Good Times

We have had some wonderful times in ministry lately.

Sitting around the table on Friday night, we read a little bit from Justin Martyr. It was about Christian worship, and what struck us was how Justin describes that during the service, the wealthy and the willing gave a freewill offering, and that money was used to support widows, orphans, the poor, and strangers. We all thought how freeing it would be for the church if that’s what the offering went to.

One of the guys there asked me about Justin and I was able to hand him a volume of the Apostolic Fathers. He came back to me and held up crossed fingers, “Me and Clement are like this!”

And then Diane Sears asked what do we know about some of the minor characters of the New Testament. So I handed her Jerome’s “Lives of Illustrious Men.”

It’s nice to be able to hand out stuff from the early church.

I did get called to account by the guy who like Clement… It’s Steve McKinney. He pointed out that Chrysostom died in 407 or something and so therefore when I say I don’t read anything past the fourth century… hey I’m just glad people are paying attention.

Friday and Saturday Night we had prayer and praise with the Congolese. For hours they sang and prayed and preached. We had some powerful times in the Lord. I was asked if I would come to their retreat in Chicago. I preached last year for them when it was in Lexington, and I can say I am honored. One of the fellows, Phanuel, came up t me and said, “Thanks for being our Papa.” I thought, it is sad that what little I have done for them has affected them so much as to embrace me and thank me and invite me to preach.

The garden ministry is going along great as well. We planted twenty pounds of potatoes, along with onions, spinach, lettuce, and radishes. We’ll be looking forward to summer gardening, raising food for hungry peoole.

John Gallaher preached Sunday and it was awesome. How good it is to be working with guys like Rosario, Blake, and John.