The Grief Is Still Too Near...

What can be worse than your own tragedy, one that happens to one of your children? There are many words that describe the way I feel right now; extreme sadness, sympathy, compassion but the one most prominent is helplessness. Our daughter had the healthiest pregnancy, brought the baby to full term and then the day before she was to give birth the child had no heart beat. My heart simply breaks for her and my son-in-law and for our whole family. So much I want to comfort her but yet comfort seems to have left our presence completely. My prayer last night was for the Lord to wrap His arms around her and my son-in-law and really draw them close during this time and to let us know the right things to say and do. My prayer is also for their young marriage and the stress this may bring to it. My heart is not full of why questions thought these typically accompany the grieving process early on. I have learned this does not lead down the comfort road as they most likely will not be answered. As righteous a man as Job was God did not feel the need to answer any of his questions. Sometimes understanding helps the recovery process come quicker but in this situation a lot of understanding may not be given. So then what does this leave? Only love and trust are left. Recovery is a hill that generally can only be climbed slowly and steadily and is different for everyone. Men and women for the most part do not process grief the same way. The very things that may bring comfort to a woman may make it more difficult for a man to recover and vice versa. Men often times want to quickly distance themselves from whatever it is that causes them pain while a woman may seek things to cherish and remind them of the situation. Women may want to speak about it often and verbalizing helps them in the healing process while some men do not. A common friend we all have in these situations is time. Now I don’t believe that time alone heals all wounds but time connected with much prayer and love from those closest to you it is the best remedy we have for tragedy. My heart still breaks.

Monday Morning Weather

The weather has been changing here up on Limestone ridge this morning. As Denise went off to watch Sawyer this morning, I got out and walked as the temps were hovering around 45 and the wind was asleep. By the time I had run an errand and come back from the post office, it was raining hard. Not an hour later the wind has not only woken up, but is running up and down the hills here so hard I had to wind the awning on the RV in to prevent it from being ripped in two. The rest of the day will be a quite one spent inside working on a ministry newsletter and some cards to send out until it is time to head out to James and Kim's for dinner.

This morning’s study comes out of the book of Hosea and has lead to some interesting thoughts. A friend of mine and I were discussing various things a while back and the subject of a popular evangelist we both knew came up…well actually I brought it up. He had fallen from grace and damaged his ministry severely because of an affair, and yet I seem to recall he was back again. My friend had told me that he had gone against advice from those who have a specific ministry of helping people to be restored and came back too quickly. When I read Hosea I am reminded that before God restored His people He always judged them first. There was a time of suffering for their sin against Him. From what I understand in Scripture, the one who repents and is asking for forgiveness does not set the terms. It would seem one’s heart is not right if they have committed a sin against another and then turn around and say okay here is what I am going to do to make things right. If we are truly interested in restoring the relationship, we humbly ask, "What can I do to make things right again?"

The 4th Annual Board meeting of Restoring The Church Ministries went well. We brought a new member on the board as another came off. Dr. Richards is a fine man and I hate to see him go, but understand his reason. He has been on board since the beginning of this ministry and he will be missed. On the other hand I am very excited about the new member, Dwight Moss. He brings so much to the table and I look forward to working with him in the future.

Met with a rather high profile guy for breakfast last week and if he decides to get involved I believe it will really help our efforts out at the camp. Like I shared with the Board on Friday, much of my time right now is spent on the phone and having lunch with folks building those relationships. Met with a young pastor last week and we are praying about where God would have us serve next.

One more week until our second grandchild, first child for my daughter, enters the world. These are exciting times! I am so proud of both of my children and their spouses. Just a commercial here if you ever need pictures made check out “Something Beautiful Photography”. There are many out there who can take pictures and fairly good ones with all these digital cameras and such, but James just seems to have an eye for what looks good. We have been updating the Camp MACOBA blog and just added a couple of new entries…only two more to go. The rain and wind are keeping the critters away for the time being but I am sure they are not too far away.

Run For Cover

It was a good idea to get my walk in and all errands taken care of this morning while the breeze was still a gentle one among the trees. It is now around 1:30 and the breeze has turned into a roar coming over the ridge up here at the camp. The critters have all run for cover...they seem to know what is coming and they have not even seen the radar like I have. The Wind has long been a menace to hunters and fishermen alike and generally likes to show out when he gets a chance. Some trees seems to be holding on for dear life as he pretends to be the big bad wolf this afternoon! Well all the hatches are battened down as the rest of my day will be spent right here in the RV up on Limestone Ridge. The workers came out yesterday and completed stage two of the new gate project. We tried it out and the electronic gate works very well and looks good too. The final stage, which involves some trenching and installing a solar panel, will probably take place next week. I dropped in the mail this morning about 150 postcards for local churches inviting them to the upcoming Sunday School Conference at Willowbrook Baptist. This is one many could benefit from and much prayer will be taking place from now until the day of conference that God will move the hearts of those who need this to show up. The instructor will be Daniel Edmonds and in my opinion he is one of the top five Sunday School Leaders out there.


This past Thursday and Friday I spent on the Eastern Shore. Seems like I remember something about Orcs patrolling these shores…didn’t see any though. The ABREA Annual meeting was held in Fairhope this year and I rode down with a friend of mine from Athens. Dwight Moss is the new Minister of Education at Decatur Baptist and let me tell you he is on top of his game. He came over from Clements Baptist where they were voted as one of the best growing churches in the Southeast in the last five years. The trip is a little over six hours one way. When you spend that much time in a vehicle with someone, the opportunity to know them increases quite a bit. The conference was a good one and the speaker, “Jay McSwain“ did an excellent job. This may have been the best conference on connecting people to ministry I have ever been to. As a matter of fact, we will probably be receiving several training sessions in “Place” (http://www.placeministries.org/) to help make us more valuable to the churches we serve. We had the privilege of viewing a new movie that is not coming out until September called “Courageous”. I thought it was the best Christian movie yet. Brent Shaw, who was the ABREA President and our host, did an excellent job. We had fresh seafood at the banquet and plenty of it. I remember meeting some friendly folks such as Wayne Polk and Chuck Ashley. There were packets from Lifeway given out to everyone which included a book. You can always count on Michael Gentry for some goodies. Speaking of Michael, it seems he was battling some kind of bug for awhile there. Saw Rick Ellison and Daniel Edmonds at the conference; now there are two busy guys. At our table was Charles Simmons, Minister of Education at Sardis Springs Baptist. He seems like a fine man who really knows his stuff when it comes to Sunday School and we had much conversation during our stay there. The wit and sarcasm of Mike Davis was missing as he was absent. Someone told me he was using some paper he was working on as an excuse. All in all it was a great trip and I am already looking forward to next year…which by the way is in Coosada. Not sure where that is going to have to Google it.

The rest of this evening will be spent making phone calls and setting up some lunch meetings for next week and preparing for our Ministry Board meeting on Friday.

A Friend From Days Gone By

The War On Respect . . .

Today as I sit up on Limestone Ridge it is raining and has been all morning long. It has been light and kind of steady. Growing up I can remember loving to stay with my grandmother and hearing the rain hit the tin roof as we drifted off to sleep at night. The RV is similar but not the same. Outside my window are eleven does feeding around and squirrels all over the place. It would seem most of their time is spent in play today as they continuously chase each other up and down trees and all over the hillside. Where do you go for a vacation when you live in a place like this?! We are truly blessed.


This morning’s study was on meditating and I have been doing some of that today along with a little wandering as well – with my thoughts that is. There is a meeting tomorrow that may have an effect on the direction of our ministry in the near future…we will see. Later this week there is a conference (Alabama Religious Educators Association) I will be attending with a friend of mine in the ministry and who will be coming on the board this year. You have heard the expression before that someone is “on top of their game”? Well he certainly is. My intention is to spend our time riding down and back getting to know him better.


There is a possibility that the hard economic times may be affecting my family in the near future and I don’t feel as prepared as I should be, which may lead to some hard decisions. If the house was sold it would sure help matters. Denise picks up her special ankle brace today and the special drugs I ordered came in as well. Hopefully this will help her ankle and we can avoid ankle fusion surgery and starting this whole recovery process all over again.


Yesterday I posted a quote on facebook from my study concerning respect and what God had put on my heart about this subject. This is one of those things where the world teaches us one thing but scripture teaches something else and the war within ourselves takes place. Like many others I was taught that respect is earned and it can be lost. We were taught to respect our elders, our teachers and the law enforcement officers. There was a certain amount of respect given to everyone. Now if someone was dishonest very often they began to lose our respect. If people were mean to us or did not show us respect, we began to hold back ours toward them as well. This has just about become the normal attitude nowadays. As a believer we are called to a higher standard and this is one of those areas where it sometimes becomes difficult.


Can you respect someone you don’t agree with or even like? The answer is yes; we can certainly show them respect. What makes a person respectable or easy to respect? Well let’s look at Respect’s two cousins named Dependability and Consistency. I can give my respect to someone who has a belief or characteristic about themselves, even if I don’t agree with, if they are consistent. Let me use an example from the workplace. Let’s say that you have someone who is always lazy and does the minimum in their job and really has to be made to conform to the rules. Somehow, sometime down the road, this person gets promoted and they become a stickler for the rules or maybe even become a slave driver. Get the picture here? Or say management tries to enforce rules that don’t apply to themselves. Now if someone has always been a hard worker or go-getter and then gets promoted why would anyone expect this character trait to not still be present? No doubt about it Consistency is related to Respect and he has other relatives as well which we won’t get into until another day. What about Dependability? If this younger cousin fails to show up enough times he will not only become lost but people will stop looking for him. You may hear statements like “can’t count on him,” or “they are never on time”. This is a shame too, because it is so easy to have Dependability move in with you and stay. I once read that a person who is always late is subconsciously saying, “My time is more important than yours.” It’s all a matter of Will, who by the way is a dominator and is constantly trying to be king of our life.


De-programming, or changing our thoughts and lifelong behaviors, takes much effort. When we can give our respect to those who have not earned it or we feel do not deserve it we are pleasing the Lord. We are called to be a different people, one set apart, and this is an area where we need all the help we can get sometimes. The Lord has sent us a helper for situations such as these, called the Holy Spirit. When we give our respect to those folks, it has the possibility of opening a door someday to share the reason why we follow a different drummer. I go back in my mind to Luke 6:32-33, which covers so many things, “If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to only those who do good to you what credit is that to you, for even sinners do the same.”

The Beginning....

When pondering over a title for this blog it did not take very long to come up with "The Quiet Place". We are living in our RV fulltime up at Camp MACOBA now and during the winter months it is definitely a quiet place...well if you don't count the critters of course.

Currently I have two other blogs (Restoring the Church Ministries and Camp MACOBA) which I will continue but I want to try and do this one at least weekly, maybe even more frequently. I am kind of thinking a good time would be on Sunday afternoons...we will see. This one may include some of the things I talk about on the other ones but will have much more personal thoughts and observations.

This winter has been an unusual one here in North Alabama with the ground being wet from either snow or rain almost every day since Christmas. This has delayed some outside projects I had planned up at the camp. The New Year looks to be our busiest one yet as many things are on the horizon. It seems that God is bringing the three areas of ministry I am involved in together and hopefully I will be able to see how these three pieces of the puzzle all fit together to honor Him in a mighty way. He knows what He is doing I pray for the wisdom to see it as well. The pieces I am referring to are Restoring The Church Ministries, Camp MACOBA Hosts, the North American Mission Board and the Madison Baptist Association where I am serving currently as the Associational Sunday School Director.

The first piece is Restoring The Church Ministries. This month we begin our fourth year and our mission is becoming clearer all the time. Simply put, "we help churches." Out target group is typically those who run 150 or less in attendance, which is pretty much most of them. I say typically because we certainly try to follow the Lord's leading in all we do and if He leads us to a larger church we would go. Now while we are open and certainly will be glad to offer the type of help other ministries out there offer, conferences, counseling, marriage seminars, Leadership Training, and those type of things, we feel success best occurs when we can come and be part of the church we are assisting. In one church we spent a year with them where I served as Minister of Education/Associate. During that time we started two new Sunday School classes, led a $70,000. 00 Children/Preschool area renovation project, (which came in under budget), installed and successfully updated a church record keeping system, and assisted in raising up two leaders in the church and another in training (which was the Pastor's main purpose for us being there). In another church I served as administrator and aided the Pastor in leading the church to go to dual Sunday Schools...efforts the two previous times in the past had failed. While our ministry is tailor-made to the church's greatest need, my background and heart is in Education/Sunday School.

The second piece is Camp MACOBA Hosts. A little over a year ago we entered into a mutually beneficial agreement with the Madison Baptist Association to serve as Camp Hosts. Church Camps are going out of business every year all over the country and the same thing almost happened here a few years ago. A group of dedicated men, many which are now on the Camp Committee, came forward at the annual meeting when the camp was being considered to be sold and said they could not stand to see that happen and mobilized much time and effort to clean the place up. We too fell in love with the camp our first time up here and have given our time and money to help move it in a positive direction. The economy is down and we have sought out other ways to help raise money and have formed some partnerships over the past year. The MBA Office tells us that in 2010 more people used the camp than any year they can remember. We have many ideas, which all take money, but are confident that God wants to use this place in a mighty way in the future and we'll feel honored if we can even be a small part of this.

Piece three is the North American Mission Board. Last year we went through the long process of applying to be missionaries through the NAMB. Late in the fall we were notified that we had been approved! We will be serving in this area at least until I retire from the Fire department in about three years and then who knows. There are two type of missionaries that come under the NAMB one that receives funding and one that does not which is called Mission Service Corps (which is what we are). At some point I will have to look into the ins and outs of this issue but if you know someone out there who wants to adopt some missionaries.... :)

Finally the last piece is with MBA as Associational Sunday School Director. I am so honored to serve on the Leadership team in this area. I have scheduled several conferences for the Association this year along with our annual Sunday School Banquet. My goal is to really focus on serving in this area in 2011. My wife Denise serves selflessly as well. She led the women's ministry just a few years ago in a church with 600+ in attendance.

We are expecting our second grandchild in March (first for my daughter). My daughter and her husband are currently serving in a new church start which is exciting. My son is on staff at Flint River, where he takes care of any publications and graphics, and his wife joins him in serving in the youth ministry. How could a man be more blessed than knowing his whole family is serving the Lord!

One project within the ministry is a book I am working on. The goal is to interview 100 Pastors and use this information to help others who are new or considering coming into the ministry. So far I have met with ten and already learned a lot. Criteria is that the Pastor has to have been in the ministry at least 15 years. A couple of questions in the interview involve what they did not learn at Seminary that would have been helpful to know and ways they have dealt with crisis.