By allowing ads to appear on this site, you support the local businesses who, in turn, support great journalism.
How I could have missed my fourth birthday
Placeholder Image

I heard about a first-grade teacher who collected well-known proverbs. She gave each child in her class the first half of a proverb and had them come up with the rest. Here were some of their answers:

• Better be safe than . . . punch a fifth grader.

• If you lie down with dogs, you’ll . . . stink in the morning.

• An idle mind is . . . the best way to relax.

• When the blind leadeth the blind . . . get out of the way.

• Children should be seen and not . . . spanked or grounded.

Few children like to be disciplined. When Dad leans his child over his knee and says, "This is going to hurt you more than me," a lot of kids probably think, "Okay, then let’s switch places so you won’t have to hurt so bad."

Nevertheless, the Bible says, "Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is pleasing in the Lord" (Colossians 3:20, HCSB).

When I was 3 years old, one day I got on my tricycle and took off down the street, headed toward the highway, before my mom knew where I had gone.

It just so happened that my father was coming home from work down the same highway, and he saw me. I was only 10 yards from the highway when he stopped me.

It scared him to death, because he knew I would have been run over in the highway. He made me put my tricycle in his car and go home. I didn’t like it, but I needed to obey my father.

A lot of teenagers think that the command to obey their parents doesn’t apply to them. The famous writer Mark Twain felt that way, too.

Twain once said, "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."

Children, you may not like it, but God put your parents in authority over you for a good reason. They have had experiences we have not yet had, and you need to obey them. I’m glad I did, or I may never have reached my fourth birthday, much less my 21st.

(Copyright 2013 by Bob Rogers. Email: brogers@fbcrincon.com. Read this column each Friday in the Herald. Visit my blog at www.bobrogers.me.)

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

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!”


Copyright 2014 by Bob Rogers. Email: brogers@fbcrincon.com. Read this column each Friday in the Herald. Visit my blog at www.bobrogers.me.