My five senses transport me back to childhood summers.

Sight:

The flicker of fireflies’ luminescence lighting the darkling sky.

Smell:

The fragrant liqueur of honeysuckle lazily dangling off a fence.

Taste:

The ice-cold, red-heart sweetness of a sunbaked, rain-distilled watermelon.

Touch:

Green grass touching soles and tickling toes during a barefoot stroll.

Sound:

The whir of an oscillating fan graciously bestowing brief breezes of dog-day heat.

This summer see, smell, taste, touch, and hear the goodness of the LORD!

My weekend emails regularly contain homiletical offers, including:

• Sermon for tomorrow—immediate access!
• Sermon for this Sunday. Reliable. Professional. Easy.
• Sermons freshly written for the Pentecost season.
• Sermons professionally written for every Sunday.

Based on the subject lines, a red-letter market thrives for preachers interested in purchasing Saturday Night Special Sermons.

In full disclosure, I often borrow from others in sermon preparation. After 2,000 years of Christendom, no one achieves originality. Dr. Fred Craddock, who taught homiletics at Candler School of Theology, warned, “He who steals from me steals twice.” And Fred probably got that statement from someone else!

However, preaching store-bought sermons as homemade homilies smacks of intellectual dishonesty and spiritual slothfulness. Like Esau, clergy that settle for “reliable, professional, and easy” sermons trade their birthright for porridge.

Preachers worth their salt labor over proclaiming the Gospel in a unique time and place to a particular people and parish. The integration of Word and World requires a pastor to stand with one foot in the sanctuary and another in the street.

Like Jacob at the Jabbok, faithful ministers wrestle with the Lord and struggle with the text. We limp away from the encounter, sharing with others our hard-won experience.

A homemade homily prepared with love and preached with faithfulness may not be “professionally written,” but it inspires the hearts, minds, and souls of God’s saints.

This week I am celebrating my fourth anniversary as the senior pastor of Northside Church. I give thanks to God for the opportunity to serve the congregation and community. Today I am sharing the blog that I wrote the week prior to my very first Sunday at NSC.

First words are important.

After all, well begun is half done. A carefully-crafted opening provides a proper introduction to an author’s thoughts. Therefore, I spend an inordinate amount of time on the first word, sentence, paragraph, and page.

Some days the words flow like a river’s rapids. Other days the syllables ooze like molasses in January. I find myself staring at the blinking cursor on the computer screen, wondering why the inventor didn’t call it a CURSER!

First words are difficult because an author must CHOOSE. Out of an infinite number of beginnings, there can only be ONE first word, sentence, and paragraph.

This Sunday I will preach my first sermon as the new senior pastor at Northside United Methodist Church in Atlanta. Like Jacob at the Jabbok ford, God and I have wrestled over what to say . . . and what not to say . . . and how to say it. After all, first words are important because they form first impressions.

Over the past weeks, those adolescent first-day-at-school-anxieties have welled up inside. Will they like me? Will the other children play with me? Can I get my locker open? Where’s the bathrooms? What if I get lost?

Time and again the Holy Spirit whispers in my soul, “Peace, be still.” Then I remember that the LORD is the First and Last, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. All of life occurs within the context of God’s providential grace.

God always has the first word . . . and God always has the last word. So Psalm 19:14 has become my prayer for the first word of the first sermon on a first Sunday:

May the words of my mouth

and the meditations of my heart

Be acceptable in thy sight,

O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.

First words are important.

Churches everywhere are observing Vacation Bible School Season. Although liturgical calendars do not note the sacred time, summer would not be complete without the Holy Week of bedlam and chaos.

I grew up attending VBS with a different theme each year. A joyful Jesus adorned all of the materials. Maps, pictures, and posters adorned the cinderblock walls. Flimsy 33-rpm records supported the curriculum with the week’s featured songs.

Filmstrips were high tech way back then. Multi-media presentations included felt boards with cartoon figures. For years, I thought all the disciples were six inches tall with Velcro strips down their backs!

Recreation was the high point of the day. The older youth led the playtime, which meant the teenage boys flirted with their female counterparts while we ran wild. The more organized leaders tossed us a kick ball before standing aside.

Refreshments included juice along and cookies. Whenever I read about Jesus feeding the five thousand with loaves and fishes, I always assumed the writers meant to say Kool-Aide and Oreos! I also thought that the pastors ought to substitute iced sugar cookies for the stale crackers used at Holy Communion.

We loved arts and crafts time, using markers, construction paper, glitter, balsa wood, and modeling clay. Oh, and the things we could do with a few Popsicle sticks and some paste glue! No doubt Noah constructed the ark with only these supplies on hand.

During music, we enthusiastically sang the songs of faith. Our Top Ten List included “This is My Father’s World,” “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” and “The B-I-B-L-E.”  Our all time, number one, favorite was “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know.”

Truth to tell, I remember the context of Vacation Bible School much more than the content. However, those summer weeks became grace-moments in my life. I learned that the Lord God Almighty, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, loved and cherished ME!

I hope every child in our community has the opportunity to attend Vacation Bible School this summer. The experience will transform their lives, and the memories will last forever.

Give this generation a foundation of faith along with some juice, cookies, and Popsicle sticks, and they will change the world forever!

Due to the global pandemic, the North Georgia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church is meeting virtually this year. The clergy and laity will meet separately on Thursday followed by a business session on Friday. On Saturday, two worship services will honor those who have died and celebrate those who are ordained.

Traditionally, the final agenda item is the “fixing of the appointments.” The bishop formally announces the pastoral appointments for the coming year. Back in the day, this was the first-time clergy and churches heard about upcoming changes. Today, the announcement formalizes the work done in the winter and spring.

On a personal note, I am delighted that our entire clergy team has been reappointed to Northside United Methodist Church. Catherine Boothe Olson, Jeff Rogers, and I look forward to serving our congregation and community during the coming year.

Ordained elders in the United Methodist church serve as itinerate pastors. During ordination, we promise to go where the bishop sends. It’s like signing a blank check with the currency of your life, trusting another to spend it wisely.

I entered the full-time ministry in 1982, and I have served seven appointments over the past thirty-nine years. My family and I have experienced the gamut of emotions during years of transition and change. Looking back, however, I can witness the Holy Spirit working in, thru, and despite our appointive process.

I sometimes smile and say, “Methodist polity is the worst system in the world—except for all of the rest of them!” Despite the challenges and shortcomings of itinerant ministry, I cannot imagine a better way of discerning pastoral appointments.

Although Methodist elders take formal vows of itineracy, God calls ALL Christians to go wherever the Lord sends. Faithful disciples walk in the footsteps of Jesus. Go where you are sent, and you will find the Holy Spirit waiting.