No Mommy called & daddy sent preachers!

 

From the buckboard to the book-board

Oftentimes, at church I have overheard mothers suggest in jest “My little Billy he’d make a good preacher some day.”

There are plenty of “mommy called and daddy sent preachers” (mommy wanted them to be a preacher so daddy sent them to college) whom have never experienced a calling of God. Their feet should never have trod the holy ground I call the pulpit or book-board where the gospel is expounded as Apostle Paul said it should be “in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (I Cor 2:4).  

The Apostle Paul believed preachers should be God-called “how can they hear without a preacher, and how shall they preach except they be sent” (Rom 10:14, 15.) His own calling into the ministry is proof of his conviction in Galatians 1:12 “For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ”

Grandpa Jones was an old fashion preacher during the depression in Pittsburg, Kansas. In 1924 he worked a short time in the above ground strip pits hauling coal with his buckboard and team of horses, Bird & Dolly.

One morning during revival season as Grandpa Jones drove his buckboard and team up a hill he found himself leaping off the buckboard calling on the Lord on bended knee.

He had heard his name called loud and clear and fear came over him for the burden to preach sank deep within his heart and he knew he was to take up the good book and go preach the Word.

According to family history after prayer Grandpa Jones was surprised to still find his buckboard Bird & Dolly had remained there. The brake on the old buckboard had never been applied yet Bird & Dolly were at his side, calmly waiting for their old friend.”  Then he took the reins he had earlier dropped and cried “By Golly! Home Bird & Dolly” and they never stopped until they arrived at the house to tell his Norie (Grandma Jones) his story how the Lord called him to preach.”  

Like my Grandpa Jones, I too have an experience of a calling into the ministry. It was on a wintry Sunday night in 1966 sitting on a pew in the southwest corner of the old Oxford schoolhouse where I regularly worshipped with a humble few in rural Johnson County, Kansas. I too heard that still small voice call me to preach as I struggled to submit; I wanted to quit before I ever got started. But thanks to God, like my Grandpa from the buckboard to the book-board I owned up to my call to preach from the church pew to the pulpit.

As the songwriter penned in the hymn titled “It’ll be worth It After-all.” We need old fashion, spirit-filled preachers with a true calling into the ministry; not “mommy called and daddy sent preachers.”