Discovering you're lost in New York and didn't know it

Dr. Bob Rogers

Holy Humor Columnist

Updated: May 24, 2007, 9:02 AM

Published: May 2, 2007, 6:15 PM

My father was a chaplain in the U.S. Army. I like to say that growing up I was “double trouble” — a preacher’s kid and an Army brat.

When I was in the seventh grade, Dad was stationed at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, N.Y., in order to attend chaplain’s school. It was a one-year refresher course for military chaplains who had served about 10 years.

I attended Public School 104, which was in an Irish-Catholic neighborhood. It was a good school with strict discipline and excellent academics. I still remember that my homeroom had 22 Catholics, six Jews, four Protestants and no atheists. All four Protestants were children of chaplains stationed at Fort Hamilton (there were no Catholic children from the Army post, since Catholic priests do not marry).

Soon after school started that fall, we learned that on Wednesday afternoons they had “release time.” This was when students got out of school early and could go to their house of worship for religious education. Jewish students went to the synagogue and Catholic students went to the Catholic church. On that first Wednesday, all of us Protestant chaplains’ kids, being brand new, simply followed our Catholic friends down the street to their church and attended the catechism. Then we returned to school in time to catch the Army bus back to Fort Hamilton.

Needless to say, the phones were ringing off the hook that night when we started telling our parents what kind of notebooks the nuns wanted us to buy for catechism. It only took one week for those chaplains and spouses to organize a Protestant religious education class for us to attend.

But what really got some parents rattled was what happened to my little sister Nancy and some of her friends during their first “release time.” Nancy, who was in second grade, and a few other Protestant chaplains’ daughters from our post, went to the Catholic class and missed the bus ride home. Their parents had the military police frantically searching the streets of New York for them. Imagine — little girls from places like Kansas, Texas and Mississippi, all lost in Brooklyn. When the girls were found, they didn’t know they had been lost.

Jesus said that he came to seek and save people who were lost (Luke 19:10). He told three parables about the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost (prodigal) son, to illustrate how God goes to great lengths to find people who are lost in sin and without God (see Luke 15). Sadly, some people don’t even know they are lost. But when one person turns to faith in God through His Son Jesus Christ, all the angels in heaven rejoice, particularly our Heavenly Father (Luke 15:7). If you don’t believe that makes God’s heart rejoice, just ask my mother about the time Nancy was lost and then found.

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Is there a church for a big woman with an itch?

Dr. Bob Rogers

Updated: Jan 23, 2014, 10:34 PM

Published: Jan 23, 2014, 10:36 PM

A pastor was called to be guest preacher at a church. He knew this church was different when the congregation ended every line of the hymn with the shout of “yeehah!”

As he stood to preach, he noticed that people were spread out on the pews. He would see a person, then a space, then another person, and another space. He wondered why nobody sat next to another person, when he noticed on the pew beside each person was a cowboy hat.

Another time this same preacher was invited to a new church in the city. He was surprised to see that everybody there looked like they had fallen face first into a tackle box, because they had piercings and earrings on every part of the body imaginable. A rock band was playing alternative music on the stage.

As different as these two churches were, they were both growing and reaching people for Christ.

Years ago I was pastor of a small country church in the backwoods of Mississippi. There was another Baptist church just five miles away in the town (population 600). The pastor’s wife at the town church asked me, “Why don’t our two churches merge?” I said, “There are people in my church who would not feel comfortable or fit in at your town church.” She said, “Oh, come on. We’re a small town church. What could be so different?”

I said, “Well, I got one really big woman in my church who, when she gets to feeling an itch, she pulls her dress halfway up and she scratches herself.”

The eyes of this pastor’s wife got really big and she said, “I see what you mean.”

I forgot to tell her about another woman in my church who saw a roach running across the wood floor, so she stomped on it with her bare foot, laughed and shouted, “Aha! I got him!”

Yep, the culture was definitely different where I was pastor.

Jesus upset the religious establishment because He crossed cultural barriers. He loved to eat with tax collectors and Gentiles and other strange people. Jesus walked into the land of Samaria, full of half-breed Jews who worshiped in weird ways and talked different and smelled different.

Jesus walked right up to a Samaritan woman at a well and started talking her language. He accepted her culture, but he let her know her sinful lifestyle had to change. Soon she had the whole town following Jesus (see John 4).

So what cultural barrier is keeping somebody in your community from hearing the gospel? If you tear down the cultural barriers to share Christ in your neighborhood, you may hear the angels shouting, “Yeehah!”

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