A Preacher's Tales

A

Preacher’s

Tales

Henry A. Buchanan

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© 2011 Henry A. Buchanan. All rights reserved.

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First published by AuthorHouse    9/1/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4634-1449-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-1450-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011910066

Printed in the United States of America

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Contents

Introduction: A Preacher’s Tales

1. Couldha Done Better

2. Our Preacher Boy

3. Church Of The Open Door

4. The Marriage Bed

5. I’m Back!

6. I’m So Glad

7. The Tale Of The Interrupted Sermon

8. Behind The Backlog

9. But Not If You Are Black

10. And Who’ll Be Number Seven?

11. Fell…..Or Jumped?

12. Getting Them All Together

13. A Doctor’s Degree For Everybody

14. To Make A Novena

15. The Big Question

16. A Day In The Life Of A Hospital Chaplain

17. A Barrel Of Beer Cans

18. A Second Chance

19. A Wing And A Prayer

20. A Long Time

21. Choppy Waters

22. Enjoy Yourself Preacher

23. In The Arms Of Morpheus

24. Bobby Joe

25. And The First Shall Be The Last

26. On Growing Older Faster

27. The Disappearing Ghost

28. Not Talking To You

29. Not If She Comes With Him

30. In The Nick Of Time

31. Jesus Christ Super President

32. Let’s Have A Drink

33. Rent A Sinner

34. Riding High

35. That Man Moses

36. Over Troubled Waters

37. Vino M.D.

38. One Of Those Illiterate Baptists

39. Ain’t Worth A What?

40. A Few Farewell Remarks

41. A Man Like Us

42. An Uncooperative Witness

43. A Proper Maiden Lady

44. A Calendar For The Preacher

45. A Case Of Win Or Lose

46. All You Ever Wanted

47. The Ins And The Outs

48. Handicapped

49. Will This One Keep?

50. Fully Qualified

51. Where’s The Landing Field?

52. Who Will Pastor Her?

53. To Pray Without Ceasing

54. To Eat A Goat

55. The Turkey Hunt

56. Why No Children?

57. What God Made Sunday For

58. The Real Lord’s Supper

Epilogue To: ‘A Preacher’s Tales’

This book is dedicated to my Grandsons

Alex and Anthony

Introduction:

A Preacher’s Tales

I AM A TELLER OF Tales. For many years I have been telling the Tale of One who came among us teaching man the Way of Life. He was a Man sent from God to show us by word and deed what manner of men we should be in order that we might experience here on Earth what we have hoped for and have called Heaven because it is an experience in which God dwells with us and gives to our life the quality of God’s own Life.

In short, I am a Preacher. A very old Preacher. But one who has been young, even a Preacher Boy, and has experienced many things in the course of learning to preach, that is to tell the Tale of Jesus as He is embodied in many preachers whom He calls to tell His Tale of Heaven on Earth.

So I am telling here the Tale of how He has spoken and acted in me and in many of my brothers, my fellow Preachers in the effort to get His Tale told so that the Life of Man on this Earth may be enriched and become an experience of His Presence among us. So I present here A Preacher’s Tales, mine and that of my Brother Preachers.

There will be some humor, for preachers are funny people; at least they get caught in some humorous situations.

There will be some sadness too, even pathos, for preachers have to deal with tragedy in the lives of the people whom they live among and serve as men of God.

There will be something uplifting at times, for preachers are here to lift up the hearts of men and cause them to see beyond the present trouble. Here then are my preachers.

But you are already asking where I am in this Book of Preachers’ Tales? I am right there. Perhaps there is a little bit of me in every one of them. Or the me I might have been if I had been there.

So look for me. I will be looking out at you from the hilarious and the humorous and the heavenly experiences that give rise to these Tales. Oh! And excuse the language. We preachers have to deal with men where we find them.

Couldha Done Better

DAVID ABERNATHY WAS A YOUNG divinity student at Jesse Sprighton University when he met Cora Hawkins and decided to marry her. He did not meet Cora at the university; he met her at the Naval Ordnance Plant, more commonly called ‘The Fuse Plant’ because loading fuses was what the hundreds of workers did at the Naval Ordnance Plant in Ocmulgee, Georgia during World War Two when both David and Cora were working the swing shift which is from three in the afternoon to eleven at night. They were introduced to one another by Brother Horace Grogan who was a part-time Baptist preacher, also working at the Fuse Plant on the Southern edge of Ocmulgee.

Brother Grogan was a matchmaker too. He saw that David was old enough to get married, and he said With all these ‘war widows’ running around here this boy might get into trouble that would disqualify him for the ministry. What he needs is a good wife to be a steadying hand for him so that he can concentrate on his studies at JSU, and he can go on working here at the Fuse Plant without getting into trouble with some of these women who have husbands in the Army overseas.

So Brother Grogan arranged for David to be moved from his own crew of men building boxes for shipping the loaded fuses, to the job of hauling the sensitive powder from the underground magazines where it was stored to the production building where the powder was loaded into the fuses which would fire the bombs and shells and missiles at the Japanese Navy in the Pacific Ocean. Production Building A was where Cora Hawkins was the supervisor of a team of girls who carried the sensitive powder to the girls working on the assembly line to be pressed into the fuses.

It was all very sensitive and dangerous work and the girls working at the presses often had accidents, and sometimes lost a finger, but if one of Cora’s girls were to drop a whole tray of the explosive powder it could blow up the room in which they were working in Building A. And if one of the barrels of powder David was hauling from the underground magazine to the girls working in Building A should blow up it would take the South end of Ocmulgee with it. And this was the job that Brother Grogan had got David promoted to, shepherding that electric cart loaded with the barrel of explosive powder. David would ride a bicycle along-side the electric cart being driven by a Negro man named Cato. David’s job was to make sure that the barrel of powder reached Building A safely.

The reason Brother Grogan got David transferred from the crate building job to shepherding the electric cart loaded with sensitive powder was to enable David to meet Cora and work closely enough with her to cause them to fall in love and marry. Brother Grogan’s purpose was achieved, but David wanted to preach the gospel in addition to working the three to eleven shift at the Fuse Plant, and attending classes at JSU, and being married to Cora as well. Brother Grogan also knew about a little Baptist church in the country about sixty miles East of Ocmulgee; he arranged for David to get invited to preach a trial sermon at this church. He preached well enough for the church to ask him to come once each month to preach at the Pisgah Baptist Church.

On a Sunday following David’s marriage to Cora, David asked Cora to go with him to the Pisgah Baptist Church, and according to custom the two were invited to eat dinner at the home of Deacon Jonas Abercrombie. The old Deacon wanted to meet the young Preacher’s bride, and David was proud to introduce Cora to his host and hostess, the Abercrombies. When David said This is my wife old Deacon Abercrombie looked closely at Cora, and seeing that she was a beautiful young woman with dark hair and sparkling eyes and a winning smile and a good figure, Deacon Abercrombie welcomed David’s Bride Cora to his home and said Young Lady, I am proud to meet you. Then he studied her a little more closely with his blue mischievous eyes, and said And you’ve married this young man who’s preaching at Pisgah. It was a half question and half statement of surprise. Well, if you’d waited a little longer and hadn’t been in too big a hurry to get married, I think you could have done better.

Our Preacher Boy

FOLKS REFERRED TO ME AS our preacher boy for so long that the first time a grown man said Sir to me I almost dropped my teeth. Not because I had discovered the fountain of youth either, but because I started in preaching so early. I didn’t like being called preacher boy but in time I came to recognize the advantage in it: people forgive your mistakes and overlook your follies if they can attribute them to youth. By the time I learned to appreciate this priceless discovery, I was too old to benefit from it.

Preachers have always had a fine reputation for eating chicken, and I have done my part in upholding that hallowed tradition. It hasn’t always been easy, nor does every chicken rest lightly on the ministerial conscience. My wife and I drove to the Smokies on our honeymoon and rented a little cottage overlooking the Tennessee River. That was back in the days before Holiday Inns and Howard Johnson restaurants had sprouted up all over the country, and motel cottages were equipped with primitive cooking equipment for the convenience of honeymooners. There weren’t any supermarkets dotting the mountain landscape either so we started scouting the countryside for something to cook. We stopped at a farmhouse where a kindly woman offered to sell us a frying-size chicken. Pitching a few grains of corn onto the ground, she quickly scooped up the unprotesting victim, the bargain was sealed with currency and we drove back to our cottage with our chicken, his feet tied together to prevent escape. When we started to prepare him for the skillet we learned why he had been so easy to catch. Those grains of corn were the first he had seen in a long time and he was too weak from starvation to resist arrest.

The first church ever to call me to be its pastor was Nails Creek in Southeast Georgia. Nails Creek had worship services one Sunday each month, and I arrived at the appointed hour eager to exhort the brethren. Pulling up in the front of the church I stepped out and greeted one of the deacons who had arrived ahead of me. Good morning, Brother, I said, with all the cheerfulness of youth. How are you this morning?

Poorly, thank the Lord, poorly, he replied.

Marriage isn’t an easy accomplishment, in the parsonage or anywhere else. One thing’s sure, being a preacher doesn’t make it any easier. Remembering some of the people we’ve met helps. There was the old couple in South Georgia, down near the Florida line. They lived in one of the first prefab houses I ever saw. It came from Sears-Roebuck, I believe, and the old fellow had done most of the work of putting it together himself. Even had a fireplace and mantel, and he would sit in front of that fireplace, reflecting on the ups and downs of his life with the woman he loved. Then, with a sly look in her direction he would turn to me and say, I tell her that whenever she wants to git shed of me to just chunk my picture behind the back-log!

I don’t keep my portrait sitting around on the mantelpiece where it could handily be chunked behind the back-log. In fact we don’t even have a mantel for the picture or a fireplace for the back-log. Years ago I was thumbing through one of the sporting magazines and I came across this picture of a brace of bird dogs on point and it was the prettiest sight I had ever seen. So I cut it out and framed it and hung it on the wall over the breakfast table. Well, those setters became a symbol of the tenuous conditions of domestic bliss in our household. Whenever I came into the house, if there was any question in my mind about my standing with the little woman, that question could be quickly answered by a glance at the wall to see if my dog picture was still hanging over the breakfast table. If I saw only the dark patch where the paint hadn’t faded I knew that trouble was stalking me and sometimes I would precipitate matters immediately – beard the lioness in her den so the speak – by demanding to know, Where are my dogs? At other times, when the burden of my own misdeeds lay more heavily on my spirit, I would avoid such open conflict and go quietly to my place in the dog house.

Some wag has said that if you associate with dogs you are sure to get fleas on you. I learned that this is not the only way to get fleas. I was staying at Lester Morgan’s house one Sunday and he suggested that we go out to the tobacco barn to look at something. Confidently I walked into the barn while Lester stayed back, pretending to fix a broken strand of wire on the barnyard gate. After a very short stay in the barn I began to have a sensation of something crawling on my legs. Stepping back outside, I looked down and discovered that fleas were crawling all over me. Lester was standing back at a safe distance and when he saw me scratching and fighting the fleas, he doubled up with laughter.

One of the traditional privileges enjoyed by the preacher is that of spending the night in the homes of the church members. During the years when I was in school and doing my foreign missions stint on weekends and in the summers I spent nights in homes from South Georgia to Central Indiana. Many of the farm families had prophets’ rooms upstairs next to the roof and these were comfortable enough in spring and fall, but they were sweat boxes in August and deep freezes in January. I remember one winter night when the mercury dipped below zero, I was spending the night (not sleeping) upstairs at Charlie Bishop’s. Earlier in the evening Charlie and I had been playing with a pet groundhog which stayed downstairs by the stove and entertained the family by sitting up on its haunches and eating crackers held in its front paws. Anyway, before daylight it got so cold my breath would freeze whenever I stuck my head out from under the covers. Charlie’s wife, Willie K., had piled about six quilts on the bed, and I huddled under that mountain of quilts and the only thing I could think about was that pet groundhog curled up by the stove downstairs. When Willie K. called me down to breakfast she asked me how I had made out during the night and I replied, Well, I made out, but it was the first time in my life that I ever wished I was a groundhog.

The unexpected pleasures that attend the kindness people show their pastor, as well as the delightful surprises at the end of long hard journeys, linger in my memory as vividly as the frost on the quilts. One summer I had been invited by Bill Mitchell, a classmate of mine, to help him in a revival meeting at a little church down below Cloverport, Kentucky. It was the most isolated spot I had ever been, and I was not at all prepared to find such hospitality as awaited me there. Bill and I stayed in a home which was located about a mile from the road and could be reached on foot or farm tractor. If it had been situated at the end of a seven-mile lane studded with potsherds and locust thorns, and we had been forced to crawl on hands and knees each painful step of the way, it would have been worth it. The patriarch of the home was one of the two real scholars I have known in my life. He had never been out of the county in which he was born, except on one occasion when, as a lad he had gone up the river to Louisville. Yet his knowledge of Kentucky was encyclopedic. He knew the state, county by county, town by town, every twist in the road and every rock in the creek bed. I, who had traveled rather extensively by comparison, did not know half as much of what I had seen as he knew of what he had not seen.

This learned patriarch had a daughter who was even more remarkable than himself. She had taught school for half a century in the community and she had actually kept in touch with every child who had ever passed through her classroom. At that time she was teaching the grandchildren of some of her former students, but she knew how well or how ill each former student was faring in life, just as she knew exactly how each of her pupils was doing in every subject. I have never seen another person who was so totally interested in people nor so dedicated to their well-being. During all those years she had taught a Sunday school class every Sunday at the little church, and she walked, flashlight in hand, along the forest trail to the church services on Sunday evenings. When I asked her if she was not afraid, walking alone at night, she looked as if I had spoken in some language she did not understand. Then I understood that she knew no fear because she did not really feel alone. The presence of God was such a reality to her and she was so completely identified with the people she taught and loved, that she was never alone.

It was while Bill and I were tramping those valleys and searching out some of the more isolated families (one woman told us that no preacher had ever been to her door before, so we stood in the humble little house and read the Bible and prayed, she wept and thanked us and we went away feeling like we had visited the stable where Jesus was born) it was then that Bill related to me how he came to be pastor of the little church. The dean at the seminary had sent him down there one Sunday to preach a trial sermon and he had been invited to dinner by one of the deacons named Philpot. After dinner they were sitting around resting and Deacon Philpot said, Brother Mitchell, how do you feel about becoming our pastor? Bill hadn’t expected such a direct approach so soon and he countered by saying that if it was the Lord’s will he would certainly accept it. I don’t know how you determine the Lord’s will, replied Philpot, but the way I see it, you’re a preacher without a church and we’re a church without a preacher. And thus began one of the happiest unions I have ever witnessed.

I had originally planned to stay only one week but on Friday night the men of the church, including Deacon Philpot, held an informal prayer meeting down behind the church house and they felt that the Lord had directed that I stay and preach for another week. It was during that second week that the events I am now about to relate took place. In order to catch and hold the attention of the children I used to have an object lesson every evening and I made it more mysterious and tantalizing by concealing the object in a bag or box until the final moment when I would draw it out and produce the moral lesson that went with it. Toward the end of the second week I had about emptied my bag of tricks and I hit upon the idea of teaching them a lesson about gentle love. To be my accessory in this I had chosen a very tame kitten which belonged to one of the families in the church. I concealed the kitten in a shoe box and proceeded without incident to the church and had built my audience up to a point of great expectation when the confinement became too much for the gentle kitten. He burst out of the shoe box, hair standing on end, claws bared, spitting defiance at the whole church. Taking off across the pews, he