I am Thankful for Roasted Marshmallows

One of the great mysteries of the universe is who invented marshmallows. There should be a statue of that person somewhere and the faithful campers of the world should be required to make a pilgrimage to pay homage at least once in their lifetime. Next to the statue, engraved in granite, there would be a list of persons who claimed to be the first to roast the blue collar delicacy in a campfire.

Parents and grandparents would gather and place flowers at the base of the statue, their progeny in tow. Off to the side would be dozens of camp fires ringed with children excitedly holding coat hangers tipped with puffs of sugar dangling into the flames, each giggling as the treats burst into flames.

We were there this evening. I built the fire in our back yard. After we put fresh hay out for the cows and gathered the eggs, Charlie and Camdyn roasted the marshmallows. Simple pleasure, simple dessert, golden memories, for these I am thankful.

Cleveland, Tennessee
March 30, 2010
JDJ

I am Thankful for …..

Today I give thanks for Cheryl’s return home and a visit by Justin, Camdyn, and Charlie. They arrived late last night. Charlie was up around six. The kids have petted the horses a couple of times, checked for eggs several times, visited the cows, and spent the afternoon at the Tennessee Aquarium with Cheryl and Justin. Tonight Camdyn beat us all in a Wii bowling tournament.

Cleveland, Tennessee
March 29, 2010
JDJ

I am Thankful for a Good Day at Church

We had a beautiful worship service this morning. The children did a processional with palm leaves. The theme was Palm Sunday as the already and not yet of the Kingdom of God. Darkness and light were fluctuating. Worship in song was powerful. The offertory included a video that had pictures of our members ministering around the world. Dr. Hollis Gause brought a powerful sermon. (If you want a copy let me know.) This evening we had a beautiful prayer and praise service. I am thankful.

As you might note my creative well has run dry.

Cleveland, Tennessee
March 28, 2010
JDJ

I am Thankful for Trustworthy Friends

I am blessed with many friends. There are a host of people who would come to my aid in an hour of need, at least I think they would. But, I am a male Johns and we are blessed with a healthy delusion of self-sufficiency. Asking for help is just not in our DNA. My friends seem to understand this and press through to my aid when I need it.

There are friends who help when your ox is in the ditch and there are friends who you turn to when it is you who is in the ditch. They are the friends who listen. One difference in the two types of friends is trust. I doesn’t take a lot of trust to ask for and accept help with a practical problem. It takes great trust to open up and share inner hurt and struggles, to be vulnerable.

I have learned that trust is a precious gift that cannot be returned. It remains for as long as it lives in the hands of the one trusted. It can be nurtured or ignored, but not given back. The validity of trust is determined not by the one who is trusting but by the one being trusted. It is established by the receiver’s commitment to the giver. If the giver is loved the trust will be cherished. If the receiver has ambiguity or disdain for the one who placed the trust it will be diminished or destroyed.

Most of us have very few friends whom we trust with our vulnerable selves. We have learned to keep the number small through the pain of betrayal. Yet we hunger for someone with whom we can entrust our innermost selves. I am grateful to have many friends who I believe to be trustworthy and a few who have thus proven themselves.

Cleveland, Tennessee
March 27, 2010
JDJ

I am Thankful for my Friend, Dr. Douglas Slocumb

Yesterday we inducted my good friend, Dr. Douglas Slocumb, into the Hall of Prophets here at the Pentecostal Theological Seminary. Doug is a long term teacher at the Seminary. The Hall of Prophets serves the dual purposes of honoring faithful Church of God Ministers and building the scholarship endowment of the Seminary. Inductees must be deceased or at least sixty five years of age and have had a ministry in the COG of distinguished faithfulness. Most are prominent ministers of past. Several are relatively unknown but faithful servants of Christ.

I was honored to be one of the speakers at Doug’s induction. I offer here an edited version of my speech.

“Doug it has fallen my lot to tell you the real reason we are here today. We have not come to honor you. We love you. This is an intervention. You need help. You have CTD, Compulsive Therapist Disorder. We are all here because we love you and we want you to get the help you deserve.

Doug, admit it. You wake up in the morning thinking ‘There’s somebody out there I can help.’ It’s the last thought on your mind before you go to sleep. If you’re not counseling someone every few minutes you get ill. I’ve seen it on your face in faculty meetings. You begin to fidget, your throat and mouth go dry. Then your hands begin to shake. I’ve sometimes feared you were going to have a seizure. As soon as the meeting adjourns you dart out into the hallway, grab a hurting student you’ve stashed away in some corner, and drag them into your office for a session.

Doug, you need help.

You are annoying in public. I go out to lunch with you and it takes forever to leave because you have to visit every table and talk. People who don’t know you think. ‘Oh, it’s just another Church of God Minister campaigning for the Executive Committee.’ But those of us who know you know the truth. You’re not shaking hands, you’re feeling pulses, looking into eyes for pain, scouting out fixes for your addiction.

Doug, you need help.

There are signs you can no longer afford to ignore. You have that phony sliding scale of fees on your door. We know you ignore it and refuse payment from most people. We’ve got it on good sources you even give people money. If you get caught there will be ethics charges, you’ll lose your license, friend.

Doug, you need help.

We all know you skip lunch several times a week just to work someone in for a session. How many cans of tuna can anyone eat in a week and not go crazy.

Doug, you’ve got a problem. You should know the signs. You teach in this area. Remember your lectures on birth order and family systems. You’re the first born son. You are driven to find approval. You feel responsible for everyone. Why else are you always the last to leave the offices. Why like a good pastor must you turn off the coffee maker, the printers, the lights and walk down the hall to flush the toilets before you can go home.

Doug, you need help.

Do you want to see yourself in thirty years. Look right down there on the first row. That’s right look at your father. He’s in his nineties and he operates a food and clothes closet for the poor. Then he visits the old folks in the nursing home. Doug if you don’t break this generational curse of compulsive care-giving that’s your future. We want something better for you, shuffleboard on a beach in Florida.

Addressing the Audience

As you can see from your program, I am here representing Doug’s peers in education. But I am really here for the same reason each of you is here. Doug Slocumb is our friend. Or more accurately, Doug has been a friend to us and we desire to in some small way to be his friend. Deep down we want to be a friend like him.

Without reservation I can say that outside of my family, Doug Slocumb is my best friend in the world, my counselor and confidant.

No one in the history of this school has garnered more love than Dr. Slocumb. No faculty member past or present receives more phone calls and emails than Doug. Some contact him because they are facing a crises and they know he will guide them through it. Others call because they want to share good news with a trusted friend.

Some things you might not know about Dr. Slocumb are that he is a left-brained ESFJ. The left-brain identifies him as imaginative. The E refers to “extroversion.” Who would have ever thought that. The S is for “sensing.” He’s given to experience, no surprise there given all of his lectures on sex. The F refers to “feeling” which uplifts his traits of humaneness, mercy, and compassion, the very root of his CTD. The J is for judging, he is goal oriented and he wants to select the best thing and then experience it. No comment.

In brief, while he is very fond of telling everybody I am a field marshal, I have never heard him confess to his own classification as “Softly authoritative and quite (not quiet) decisive.” “He respects hierarchy,” right, if he is the hierarchy.

Seriously, Dr. Slocumb is gifted to the level of clairvoyance in observation, analysis, and diagnosis of human behavior. He has an intuitive ability to read a life and the forces influencing it in a matter of minutes. And he is right all of the time, except with me.

Doug is an outstanding educator. I recall something Dr. Charles W. Conn said to me when I was a student at Lee College and he was President. He said the mark of a truly educated person is not knowing all the answers, it is knowing where to find the answers. Visit Doug’s office and if you can look past the stacks of folders and papers you will see an extensive library on marriage and family and all other areas of Christian ministry. What many of you do not realize is that they are stacked two books deep. He knows what’s in those books and when a student or client needs extra guidance he knows just which book to lend them.

Here at the Seminary we emphasize the integration of head, hart and hand. Faith and life must be woven together and expressed in behavior. No one does that better than Doug Slocumb. Every lesson he teaches demonstrates the integrity of this fusion. Every principle he expounds has been weighed against the word of God.

I am blessed to teach a course on family ministry with him. It is one of my most enjoyable teaching experiences. We have different personality types and learning styles, but we just fit together like yen and yang. Plus we both like to tell stories. I’m more analytic and he’s more common sense and imaginative. In other words, he chases rabbits and I count the ticks on their back.

We are all blessed to have Dr. Doug Slocumb in our lives.

Doug, we love you but you need help.

Cleveland, Tennessee
March 26, 2010
JDJ

I am Thankful for Sugar Donuts

There was a time before seat belts and child safety seats, you know, when no one locked their doors and children walked or road their bikes to school. Henry F. Kite Elementary School was a couple of miles from our house. I road my bike or walked every day. Lunches were 25 cents and for a nickel you could get dessert. I was a “School Patrol Boy”; It was also a time before we knew the word “sexism.” In that roll I went to school early, stayed late and served as a crossing guard for others. It was cool; we wore badges and had long polls with red flags and we got to stop traffic. In the sixth grade I was the Captain of the patrol, the senior officer who made out the work schedule. I digress.

Just a couple of blocks out of my way, OK, two or three, there was a bread outlet store. They sold a bag of “Sweet-Sixteen” powdered sugar donuts for 25 cents and there was no tax on food in Florida. Every week I saved my dessert money for a Friday trip to the bread store. It was not a difficult decision, hard as brick brownies, burnt chocolate pudding, stale carrot cake, something they called butterscotch pudding, or a sack full of delicious donuts. Donuts won every time. Or for variety I could get two mouth watering honey buns for 20 cents which I liked even more but the donuts seemed a better buy. The honey buns were gone within three or four blocks. The doughnuts made the whole walk home a touch of heaven, one doughnut per block. The only catch was sneaking the bag into the trash at home without being seen. The fact that Momma usually shopped on Fridays helped me keep my addiction secrete.

I believe in healing, entire sanctification, killing the old man, and plucking the sin up by the root. I’ve cried and tried but I can’t get free. I’ve gone for months even two years without giving in to the temptation. The shame is more than I can bear. When I walk by them in Food Lyon I tell myself “the children are watching.” But then I’m alone, no one to help me and a voice whispers, “you haven’t seen any children in the store tonight.” And I tell myself, “I’ll discipline myself, just one or two a day. Jesus wouldn't condemn me for that.  He knows I have needs." Mysteriously, I seem to always pick up two bags; It’s an accident, I promise. Standing in the checkout line I wonder what the clerk will think of me. If she asks what will I tell her – “I have grandchildren!”

The twelve step program is too puny. I need four more digits; Sixteen is such a sweet number. I am thankful my vice of choice is legal and cheap.

Cleveland, Tennessee
March 25, 2010
JDJ

I am Thankful for my Aunt Eula Mae Stephens (O’Quinn)

There was a time when people walked not for recreation or pleasure but as a primary mode of transportation. That time was not so very long ago. In fact it is still here in many parts of the world. When the Church of God arrived in the southeastern corner of Georgia in the early 20th century people walked to church, not a few blocks, they walked for miles.

My Aunt Eula Mae, who was my mother’s oldest sister, somehow ended up in a revival service at the Bachlott Church of God. The church was meeting in the old community school/church house. Bachlott was a turpentine village at the time. There was a still there for processing sap gathered from pine trees into turpentine. A small village of shacks for the workers had developed around the still. The land where the church building sat had been donated by my Great-grandfather, George Washington Johns, to the Methodist Episcopal Church of the South. He had also donated the adjoining family cemetery to the community. The Methodists had abandoned the building and it served various community purposes until the Church of God set up shop. My mother’s family lived about seven miles away through swamp land and flat woods.

Young Eula Mae was saved, sanctified and filled with the Holy Spirit. When my Grandfather heard about it he forbade her to return to the holy roller church. She said, “Papa, you had may as well go ahead and spank me cause I can’t not go back.” She told me that story herself.

For a while Grandpa would walk her through the woods to church. He even snaked the logs for the new church building. But he got offended and quit which left my Grandmother to walk Eula Mae to church. Soon the whole family, minus Grandpa, was attending. Well, Grandma and her daughters attended the services, while her sons got into mischief with the other boys outside.

I owe my spiritual heritage as a Wesleyan Pentecostal to my Aunt Eula Mae. I also owe her a portion of my image of God and my vision of the global character and mission of the church. For several years Uncle Frank and Aunt Eula Mae lived in Jacksonville and Mom would take us to visit Aunt Eula Mae frequently. I think they met to pray about once a week but I was usually in school. Momma prayed with great fervency, like she had to fight her way into the presence of God. Aunt Eula Mae prayed like God was sitting next to her and they were carrying on a conversation between friends. From my mother I learned the awesomeness of God’s gracious power. From Aunt Eula Mae I got a glimpse of Him as gentle, loving Father.

On one of our visits she lent me a book published by Church of God World Missions, Herman Lauster: One Man and God. That book changed my life. For one thing, I actually read it from cover to cover. But primarily it introduced me to the global nature of the church. A second biography on the life of Paul C. Pitt expanded that vision.

I am deeply thankful for my Aunt Eula Mae. She had the courage of David, the devotion of Daniel, the wisdom of Samuel, and the graces of the Holy Spirit. Because of her our family was brought into Pentecost and my mother was mentored into maturity.  Today, she's walking the street of gold.

Cleveland, Tennessee
March 23, 2010
JDJ