Journal,

I’m sending a shortened version of this entry for the purpose of testing my blog-journal. Recently had an upgrade but it appears that my last two entries did not make it to my subscribers. Hopefully everything is now fixed. By the way, I had my check up today on my cancer healing. Everything looks great.

Ok, here goes…

The first time I remember stepping inside a church was in 1949. I was nine years old. It was an old-timey Pentecostal Church in Burr Ferry, Louisiana, right near the Sabine River. This is where my grandpa and grandma Carver went to church, along with others of my kinfolk. For a little fellow who had never been to church, it was a world to behold. Guess you could say that I dealy fell in love with that church. But not just that church. I soon found myself in love with churches in general.

Now I realize that this may sound a bit odd, but to this day when we are traveling, every time Betty and I  pass a Christian church, I get this warm fuzzy inside. Sure, I know where the feeling comes from. Every church speaks to me of God’s people and God’s people are my family. So I always have this homey feeling.

Course you have to understand that I tend to be very idealistic. For one thing I place a high value on the word Christian. Certainly this makes me a little naive or over-simplistic about life. After all, Christians are just people trying to make their way through life, needing all the help from the Lord that they can get.

Guess this is one reason that when I am ministering at Christian Challenge, I always place a strong emphasis on a love for all God’s people. Last evening in my ‘Shepherd’s Heart’ class, I called attention to the term ‘the body of Christ,’ that with regard to Pineville, this term speaks of all the true Christians of Pineville. No church should ever take to itself as being exclusively the body of Christ.

And this is why I love listening to the old hymns…

I’m talking about those hymns that remind me of my childhood. You see, I had the privilege of having two church backgrounds. One was Pentecostal. The other was Church of God (Anderson - non-Pentecostal.) Both settings had their own songs that remain precious to me to this day. Where the Pentecostals tended to be more exuberate, Church of God singing was more mellow. And I loved them both.  I’m not that familiar with highbrow singing. Course it all sort of depends on my mood at the time. 

Now here is a video that combines my love for churches with my love for good old down to earth church singing.

The first part is more like my Church of God memories. The second part is more like my country Pentecostal memories.

Just take you a listen….

Wanted to make this entry short for the purpose of the upgrade. I’ll be sharing more a bit later.

Blessings,

Buddy