My journey as a pastor - Church

I began my new life in a Baptist church. And the Bible College I attended was baptistic in its view of church. They thought (and taught) that liturgy, having something written and repeated, was not spiritual. The irony is, the Baptist churches I attended did have a liturgy, they just called it ‘the order of service’ – you knew what was going to happen and when in each service. The church service was always: welcome, couple of hymns, offering, special music, and sermon. And you always knew exactly what the ushers would pray after receiving the offering! When I started attending the Alliance Church in Memphis, while the Sunday night service was a good bit more unpredictable because of the opportunities for unplanned “testifying”, it was pretty much the same thing. No church I ever attended had regular Scripture reading, and (Sunday) prayer was limited to a rather brief “Pastoral Prayer.”

So, when I began pastoring that’s what I went with. I was constantly working to incorporate a contemporary aspect to the service to promote worship, but I confess, I did not see the need to read the Scriptures each week and I have a feeling that my “pastoral prayers” were probably pretty weak. But God was working.

The Lord began showing me that the reading of the Scripture was an ancient practice. The Jews systematically read through the Scriptures. I don’t mean simply the passage someone was going to preach from that day. No, they read through The Law (first five books of the Bible) every year. They systematically read through the Prophets as well. The Apostles continued this practice. They commanded, “devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture” and the early church was obedient to the apostolic charge. I slowly became convinced and convicted of this and established a Scripture reading program in which we publicly read through entire books of the Bible.

I still remember sitting in a Methodist Church in Jackson, MS when God spoke to me about prayer. They had a “time of prayer” and I was convicted: this was ancient and apostolic. I began to research this. The liturgical churches often had a Litany, “a series of petitions for use in church services, usually recited by the clergy and responded to in a recurring formula by the people.” That is,
Leader: We pray for our pastor and all the pastors in this area.
People: Lord, hear our prayer / or, Lord, have mercy
Then I found that liturgical worship was very old and I found the early prayers. Man, they prayed for everything. Every week. So I printed those prayers found in the four or five oldest liturgies and they became my pastoral prayers.

And speaking of Liturgy, when I discovered it wasn’t merely the “dead ritual of dead churches” but ancient and apostolic, I began to incorporate that as well. Every Communion service was now always observed as a liturgical service. Was this stuffy ritual that I resorted to because I was no longer operating under the Spirit? No, this was a purposeful effort to make this richer for us. Here is the congregation’s copy:
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Communion Service

Old Testament Reading

Pastor: Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
All: We praise You; we bless You; we worship You; we glorify You; we magnify You; we give thanks to You for Your great mercy. O Lord heavenly King, God the Father Almighty; O Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God,;  Lamb of God Who takest away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us. You Who sit at the right-hand of God the Father, receive our prayers. Have mercy upon us, for You only art holy, You only are the Lord, You only are glorious; with the Holy Spirit in the glory of God the Father. Amen.

Prayer

Reading of the Gospel

Prayer

All: Hallelujah, The Lord is my strength and my praise and He is become my Salvation. Hallelujah

Reading of the Epistle

Sermon

Confession of Faith (The Nicene Creed)

Prayer
All: We believe You; we bless You; we adore You; and we praise Your Name forever: You through Whom is the Salvation of the world; through Whom is the Life of men; through Whom is the Resurrection of the dead. Amen!

Communion
Prayer
All: We believe, O Lord. We believe we have been redeemed by the breaking of the Body, and the pouring forth of the Blood; and we rely on this Sacrifice
The Lord's Prayer

Prayer of Thanksgiving
Benediction
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We were certainly an interesting church: We had contemporary worship led by the best praise team ever, we were reading through books of the Bible, had a definite time of prayer, and a teaching time as well! We had the form and we had the life.

Why bother with a funeral?

Why bother with a funeral? There are those who dispense with it altogether. “Why bother? The person is dead. Let’s just move on.” Without criticizing those who do not hold funerals, I want to offer my thoughts on why a funeral is good and helpful.

First, the funeral is for the departed. Clearly, they are no longer with us. They are dead. They have departed. They’ve passed on. They’re gone. Do you notice have many expressions refer to the soul? It’s not simply that life has ceased in that vessel, they are gone. That which made them them has left. But I digress… The funeral is a time to honor and remember this person. They didn’t just live a meaningless, purposeless life. They meant something to somebody. They touched somebody. They impacted someone. They changed someone’s life. The funeral is a time to honor them for their life.

It’s also a time to say “Good-bye.” I believe this is important and healthy. Do I mean literally say good-bye? Yes. “What are you talking about? You’ve already admitted they’re gone. Now you say I should talk to them?” Yes. When you lose a loved one and visit their grave, what do you do? You talk to them. Sometimes you offer family updates. Other times you ask for counsel. They’re not actually there. And they are not going to respond. Yet you talk to them. I believe this is normal. If you don’t understand this, I can’t explain it.

Second, the funeral is for the family. This is a time to gather with them and offer comfort and condolences. This is very helpful and encouraging. Of course, this needs to be followed up with practical demonstrations of love, but the funeral is a time to stand with them in their sorrow. This is important. We are community. There is tendency today to move indoors and isolate ourselves. This is not good. Or healthy.

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
                                                                         John Donne


This is why we should bother with a funeral.

Maybe this flag should come down as well

Every day now, and on every side, we are hearing calls and demands for the Confederate flag to be removed. Companies like Amazon and Walmart have removed it and all products showing it from their offerings. One video game even removed it from a Civil War game. A protester took it upon herself to remove it from its pole at the State Capitol in Columbia. People are outdoing each other in their displays of “righteous indignation” over this flag.

In addition to this, I have heard calls to go further – rename all buildings, streets, cities, parks that bear the names of Confederate era heroes and remove all statues of the same. After all, they were all slave owning, violently racist men, without an ounce of honor. I recently read an article written by a Robert Lee, whose great, great, great grandfather was Robert E. Lee, in which he expressed the “great guilt” he felt being related to such a monster.

I’m wondering if they are going far enough. Should they think about removing all flags and memorials associated with slavery and racism? This would include the American flag.

Consider:

• Slavery in America was not restricted to the South. (Slavery did not even originate in the South, it is almost as old as the human race itself.) Did you know that all of the original thirteen colonies were slave states? All of them.

• George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were slave owners. Washington freed his slaves, but only at his death. Jefferson fathered children with his slaves.

• In the years preceding the war of northern aggression there were states admitted to the Union as “slave states.”

• After the North won the war, they sent carpetbaggers to the South to rape and pillage while their military heroes went out West. And what did they do out there? They were part of the genocidal campaign against those pesky Indians. The policy of the US was to round up them Indians and place them on reservations if they were cooperative, otherwise to wipe the buggers out.

• A legitimate Monarch of an internationally recognized kingdom was arrested by a band of Marines and held under house arrest the rest of her life and this kingdom "claimed" by the United States (Hawai'i).

All of this and more under the banner of the American flag. I would think that for this “righteous indignation” to be consistent they would turn on this banner too, as well as all streets and cities and states that bear the names of those two villainous, racist, slave-owning guys, Washington and Jefferson.

But that won’t happen. Besides, we know that once the Confederate flag comes down and is no longer allowed to be displayed anywhere by anyone, all racism will cease. It’s a known fact that there are no racial problems or tensions in cities and states where the Confederate flag is not flown or displayed.

remember, history is written by the victor