What a great, great time we had this week at our church for this year's Holy Week Services!!! My, oh my, I have fallen into even greater love with my Christ and my God!!! All the sermons this week by very phenomenal and seasoned men in gospel ministry were life changing!!
Dr. Perkins percolated prophetically. Bishop McKissick, Sr. was mind-boggling! Bishop Peyton stirred the coals of the fire in my life concerning the cross!! And Bishop Morton hit it and quit it with us all in awe.
The 7 last sayings series, yesterday at noon, was great, as usual. That service is becoming a "major" meeting in the Bay County area as our church was nearly filled to capacity in the middle of the day on a Friday! All the preachers did a fine job, but every year there always seems to be a "signature presentation" out of all the presenters. I believe yesterday's "signature" was the 3rd saying presented by Pastor Lillie Hutchinson of the Wynn Memorial Pentecostal Temple Church of God in Christ in our city. It was absolutely unreal how she personified the situation of a mother looking at her son on the cross and in trouble. My God!!! Thank you "Mother Pastor!"
Today, I'm trying not to do anything (well, not publically at least). I'm going to try to put the finishing touches on my two different preaching presentations for tomorrow. Yes, St. John Disciples, I said two different preaching presentations. :-) (For all my all day attendees, you won't get a part of the message at the early session and then a full presentation of the same message at the 2nd session. Tomorrow we will have 2 full worship services!)
After putting these finishing touches on it is my plan to wash the cars. Everytime I say something like that my people will often ask "you wash your own cars?" Or "you do your own laundry?" It's like I'm not a real person who lives in the real world like everyone else. Though, it's funny how that applies in some cases and other cases they expect you to be just as "real" as they are when they want to tell you what to do or control you. Yes, church folks are a strange breed.
It is just unreal how we talk to the man (or woman) of God sometimes. Thinking retrospectively, we had an incident to happen this week that I hope doesn't leave a lasting blemish on our church and my ministry. In case you don't know, preachers are a rather eccentric group with strange ways and peculiar habits. One of my mentors, Pastor Harold K. Lester in Chattanooga, Tennessee, says all preachers/pastors are mentally off; we have to be in order to deal with all that we have to deal with from church people and the life of a minister. So we develop little quirks to try to help us cope.
For a layperson in the church to tell a seasoned pastor of the church what he is or is not going to do is absolutely uncouth; even if it is seemingly for his own good. I think one thing we should hold on to is that the preacher/pastor is solely in the hands of God. And for us to try to take the reigns from God to make him do what we want him to do, good or bad, is an absolutely appalling gesture.
Wow, the blog just got thought provoking.
Anyway, this whole Orlando Magic drama is wearing me thin. I'm just about to get on my son's bandwagon and start calling for a complete overhaul of the organization in Orlando. They're acting like little babies and whimps down there and it doesn't look good.
Also, in the sports world, I was already struggling to continue my Marlin mania because I'm not too fond of this name change deal. I liked the fact that the Miami team used to represent the entire state of Florida, now it seems that's not what they want; which makes me feel they don't care about support outside of Miami. (By the way, I'm not a Miami (the city) fan at all and not a fan of all teams Miami; so now you can feel my dilemma.) And to top off my struggle for fanaticism, these new Miami Marlins come out of the box losing their first 2 games and only scoring one run between the both of them. This is going to be a rough major league baseball season. May be time to return back to the Mets or even try the Rays of Tampa Bay. (But I like Ozzie too! smh)
I'm going to wait a few more days then maybe blog something about people's inquistion and so called "concern" for persons in the body of Christ and what exactly they expect me, us, as pastors to address or handle different scenarios in that arena. Let me see how many more calls I get before I start in on that.
Happy Resurrection Sunday to everyone tomorrow. Let's make sure we don't forget to worship! You can do so with us at our church at 6:00am (and get breakfast) or 8:45am or 10:00am. I'm still excited.
