Locusts and Wild Honey

Several churches from New Jersey have blessed Lakeshore through their continued prayer support, generous financial gifts, trucks of food, water, and supplies, as well as several work filled trips.

When Calvary Baptist Church of Carnypoint NJ schedule a trip, Pastor Jeff Hill and I were excited to learn that we both planned to attend the Together For the Gospel conference. We met up in Louisville and enjoyed a time of fellowship with other like minded pastors.

The next week Jeff led his team to Lakeshore and worked hard on several projects. I think they spent most of their time on the Patterson House. If you have been following my blog, Mrs. Violet plans to move back into her home this week. Lord willing, I will try to post pictures soon.

Roughly 400 people flow through our food distribution center on a daily basis. As long as the need exists and donations pour in, we will continue meeting part of the grocery needs of our storm ravaged community. Now open Wednesday through Saturday the free store provides assistance to those trying to put their lives back together under very difficult living conditions.

Last week a generous truck load of bananas came in. Unlike canned food, we can’t set perishable food back in our regular canned food stock rotation. Fresh bananas need to move immediately. So not only did each family get a case of bananas, we set a pallet of bananas on the front porch on Sunday to distribute to all congregants. Even the volunteers have been eating bannana bread, bread pudding, and a variety of other banana recipes this week.

Come Mr. Tally Man, tally me banana
(Daylight come and we want go home)
Come Mr. Tally Man, tally me banana
(Daylight come and we want go home)

Huricane relief, in Lakeshore
(Daylight come and we fix da home)
Fix da man’s roof, and da man’s floor
(Daylight come and we fix da home)

Day, is a day-o
(Daylight come and we fix da home)
Day, is a day, is a day, is a day, is a day, is a day-o
(Daylight come and we fix da home)

Off the truck with da big bananas
(Daylight come and we fix da home)
Help da folks in da FEMA campa’s
(Daylight come and we fix da home)

6 foot, 7 foot, 8 foot bunch!
(Daylight come and we fix da home)
6 foot, 7 foot, 8 foot bunch!
(Daylight come and we fix da home)

Day, is a day-o
(Daylight come and we can’t go home)
Day, is a day, is a day, is a day, is a day, is a day-o
(Daylight come and we can’t go home)

The Southern Baptist Convention meets next week in Greensboro, N.C. This year proves to be an interesting presidential race. After Johnny Hunt, pastor of FBC Woodstock GA, declined nomination, at least three others stepped in as candidates. Ronnie Floyd of First Baptist Church in Springdale, Ark., Frank Page of First Baptist Church in Taylors, S.C. and Jerry Sutton of Two Rivers Baptist Church in Nashville TN all vie for the appointive powers held by the office.

I will not attend the SBC this year. If I did, my vote would go to Mark Dever, pastor of Capital Hill Baptist Church in Washington DC and director of 9 Marks. I briefly spoke with Dever at the Together for the Gospel conference. I asked him if he had any interest in accepting a nomination to the SBC presidency. He disinterestedly reacted as if he had never even considered the possibility. He noted the fact that he didn’t serve a mega church. I told him that is exactly why many of us would love to see him at the helm. The vast majority of SBC churches are not mega-churches. Most of these churches will probably never be mega-churches; but they can become healthy churches who reflect the character of God and display God’s glory.

Dever lists the Nine Marks of a healthy church as:

1. Expositional Preaching
2. Biblical Theology
3. Biblical Understanding of the Good News
4. Biblical Understanding of Conversion
5. Biblical Understanding of Evangelism
6. Biblical Understanding of Membership
7. Biblical Church Discipline
8. Promotion of Christian Discipleship and Growth
9. Biblical Understanding of Leadership

Back in February, As we began thinking of rebuilding our destroyed church facilities, I attempted to open a discussion on Church architecture. See:

• Thinking about church architecture
• 21st Century Church Architecture
• Christian Architecture
• Masculine Church Architecture
• Reformed Architecture

I had a glitch in my comments feature and lost all atempts to add feedback. Donna-Jean emailed me her reflections.

So good to read your thoughts on this topic - and I appreciated the Sweet article, too.

I see two (related) dangers in church architecture; rather, in the actual building itself. One is with existing buildings. It takes the current generation (and I’m speaking of those in the church now, spanning a range of ages, not just ‘young’) awhile to feel ownership of a building that’s existed for a long time. I recall telling others, “We’re the church. If this item doesn’t work for us, we get rid of it.” (I say that respectfully, believe it or not, knowing that the effective past generation did the same.)

Graven images (to me) have more to do with “Well, so and so donated that, so we have to keep it” or “We’ve always done it that way” than with actual images. For instance, having a good-sized room with three little tiny rooms off of it worked well when I was growing up - for the Primary Room’s opening exercises, and then the little sit-down classes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades. But our kids now learn better with more space, more centers of activity, more interaction. So some walls in our church building have come down to make a bigger classroom or nursery, one old classroom is now a kids’ library with books/DVDs/videos and a welcoming librarian each week, some tiny classrooms are storage closets for costumes and props for outreach dramas/musicals, and some are now offices (mine, included .

The other is about building a new building. I just finished reading Steve Saint’s “End of the Spear.” (I hate that the very unfortunate Chad Allen controversy would keep anyone from the book or the movie - which I’ve not seen yet. The book is very powerful. I pray, above all, that Chad Allen sees his need for Christ through his involvement in the film. But that’s another topic.) In it, Saint talks of how the Waodani (”Auca”) people let a church building in their village fall apart and be unused. (It was built during his Aunt Rachel’s ministry there.) He asked why - and it was because a) it was built differently than their usual ‘architecture’ and so they felt inadequate for it (and it wasn’t that ‘workable’ for their open-air living), and b) it was built by well-meaning outsiders so they felt it wasn’t ‘theirs’ to use, or to fix, when it began to deteriorate.

New buildlings need the ownership of its users - and part of that comes from their involvement in its planning, creation, and realization. As you benefit from the goodwill and sweat of ‘outsiders’ (and we are always chomping at the bit to be a part of that, we are committed to helping as long as God allows your own people must never feel displaced, or somehow unworthy (even in their own overwhelmed situation) to be decision-makers.

I love the versatility a good church building can provide. We still have wooden pews in our sanctuary, and stained glass windows imported from its former site (before we came). We love its look. But we’ve also reconstructed the platform, removed the organ (when there was no longer anyone to play it, despite tireless attempts to find an organist, even from the outside), and cut a picture window in the narthex wall so people could see into its beauty as they enter. We’ve also turned our large downstairs area into a Narnia-decorated coffeehouse, rollerblading area, ladies’ tea room, men’s sportsmen’s dinner, or kids’ game night.

And it is thrilling to see our people realize this place is theirs, it’s their place to worship, weep, rejoice, pray, marry, grieve lost loved ones, praise God, eat together (we do a lot of that , discuss, learn, laugh, and sometimes just hang out together with our kids. (And it’s also their place to fix when things go wrong. Just as it’s encouraged so many to realize they can ‘chainsaw for God’ in Lakeshore, it’s important for those in our church to know that fixing the running toilet and adding landscaping and changing light bulbs is ministry, too. They ‘get that,’ and are now enjoying the blessing of comraderie/fellowship that such work entails.)

Perhaps it’s not the best analogy, but on the TV sitcom “Cheers,” the song for that bar was about “where everybody knows your name.” There is something to be said for church being Oasis, Refuge, Shelter, Learning and Creativity Center, Refueling Spot, Training Grounds, Home.

I can’t wait to get to church, to see these people, and to bring others into this place. As a pastor’s daughter and pastor’s wife, I’ve known Christians’ quirks - and even their barbs - individually. But corporately, church can be a taste of heaven. I pray that for you and your church family as you continue in the Lord, whether out in the open, under a tarp, under a tent, in a quonset hut, under steel - or whatever design is next. You’ve been an inspiration.

Lakeshore Baptist Church is never far from our thoughts and prayers at Chapel on the Hill.

Not long after Katrina had ravaged South Mississippi, an outreach group of folks from the First Baptist Church of Elkins, WV and the Rotary Club from the same city ended up at the Lakeshore Baptist Church on the western side of Waveland, MS. Although the church was completely destroyed, there´s a slab there, the people of that church were playing host to volunteer workers from the North. The only facilities were tents to sleep in and portable toilets for use by the volunteers.

Not anymore! On May 1, 2006, another form of aid left Elkins, WV for the Hurricane Katrina devastated area in Mississippi. A retired 48-foot, over-the-road trailer, that had spent its ‘productive´ years as a ‘reefer´ operated by a dairy company and later converted into a combination bath facility and laundry mat, will now serve the army of relief workers who continue to help Mississippi residents recover from their devastation with a place to bathe and do their laundry.

The trailer is the brainchild of Elkins Rotary Club Vice President Dwayne Hannah. “One of the first things that became apparent when I visited the area not long after the hurricane was that the volunteers down there helping those folks did not have a place to wash their clothes, and still worse, had no bathroom facilities except portable toilets,’ Hannah said. “Something had to be done to help the relief workers as they helped the victims.’ Hannah explored ideas that would provide the relief workers a means of sanitary toilet and bathing facilities and at the same time give them a place to wash their clothes. He struck upon the appropriate idea of a “mobile wash house.’

In December, Hannah contacted several trucking companies asking if they might have an old trailer that could be donated and used as the foundation of his idea. Broughton Dairy of Parkersburg, WV, donated an old refrigerated trailer that had hauled milk and other perishable dairy products to grocery stores in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The

dairy company moved it from Marietta, Ohio, to Williamstown, WV where Elkins Distributing Co. picked it up and brought it to the Elkins/Randolph County Airport. Airport Authority officials gave Airport Manager Dick Chaney permission to provide an aircraft hangar for

the restoration work. After four months of volunteers working 12- to 16-hour days and at a cost of nearly $40,000, the wash house was ready for service.

On May 1, Steve Felton, owner and operator of Triple S Trucking in Mill Creek, WV departed for Lakeshore, MS, where the mobile wash house will enter service. The Rotary Club of Wiggins, MS, paid for the $2,000 transport fee. The mobile wash house was delivered to the Club President Jere Hess on May 3. “Having the mobile wash house is better than having a place to sleep. People can sleep in a tent, but they have to have baths and there is no place to take one,’ Hess said. “A water hose just doesn´t do the job for people working in the heat and humidity we have down here. They also need a decent place to go to the bathroom. Portable

toilets don´t get the job done either. Now they will also have a place to do their laundry. The wash house will be a great boost to morale, and help speed the recovery efforts. We don´t know how to thank the members of the Rotary Club of Elkins, volunteers and donors for what they´ve done for us, and even if we did, we couldn´t thank them enough.’

The wash house is equipped with two bathrooms. The ladies´ room has a toilet, two shower stalls and a dressing area, while the men´s room has a toilet, urinal, two shower stalls and a dressing area. The center area contains two combination washer/dryers, a utility wash basin and houses the hot water heater. The dryers are operated by natural or

propane gas, which also heats the facility when needed. The trailer is equipped with air conditioning and exhaust fans that keep the wash

house cool and well ventilated. The wagon is equipped with an attached entrance stairway, landing platform and handrails that fold for storage and transport against the wagon´s underbelly. Utility hook-ups are also provided from the wagon´s underbelly.

Restoration work was under the day-to-day supervision of Roy Crickard.

Bobby Hutton of REH Construction supplied manpower and other resources for electrical, plumbing and carpentry work. Hannah Engineering provided structural engineering and outside graphics design. Rob´s Custom Graphics painted the outside decals. Mary Hannah,

Clint Hannah and Jeff Harvey donated their time for cleaning chores. Tim Sprouse volunteered his time and resources for welding.

Rotary officials said that when the wash wagon is no longer needed in Mississippi, it will be returned to Elkins and put on standby for service anywhere in the country it might be needed.

“We hope the wash house will never have to be used again, but if it is, and unfortunately it will, it will be ready to serve,’ Hannah said.

Elkins Rotary Club President Grace Roy said the project has received donations from many social organizations and churches from around the state of West Virginia. The club also assumed a rather large loan from Mountain Valley Bank to expedite the project´s completion.

Tax deductible donations are being accepted and may be made by contacting Dwayne Hannah, at Hannah Engineering, P.O. Box 2050, Elkins, W.Va. 26241 or by calling (304) 636-7777.

Dewayne Hannah is a graduate of Civil Engineering from West Virginia University. Jere Hess is an MBA graduate of Mississippi State University. This Fall the two universities will play each other in football at the State campus and both Hannah and Hess expect to be there…maybe even together. However there may be a good chance that they will meet in the MSU President´s Box as the new president at MSU, Dr. Robert “Doc’ Foglesong, earned all three of his degrees from West Virginia University. When told about the wash wagon story, Doc Foglesong replied, “This is why America is the greatest nation in the world.’

* Wayne Sheets of the Inter-Mountain Newspaper, Dewayne Hannah and Jere Hess submitted information for this article.

June 11, 2006 Lakeshore Baptist Church celebrates ninety-five years of ministry in Lakeshore MS. The church invites the community to its 11:00 service that Sunday to be followed by dinner on the grounds and a concert.

In 1911 a small band of believers gathered in the home of R. C. Crysell to establish the Lakeshore Baptist Church. Four years later a major hurricane slammed into the Gulf coast taking their first building. Undaunted, the congregation rebuilt and continued proclaiming hope in a God who remains in control. In 1968 Camille took that building but left a 1952 structure to be cleaned out and used for services. On August 29, 2005 another storm, more powerful than any the gulf coast had ever seen, destroyed all buildings owned by the church. With faith in an unshakeable God, Lakeshore Baptist Church continues to minister to her community and offer hope in Jesus Christ.

Lakeshore Baptist Church invites the community to join her in celebrating ninety-five years of perseverance and prayer. The 11:00 Sunday morning service will highlight God’s unfailing hand of providence. Sixth Street Baptist Church of Alex City Alabama will supply a full lunch immediately following the service. Local gospel group, The Morans will appear in concert at 2:00. Lakeshore Baptist Church is located at 6028 Lakeshore Road.