Thank God for New Hope…

The first church I ever knew was my home church, New Hope Baptist Church, Wauchula, Florida.  My earliest memories were of my Aunt Faye feeding us cookies and cool-aid in Sunday School.  Wise woman that she was, she laced our memories of church with sugar, making a grace-filled chemical bond in our brains. 

My friends were all in that class: Mark White, Mark Lambert, Teresa Weeks, Audrey Graham, and Denise Grimsley.  We learned the stories of Bible from pictures sent from Nashville.  After the Bible stories, we got to work puzzles or play with Play-Doh, a marvelous invention, unless your name was Clay.  Early on I was tagged as “Clay-Doh.”  Personality tests I have taken through the years say I am very flexible when it comes to ideas.  I trace that trait back to my childhood nickname. 

After Sunday School, we would go to church.  There was no such thing as “Children’s Church” in those days.  When the hymn books opened, we were supposed to stand and sing, though none of us could read.  For some reasons, the song leader would call out “Let’s sing verses 1, 2 and 4.”  I never sang the third verse of hymn until I went to college. 

When the preacher got up to preach, we were expected to be quiet.  It’s hard to be quiet when you are only four or five.  Once, Mark White and I were looking through a Bible and came upon a picture of Abraham sacrificing Isaac.  Isaac was naked, except for a strategically placed sheet.  Five-year-old boys find naked people funny.  We started to giggle.  We knew it was wrong to giggle in church, but some things make giggles grow.  We laughed out loud and I received from my mother a pinch that would flatten barb wire.  My mother had not read Dr. Spock’s theories on child punishment.  Her pinch stopped my giggles.  In the front yard of the church, in full view of the church body, I received one of the strongest “whippings” of my life.  I have never laughed at a picture of a mostly naked man in church since.

In those days we had church on Sunday nights, to prove we were more pious than the Methodists and Presbyterians.  Backsliders would stay home and watch “Bonanza” or “The Ed Sullivan Show.”  But Sunday night were usually better than Sunday mornings, because I would get to sit next to Mama Cat, who always had some candy in her purse for bored little boys.  What was even better was after church when the adults would stand around and talk.  We kids would play tag (this was before smart-phones took away childhood).  I was chasing Harold Lambert one night and swallowed a stink bug.  I went to tell Mama and she told me, “Don’t you dare throw up.”  It was a threat of self-preservation – she had a weak stomach.  There was something in her voice that told me it was better to digest than expel.  I’ve heard about people stranded on deserted islands eating bugs to survive.  If I am ever on a deserted island and bugs are my only option, I will die.  One bug was enough for a lifetime.

Childhood does not last forever.  When I was teen-ager, New Hope had a youth Sunday.  The youth led the service, and I was the preacher.  It takes a lot of grace for aunts and uncles to listen to a sixteen-year-old berate them about their sins.  I didn’t know it at the time, but the older you get, the options for sin you have.

One summer, New Hope let me be a summer intern to work with the youth.  I wasn’t very good at it, but they gave that most precious gift, the gift of experience.  Experts say you need 10,000 hours of doing something before you get good at it.  My first hours of teaching Sunday School, preaching, even leading the singing (I would make everyone sing the third verse), happened at New Hope.

When the time came for me to be ordained as a Minister of the Gospel, it was New Hope that laid hands on me and whispered blessings in my ears.  My brother and sister got married at New Hope.  My father, mother, and step-father had their funerals at New Hope.  There are twelve stained glass windows given in honor or memory of folks.  I kin to most of them.

Across the road from church is the cemetery.  My father, mother, grandparents, two sets of great-grandparents, uncles, aunts, and more cousins than you can shake a stick at are buried there.  My New Hope roots run pretty deep.

I’m going home this week to speak at New Hope’s 140th anniversary.  To invited is more than an honor.  It’s a sacred duty.  Whether you realize it or not, everyone has spiritual roots.  Somewhere along the line, someone gave and sacrificed to help you have a spiritual foundation.  The people of New Hope did that for me.  I thank God for them.

People I will not meet until I am in heaven started a church 140 years ago.  They believed.  They gave.  Their faith seeped into my soul and has carried me a long way in my journey.  They named their church New Hope.  Isn’t that what Jesus really brings?

Church Is …

As far back as I can remember, I knew God wanted me to be a preacher. “Preacher” was synonymous with “Pastor,” but we were never that formal at Route 1, Zolfo Springs, FL.  I knew what I was supposed to be, but I did not know where. 

We lived in suburban Lemon Grove (urban Lemon Grove had Graham’s Store; suburban Lemon Grove meant you could not see another house from your porch).  We attended church seven miles away in Popash, a country crossroads that used to have a school, but now just had a church and a country store that kept going out of business.  I’m not sure why, but in my five-year-old mind, I decided Lemon Grove needed a church. 

I knew Popash needed a church, because there were apparently a lot of sinners there.  The preacher at New Hope Church talked about them constantly.  Sinners apparently stayed home from church on Sunday nights watching “Bonanza,” went to dances, drove up to the County Line (it would be years before I understood “The County Line” did not refer to a political boundary but a liquor store), and snuck over to the theater in Sebring to watch non-wholesome, non-Disney movies. 

I didn’t understand all that the preacher at New Hope talked about, but I was aware of sin in Lemon Grove.  My brother Steve was the source of most the sin I knew about.  In reality, he was simply performing “big brother” duty.  But he was mean to me, bossing me around, telling me I was adopted, and generally being annoying.  Having a church in Lemon Grove meant I could preach to my brother and label his sins for all the world to condemn. 

We owned a piece of land on the dirt road that met our house.  It was covered with palmettos, tall pines, and blackjack oaks.  I decided that was the perfect place to build my church. 

I announced this to my mother, my sister, and my brother.  I left out the part about being able to preach hell and fire (“damnation” sounded too much like a cuss word and I was afraid I’d get my mouth washed out with soap).  They smiled indulgently.  My mother said something like “You’d better start gathering bricks now.”

At age five, I started collecting bricks.  There were always a few to be uncovered down at the barn.  Once, I took one from my Aunt Mildred’s flower bed.  I got a whipping and was told never to take something that didn’t belong to me.  Bricks were harder to come by in those days.

I wasn’t sure how many bricks I needed; I could only count to a hundred.  One day I tried to count the bricks on the building at New Hope and I ran out of numbers before I ran out of bricks.  Building my own church was going to be a lot harder than I thought.

Of course, I never built my own church building.  But for years, we referred to that twenty acres as “the land where Clay is going to build his church.”  Even when I went off to college, the land was still uncleared.  Finally, economic reality set in.  Pop cleared the land and set an orange grove there (any old-timer will tell you blackjack oaks and palmettos make for a fine orange grove). 

Somewhere along the way a different idea began to take hold in my soul.  Church wasn’t a building.  I learned church was people.  You could have a church without a building, but you couldn’t have a church without people. 

Then I learned that definition was incomplete as well.  Church wasn’t just a group of people.  Church was supposed to be a group of people gathered to do something for Jesus.  Church is a movement.

I’ve sat in meeting after meeting and heard people say, “Church is a business.”  Wrong.  Businesses exist to serve owners.  Churches exist to change the world with Good News.  If a church doesn’t make Jesus its focus, it loses its power.  It becomes an institution, centered on maintaining the building and keeping everyone happy.

About a hundred churches close each week in North America.  My hunch is somewhere along the way, folks forgot church is a movement.  Church is a group of people who share the adventure of following Jesus and telling the Good News of God’s love as they follow him.  The building is just a tool to help the movement.

How do you make sure your church is a movement?  It starts with you.  Do you want the church to focus on you?  Or do you want the church to focus on Jesus?  Your answer either makes the church a pile of bricks and sticks, or makes it a movement that has the power to change the world.  Your choice.