Sunday morning and worship

As I sit at my computer I hear a summer Florida thunderstorm rolling in. Morning thunderstorms are not the norm. Mostly they come in the afternoon, but here it is Sunday morning and the storm is rolling in. It does remind me of three stories ... one mine and two from the ministry of a mentor, The Rev. Dr. Wallace Chappell.

The first was when I was the pastor at Big Pine UMC on Big Pine Key, FL. One late Saturday evening/early Sunday morning we experienced one of the worst electrical storms that I have ever witnessed. The atmosphere was so electrically charged that lightening was running parallel to the ground, just a few feet off the ground. It was fascinating to watch, but extremely frightening. The next morning we had the largest summer attendance the church had ever experienced. It is amazing what a little atmospheric light show can create in the hearts and minds of individuals. Some in attendance that day hadn’t been in church in years.

The first Dr. Chappell story was early in his ministry. He had been assigned to a church that sat at the top of a steep hill. Winter came and brought with it a huge ice storm making all the roads and sidewalks extremely treacherous. Wallace’s parsonage sat next to the church so come Sunday morning he got up, following his normal Sunday morning ritual, got dressed and went over to the church to fire up the furnaces in preparation for worship. His wife, Mary Frances, asked, “Wallace, why are you doing that? Surely no one is going to be coming out in this weather!” As he shared several years later, they had a rather large attendance that Sunday. Few people stayed home. Evidently everybody saw it as a challenge to see if they could get up the hill to the church … they actually had to climb up the hill on foot since no cars could make it up the ice covered street.

The other story continues to inspire me. It comes from his days as the senior pastor of Woodbine United Methodist Church in Nashville. Miss Hattie just lived a couple blocks from the church and had the Sunday morning ritual of walking to church regardless of the weather. Now what made this so remarkable was that Miss Hattie had crippling arthritis and could literally only move at a snails pace … little baby half-steps … taking her more than an hour and a half to walk those couple of blocks, but there she was, in her pew, every Sunday. One particular Sunday it was pouring down rain as Wallace, Mary Frances and their children drove to church. They were thinking of Miss Hattie and so they swung by to see if she was walking in the rain. There she was making her way to the church. They stopped the car to offer her a ride, but Miss Hattie said, “No thank you, getting there is half the joy!”

May this Sunday be a joy filled day for you!

Quote for today: I often visit newcomers in town and find them to be church shopping. They want to know what they can get out of church. Churches are one more consumer commodity. Worship services are not a place for us to serve God and neighbor but a place where people expect to purchase the best: Inspiring worship, good music, moving sermons, quality child care. As if we buy God and not vice versa. Arthur Boers