Sitting for the cycle

You could call it a fan's version of a grand slam — or perhaps a round- tripper. By whatever name, my friend Marshall Kerlin of Americus, Ga., and I took in baseball games at all four professional levels last weekend.

When my wife and daughters announced they would be going out of town for a family wedding over Memorial Day weekend, I began the search for reasonably close baseball games. The planets and schedules aligned miraculously.

We began last Saturday night (which means the timespan fits any normal weekend) in Atlanta where Marshall and I have watched hundreds of games together over three decades. Then we backtracked to Macon, Ga., so I could carry out Sunday morning pinch-hitting duties at Vineville Baptist Church.

After the last "Amen" at the second service, we headed for Chattanooga. The Lookouts — now the L.A. Dodgers AA team — had scheduled an unusual Sunday evening game with fireworks to follow.

A perfect night for baseball. We sat in the general admission seats down the right field line for a good view of the field, Signal Mountain and the Tennessee River.

The next morning we jumped on U.S. Hwy. 27 (which runs behind the home run fence of AT&T Field — now known as "Dodgertown, Tenn.") and drove south to Rome, Ga. Both Marshall and I had attended college in that town; he at a Baptist school called Shorter and I on the expansive and unequally beautiful Berry campus.

The Braves' single-A team (previously in Macon) is there now. Nice field and good food. Much cheaper than the 'dogs in Atlanta.

Our last stop was northeast of Atlanta where the former Richmond AAA team is now the Gwinnett Braves. It was an enjoyable experience as well.

Having lost the Macon Braves, however, I have empathy for the fans in Richmond who supported the AAA team for so long.

Marshall and I also enjoyed the additional benefits of well-done Memorial Day observances at each of the four ballparks last weekend. Moments of silence for those who died in defense of nation and other tributes were appropriate and moving.

However, someone needs to tell all singers that the purpose of the National Anthem is "to honor America," not to stretch it into five minutes of painful modulations.

Despite constant threats of rain, we pulled off our amazing baseball weekend perfectly. It is one we will talk about for years to come.



On the rare occasion a player gets a single, double, triple and homer in the same game,it is called hitting for the cycle. For us, then, it was a weekend of sitting for the cycle.

Has it been done before — attending A, AA, AAA and MLB games in one weekend? Perhaps. Doing so and not missing church? Very doubtful.

My assessment of the weekend: Too much baseball food — but there is no such thing as too much baseball.

[Photo 1: Marshall Kerlin and "the Chief" at Turner Field where the one in the headdress — if he makes it to the end of this season — will have attended 1,000 consecutive Braves home games. "Chief" (real name is Robert) is also catching the Braves at Fenway Park this summer while in Boston to play tennis in the Special Olympics. Photo 2: Marshall and other fans gather on the outfield of AT&T Field in Chattanooga to watch a post-game fireworks show.]

When things don't work

In an earlier era, my friends and I drove high-mileage, less-reliable cars that bounced along on "May-Pop" tires.

We didn’t take for granted that our cars would start or get us to every intended destination. We just hoped and prayed and checked the air pressure and fuel levels regularly.

Back then I heard someone say that cars were “both our slaves and masters.” They could take us to wonderful places or leave us stranded on the side of the road. And that was before cell phones could bring easy rescue.

Computer technology has brought us into new slave-master relationships. We boot up each day with the assumption that our computers will function properly, that web sites will appear and that email will function.

When it doesn’t happen as expected … well, patience gets tested.

The Baptists Today web site and, more importantly, our staff emails disappeared last Thursday — and didn't return for nearly a week — thanks to the lousy customer service from "ValueWeb — a Hostway Company."

It is amazing how much of our daily work depends on computer technology. And most days our computers are our servants.

On this occasion, however, we are at the mercy of some unknown others (who apparently feel that our use of email and our web presence are not that important).

My frustration is greater than in the olden days when a "previously-owned" car broke down or would not start. For apparently our Internet provider doesn't know how to drag something over to a shade-tree mechanic who will keep working until the thing he is working on is working again.

With patience gone, I'm searching for a silver lining in this dark cloud that continues to hang around after five days.

Perhaps it the awareness that there are so many things that we take for granted routinely — when we should be expressing gratitude for their presence in our daily lives.

From the outside looking in

My only view of congregational life has been from the inside. Having never lived apart from a "church family," my unvarnished perspective is vastly different from those who view the church from the outside.

Like many, I've seen the church up close — in all its ugliness and beauty.

The downside is disappointing: division, pettiness ("Making mountains out of molehills") and the repeated failure to "rightly divide the Word of Truth" on very basic issues of equality and justice.

Some have become ex-insiders, disillusioned by the church's failures. But congregations are made of humans; so what should we expect?

The upside keeps many of us faithfully engaged: spiritual nurture, genuine concern for others, acts of reconciliation, and being buoyed by congregational care during a time of personal loss. So I'm sticking with it.

But, sadly, I understand why the church is unattractive to many who see only the image we (not the media or any other scapegoat) have created.

We are marked by inflexibility and an unwillingness to address the complexities of hot-button moral issues. Easy answers to tough questions leave us looking unintelligent or arrogant or both.

We get dragged along by the rest of culture when it comes to simply affirming basic issues of human rights and equality — even though the Bible compels us in that direction. And the theological defenses of our positions tend to sound more like radio talkers than Jesus.

The more we are polled, the worse we look. Frequent churchgoers support the use of torture and preemptive war to a greater degree than the public at large.

We seem to be last to ever change our minds and say we are sorry for our errant ways of thinking and acting. Instead we make excuses, blame outsiders or falsely claim to have held to the newly accepted position all along.

And, as if we need something else to soil our image, the worst examples of "Christianity" find the brightest public spotlights.

Within the church today, most of our debates are about worship styles, leadership models and doctrinal positioning. Perhaps we should be more concerned about the view from the outside looking in.

Five ways to enliven the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting this year

1. As a point of order, ask if Louisville, Ky., was freely chosen by a planning committee — at Al Mohler’s urging — or predetermined by God before the formation of earth to be the 2009 meeting site.

2. Hang around the Southwestern Seminary booth until you can identify a true Baptist all by yourself.

3. Repeatedly and excitedly ask LifeWay bookstore workers when and where the book signing by Wade Burleson will be held.

4. Make a motion to boycott AT&T for having a logo similar to CBF.





5. Imagine Will Campbell is sitting beside you — and what he might say.

After midnight

Aging is a dirty trick in that behavioral changes occur without one's intent or permission. For example, "sleeping in" now means I'm not at the coffee shop when the doors swing open at 6:30 AM.

Staying up late means I catch the last inning of the baseball game on TV — unless there was a significant rain delay or some "free baseball" (as the late Skip Carey called extra innings) stretching things out too far. Then I just check the score early the next morning.

As a teen and young adult, staying up late was routine. That's when all the real fun happened, we convinced ourselves.

My dad, however, had this assessment: "The only people out past midnight are hoodlums."

He could have paid my college tuition with ease if he'd tossed in a dollar every time he made that proclamation to me or one of my brothers.

Dad's words resurface on occasion. Such as this morning when I read in the local news where a gunman tried to rob a woman sitting in her car "just after midnight" last night. She should have gone home earlier before hoodlums come out.

Though my own young-fool mischief was mild (no details, Dale Newman, we have a pact) by hoodlum standards, getting in by midnight rarely occurred on weekends. Turning off my headlights before reaching our home and tiptoeing in worked most nights.

"What time did you get in last night?" Dad would ask the next day.

"I think it was a little before midnight," I'd respond, missing the truth by nearly two hours.

But somehow his words continue to ring in my ears. Even recently, I returned from an out-of-town speaking engagement and pulled into my garage at 11:54 PM.

Looking at the clock in my dashboard, there was a feeling of accomplishment — that I had come in under the hoodlum deadline by six whole minutes.

There is something about the teen and young adult years that calls for late nights. But it sure does fade decades later.

Now with one teen and another approaching, there will be a great clock challenge just ahead. But they need to know: I've changed my mind; Dad was right.

Translating the faith to our time

Rarely do we find honest public confessions from U.S. Christian leaders about the state of our faith practice. That's why a line from Gary Gunderson's 2004 book, Boundary Leaders, has stuck with me.

Gary is a Baptist minister who has worked for many years in interfaith health programs at Emory University. The memorable line in his book is:

“I’m trying to follow Jesus as best as a middle-class white male can, which is to say, not very well. I could add other adjectives for myself, but none would make mine sound anything remotely like the lifestyle of the first-century itinerant carpenter whose example I choose to emulate.”

While Bible scholars have the challenge of translating scripture into familiar languages, individual Christians and congregations face the challenge of translating the Christian calling into our culture and lifestyle.

And, honestly, our tendency is to downplay those parts that don't suit our tastes — especially Jesus' strongest calls for personal sacrifice and love of enemy.

Our common practice is to "translate" the teachings of Jesus to fit — and even support — our comfortable ways of living.

Gunderson rightly notes that our culture is radically different from the one in which Jesus lived and taught. That acknowledgment raises the important but difficult question: How do we follow Jesus in this fast-moving, technologically advanced world that early Christians would not recognize?

Any assumption that we have figured that out is folly. Perhaps the best we can do is admit to giving a lot of time and energy to this effort — even though we continually come up short of the mark.

Even at our best, we are practicing Christianity with loopholes.

Do you want to be you?

While watching the Atlanta Braves defeat the rival New York Mets ... with their ace pitcher, Johan Santana, on the mound ...in their new ballpark named for a bailed-out bank ... on television last night, I flipped through the Official Souvenir Program a Braves employee had given me at a recent home game.

Personal tidbits about the players were interesting. Longtime buddies Jeff Francoeur and Brian McCann enjoying listening to country signers Kenny Chesney and Jason Aldean, respectively. Somebody needs to take those boys to a Merle Haggard concert.

Future Hall of Famer Chipper Jones likes Rascal Flatts — although the last note of every song, to me, sounds like someone sat on a screech owl. The other Braves veteran, Tom Glavine, listens to James Taylor. That's more like it.

Pitchers Jair Jurrgens of Curacao likes Lil Wayne and Japanese import Kenshin Kawakami tunes in Beyonce.

Most interesting, however, was the large number of players (including Francoeur, Chipper, Yunel Escobar, Tim Hudson, Casey Kotchman, Derek Lowe and Javier Vazquez) who mentioned golfing sensation Tiger Woods in one or more responses. More than any other, Tiger was the one person with whom players would most like to trade places for a day.

Since so many of us dreamed of playing big-time baseball when we were growing up (and, OK, after growing up too), it was intriguing to see what players listed as their "dream jobs."

For Glavine, it was as a hockey general manager. And professional golfer was Vazquez's response. Closer Mike Gonzalez affirmed, however: "I'm doing it right now."

There were other signs of contentment such as pitcher Jurrjens' response to his dream vacation: "I don't have a dream vacation because I'm from an island."

While most of this stuff is quite trivial, there was some wisdom passed along as well. Former Braves catcher and current bullpen coach Eddie Perez was asked about the best advice he ever received as a player.

"There is a camera watching you all the time," he responded. Pass it on, Eddie, pass it on.

In D.C. on the National Day of Prayer

The National Day of Prayer has been around for decades. But during the eight-year tenure of former President George W. Bush, it took on a different flavor. He hosted an annual observance in the East Room of the White House coordinated by Shirley Dobson, chairperson of the privately-funded National Day of Prayer Task Force and wife of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson.



As one might expect, that prayer event took on a distinctive flavor of the Religious Right.



The Dobsons were not invited to the White House on this National Day of Prayer, but held a three-hour-plus service in the Cannon House Office Building.

Being in D.C., I decided to check it all out.

I expected to see various gatherings or other expressions related to the Day of Prayer all around D.C., but did not. There has been a good bit of news coverage though.

Brent Walker, executive director the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, was fielding calls from reporters and on hold for a possible CNN interview when I dropped by.

At the conclusion of the Dobson-directed service, a press conference was held featuring several members of Congress. Rob Marus covered it for Associated Baptist Press while I took photos.

Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), who is co-chairman of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, led the post-service press conference. (Like me, you may not have known that such a caucus exists.)

President Obama — like his long line of predecessors sans the most recent — did not hold a prayer service in the White House today. This decision, of course, made him ripe for comments from his political opponents like James Dobson (who was "disappointed") and Rep. Forbes (who felt the president "missed an opportunity").

After a good lunch (salmon, corn and asparagus salad, hazelnut and blueberry dressing) at the National Museum of the American Indian, I received an email from the White House Office of the Press Secretary noting that President Obama had signed a proclamation — as has been the long tradition — designating this as a National Day of Prayer.



He called for unity and respect for our varied faith traditions, and then concluded: "I call upon Americans to pray in thanksgiving for our freedoms and blessings and to ask for God’s continued guidance, grace, and protection for this land that we love."

For the old soldiers of the Religious Right, however, only special favor for their narrow view of religious faith seems good enough. Which is one of the reasons why finding unity in the United States is increasingly difficult.

(These photos were taken by me today except for the official White House photo of President Obama signing the proclamation while Joshua DuBois, director of the White House Office for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, looks on. Like the Dobsons, I was not invited over to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. either,)

The radio and mom's discernment

The early morning radio voice of Luther Masingill — with Mom clanging around the kitchen — was the background music of my childhood and youth.

After six decades, Luther is still on the air in Chattanooga to eagerly promote a benefit pancake supper in Flintstone, Ga., or help a family in Soddy-Daisy, Tenn., find their lost dog.

On non-school days, I heard other WDEF Radio personalities throughout the day — who, unlike Luther,came and went. One was called "Jolly Charlie," I recall.

Songs like Petula Clark's "Downtown" and Red Foley's "Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy" (a local favorite) seeped into my young head.

But just around dinnertime, a voice without that comforting Southeast Tennessee/ Northwest Georgia drawl would come on the air announcing: "The World Tomorrow with Dr. Garner Ted Armstrong..."

CLICK. Without comment, Mom would turn off the radio that had played since before she cracked the first egg.

With some sense of spiritual discernment that she never explained, my mother — a Baptist from Cradle Roll to the grave — didn't want us to hear the teachings of this radio minister who succeeded his father, Herbert W. Armstrong, and later had conflicts with the elder Armstrong over his prophetic views. Both are gone now.

But for some strange reason all of those childhood memories came rushing back yesterday when I read an article from Religion News Service. According to the report, the ministry started by Herbert W. Armstrong is now to be known as Grace Communion International.

The group renounced the teachings of its founder after his death in 1986 and seems intent on staking out a place in the mainstream of evangelical Christianity. Becoming known as Grace Communion International appears to be another step away from the teachings of Armstrong that apparently included denial of the Trinity and an emphasis on Old Testament law.

But I'm really not sure what the Armstrongs taught — since Mom was quick to reach for the dial each evening.

In fact, the radio in our kitchen stayed off until the next morning — except on spring or summer nights from 1966 on. Then a voice we could believe in came to us with a quick click to the "on" position:

"This is Milo Hamilton along with Ernie Johnson and Braves baseball is on the air, brought to you by the people in your town who bottle Coca-Cola and by Union 76. Any rebroadcast of the descriptions or accounts of this game without express written consent of the Atlanta Braves is prohibited..."

Mom protected us from wayward theology but not from the pain of losing.

It's just money...lots of it

News reports indicate that Chrysler is filing for bankruptcy and Ford's sales number are even lower than expected. Some economists, however, see signs that the economy is turning around.

My understanding of economic principles is so limited that I must rely on someone else's expertise. But it doesn't take a genius to see that many (if not most) Americans feel less secure financially.

What is the silver lining in this dark sky? That is a good question for people of faith to consider.

Churches are acting more like "communities of faith" than before the dollar crunch. Taking care of one another — and those beyond the fold — in times of need is a vital part of being church.

Personal reflection is leading many to realize that we put too much stock in stocks and our self-reliance. Our trust must be built on something more reliable than portfolios.

A few months ago I passed through Phipps Plaza — a trendy mall in Atlanta's Buckhead community. On display was a eye-catching Bentley Continental GTC convertible.

Its mileage rating was 10 city and 17 highway. It carried a gas guzzler tax of $3,700.

The "suggested retail price" was $222,765 — but I bet you could take it home for closer to 200 grand.

It hard to believe there is — or ever was — a market for a vehicle with such statistics. But then it's just money. Or is it?