Pastoral Ministry

I was cruising down Second Street a few weeks ago when I spotted a sign in the back window of an SUV. As an inveterate reader of signs on the backs of automobiles, I zoomed in to a death-defying distance to make it out. The sign said, “Going shopping with my husband is like going hunting with the game warden.”

A revival was being held in a small church, and many people were coming on the invitation at the end of the service. As the pastor counseled and prayed with the people coming, one man, whom the pastor did not know very well, came forward. The man said, “Pastor, I would like for you to pray for my hearing.” The pastor said that he would be glad to do so.

With the recent stock market crash, businesses all across the country are in trouble. There is at least one exception to that, however. One business is doing more business than ever before. That is the business of fortune telling and crystal-ball gazing. Persons in this business report that business is booming. And it is different from the kind of business that they usually do. The most common kind of business that they usually do is related to matters of the heart—love, romance, and relationships. The business now is about business. Where is the nation’s economy going?

Some of my earliest memories are of my trips to Hornbeck, Louisiana. A trip to Hornbeck may not seem like much to you, but to me, at the time, it was a wonderful trip. Not only did Hornbeck have Jett’s Mercantile, which was packed with all kinds of goodies, it also had the trains.

An art teacher gave his students an assignment to paint a portrait. When the due date came, one of the students turned in a portrait of his brother. A few days later he got the portrait back, and the teacher had given him a “D” on the assignment. When the student asked the teacher why he had made such a low grade, the teacher said, “The portrait is not realistic. The nose is too big, the shoulders are too narrow, the legs are too short, and the stomach is too large.”

Odell Behan was a fixture during my growing up. We got to know him because he was the butcher at Jett’s Store in Hornbeck where we bought our groceries. Jett’s store eventually went the way of a lot of small-town grocery stores, and Odell had to move on to other forms of livelihood. He drove a school bus to Hornbeck High School for many years. My older brother Wayne moved to Hornbeck when he got married and attended church with Odell for over forty years.