone you love dearly. Things need to be done--things which despite long years of intimacy are still discomforting to the one who cannot care for herself as usual. I'm not going into specifics--y'all know the kinda stuff, not limited to holding a basin for someone to vomit into, or washing their face afterward, but stuff like that.

So, I've done that before and I don't mind doing it. I don't. And she knows, as much as humanly possible, that I don't find such things repulsive or disgusting. I love her; I'd do anything to help her when she's suffering. But this time it's different. God has taken me in hand, put His arm across my shoulders, and drawn me a bit closer, let me see a bit more of His grace through His son.

As I sat through those worst hours there in the hospital, doing my little routine with the basin and the wet cloths on her forehead and so forth.....sometimes I sat and waited for the next call to service and realized that I wasn't being a dutiful husband, suffering through these menial chores with a stiff upper lip, deserving of so much appreciation for my dedication. What I was is this: Blessed. I experienced something which previously I had only read about: the joy of serving another person, the blessing which God bestows upon His children as they learn something about "ministry"

I want to say it out loud: I love caring for her. It's a joy to care for her in whatever way I can. I'm so grateful to God for taking me past that selfish state of "being noble" and suffering dutifully. Jesus said He came not to be ministered to, but to minister. Have we ever twisted that word into something grotesque! Most "ministers" haven't the foggiest concept of ministering.

We all know the story of the "Last Supper" from the Gospel accounts. As the apostles arrived, Jesus garbed Himself as a servant and washed their feet. And we hear a lot of sanctimonious preaching about how we need to do likewise, and some denominations take that literally and have services during which folks wash one another's feet. What do you suppose they are thinking when they do that?

What do you think Jesus was thinking as He did that? "I'm gonna do this to teach these guys how to be humble" If you think that, you are making Him out to be disingenuous at best. This was a cultural practice, a courtesy extended by hosts to their arriving guests. The household servants washed the guests' feet because they were dirty! Jesus Christ came as the Servant of Jehovah. This was His heart on display; He loved those apostles. He wasn't thinking "Yuck, I've got to do this just to make the point"

If we love the brethren, we will serve them with the same heart....not begrudingly (well hidden, of course) but joyfully. It was Christ's great joy to serve His children. It will be so in all eternity as well.

We're home now and Carolyn is regaining some mobility and can care more for herself but still needs help. I am still in service here. I still rejoice in it. I am beginning to feel that I've failed in my attempt to communicate this. May God make it clear to all who read this, despite my poor effort. Ministry is servant-hood. Poor, pitiful folks who think "being like Jesus" means being King......or some other big shot. The Christ whom the church is to emulate is that Humble Servant, joyfully washing the feet of the disciples.

ON MINISTRY (Part 1--Background)

You might want to read Part 2 first...this is the "deep background" for it and might not be worth reading at all...

This seems to be my toughest-ever writing assignment.......self-imposed as it is. Been thinking about it two weeks and just can't get started.....so here we go:

June 22 Carolyn had knee-replacement surgery. I spent 4 days and 3 nights at her bedside in hospital and have been her 24-hour per day "nurse" since her return to the house.

The Monday evening after the surgery, all day Tuesday, and Wednesday morning were rough! She came out of surgery about 2:30 Monday afternoon. Surgeon called me and reported that all went well and she would be in Recovery for a while. About 4:00, they let me go back into the Recovery Room and visit her. At that point she was in excruciating pain and the staff was baffled and in a well-controlled frenzy trying to figure out what the problem was. During the surgery she had had a spinal block (short lived but highly effective) plus an epidural anaesthetic (longer term). At the end of the surgical procedure the anaesthesia team did a block of one branch of the femoral nerve which was intended to control the pain as the spinal block wore off and when the epidural catheter was removed, ending that relief.

Bottom line is the femoral nerve block failed....so she had no anaesthetic benefit at that point only 90 minutes after the incision was closed. She was in agony and the staff was doing a major running analysis there at her bedside, so they ran me out, promising to call me back when they had overcome the problem.

At 5:30 they called me again, saying that Carolyn was fine and ready to go to her own room. We didn't get the information immediately but the short form of the story is that there are 3 branches to that femoral nerve and they either missed the first attempt (my guess) or it was necessary to do a second block on another branch (their spin). This is not intended to be critical....that stuff happens and I'm impressed at the concentration of brain power and intense effort the whole staff put into resolving the situation as quickly as possible.

An attendant rolled her bed down endless corridors and through a couple of elevator banks to another building which must be a quarter mile away. We ended up in the old Vanderbilt Hospital building, 6th floor, in a huge (by hospital standards) room. From her arrival there, Carolyn was pitifully nauseated off and on for the next 24 hours. She has always suffered from this post-surgery misery and though this was not the worst-ever, it was pretty bad at times. As time went on, we figured out is was a reaction to the high-powered pain killer they were giving her by IV (oxycontin). After 3 doses at 12-hour intervals, she told them...."Don't do that again; I'd rather hurt!" They switched her over to some oral stuff of lesser magnitude and the nausea was greatly abated.

Tuesday morning, they announced that her blood level was low and they were going to give her a transfusion. We were prepared in advance for this possibility and she had given a pint earlier which they had on hand......so she would be transfused with her own blood. This is about a six-hour procedure and would delay her physical therapy for just about the entire day. At this point it looked like we were losing a whole day in the scheduled process geared to her being sent home on Thursday.

Three hours into the transfusion, she was racked by more excruciating pain. Worse, she says, that the undiminished post-surgical pain when the nerve block failed. Once again, the staff was baffled! We had this tremendous charge nurse, a young woman originally from Colombia, and she was doing the transfusion.....but she fell victim to the same sort of thing which happened in the Recovery Room.....something outside the "way it ought to be" Severe back pain is a side effect of blood transfusion. They know that. BUT....it isn't (according to The Book) supposed to happen when you are being given your own blood. The nurse was smart enough to see no other proximate cause and turned off the blood flow. Within minutes, the pain eased, and Carolyn went to sleep. Watchfully, the nurse turned the drip on again, and the transfusion was completed without further incident.

Wednesday was really the beginning of physical therapy, the progress in which is a determining factor in when and whether one goes home on schedule. It did not go well. Carolyn was still nauseated off and on, more or less a day behind, acting like someone whose surgery had been Tuesday not Monday. It was discouraging to hear talk of going to a Rehabilitation facility for 7-10 days rather than going home on Thursday as we had planned. At the same time I forced myself to face that possibility, I also resolved to do all I could to get her home.....and that "what" was to beseech God to do a work regarding her condition.

Thursday morning a new day dawned but I was so exhausted from the 3 days of stress and sleeplessness, I wasn't too cognizant of the change until mid-morning. Carolyn was simply "much improved" The physical therapist could hardly believe she was the same person who could barely do anything 18 hours earlier. Carolyn was up, taking steps with her walker, sitting in a chair, getting up, etc. By noon or one p.m. the charge nurse was saying things like: I think you'll be going home. When I, still a bit stupified, said "When?".......she floored me with "this afternoon"......and sure enough, at 3:05 Thursday, she was in the car and we were merging into the traffic outside the hospital driveway.

SPEAKING OF MONEY....

Well, I was in Kroger's today and had sent a clerk into the storeroom to see if they had any Ginger Ale since none was on the shelf. To while away the time, I opened a letter from one of my congregants. In it was a check from the State of Tennessee drawn against the inmate's account, payable to the prison ministry. So, the clerk comes back, says "no ginger ale" and seeing the tears in my eyes must think this guy really wanted that ginger ale.....

I went down the dog food aisle and spent a few minutes scrutinizing the labels on the bottom shelf......had to get on my knees to do that. God continually reminds me of His great power to change men, to re-create them. I am not only grateful that He does this, especially that He did it for me, but that He constantly parades His trophies of Grace before me, blessing me with their testimonies and the evidences like this of what He does with those who were once dead in trespasses and sin.

What does it mean that I see so much more of this behavior from my convicted felon brothers than I see from the respectable, pillars of the community church members? We've had an inmate who gave his tithe every month, in the form of postage stamps, to the prison work. We have inmates who because of their poor vision get large-print periodicals by mail and when they are through with them, give them to us to place in nursing homes. I've told you the story of the paroled men who pooled their funds to pay the deposit at a half-way house for one of their brothers who had no money (He is there; arrived the 31st).

I'm trying to figure a way to compare the generosity of these men to the experience we've had with free-world churches, but don't think I can do it without being misunderstood as a whiner or seeming to hint for a handout. Suffice it to say, this brother who sent that check surpassed the total amount we have ever received in support of this prison work from all churches, ever. That's fine in that God has always provided in His own way and I've learned enough to look to Him rather than depend upon men in any way. But that's quite a commentary in my on-going rant on churches and money.