Understand, I am not poking fun at the derecho that raced across Iowa and Illinois before it reached Indiana and then Ohio almost two weeks ago. A derecho is a straight line wind storm where the winds reach freakish speeds. This one had winds that reach Category 2 hurricane level in Iowa. It lost some power as it hammered away at Illinois. By the time it swept over this part of Indiana it had slowed somewhat but was still pretty powerful. In Ohio it began to encounter hills as it neared the center of that state and began to break up. In Iowa alone it destroyed or severely damaged 10,000,000 acres of crop land. Certainly serious.

          One of the very serious events during this rare, but devastating, storm was Lori Fitch heard the storm was coming while she was at work and realized that the cushions and pillows on the deck furniture at the house were exposed and would be blown away. Nothing to be done but to call husband Ed, who was headed home. Ed’s telling of the story was that when he heard of the coming cataclysm and the inevitable loss of the cushions and pillows, he made the truck fly. Squealing into the driveway and racing back to the house, he leaped from the truck. The wind was already picking up and one could hear the great wind approach. Leaping up the steps, our hero hit the top step with the toe portion of his shoe, hyper extending his foot up to his leg. The resulting injury was a damaged tendon that, luckily, will heal in time. As he tells the story, he was heroically still able to save cushions and pillows in spite of the excruciating pain.

          What makes me laugh here is not the wind storm, which has crippled Iowa’s farming year, nor is it that Ed performed his assigned spousal duties and paid a price for it (although paying the price for cushions and pillows is kind of funny). No, what makes me laugh is the memory it sparks in my mind. You see, I once did the very same thing. Different circumstance and I was very much younger, so I avoided injury. But I did it in front of three to four hundred people.

          The town I am from in Ohio was a little bigger than Urbana, but only in the fact that we had a functioning gas station and a small general store type of building. A lot of farmland at that time surrounding a small village area. I accepted Christ at the age of 17 and began going to a local church. The zip code actually was made up of three distinct communities. Perry Village, North Perry (right along Lake Erie), and Perry Township. The total population within the zip code was less than 800 people. The church I went to, in Perry Township, had over 1,000 people in attendance every Sunday.

          How was that possible, you ask? Well, that was in the day of bus ministries. A church would buy a couple of old, beat up school buses, paint them up and then start hauling kids to church. Back in those days in Ohio the bus did not need to pass a road worthy test nor did the driver need anything other than a regular driver’s license. In most cases, the buses were unsafe and the drivers not qualified. The church I started going to had 22 buses; 4 for parts and 18 for the road. Each week we brought in right around 600 kids in overloaded buses to church from the surrounding communities. The bus I eventually drove went 40 miles from the church, almost to Cleveland. I was 18 years old. I had driven farm equipment before, but nothing like a bus. There are a lot of adults out there, in their 50s now, who are lucky to be alive.

          But when I started going to the church, I was not driving. I was only 17, after all. I was like a sponge soaking up everything the pastor said. Oh, my! He would shout and he would weep and he would pace and he would yell and he would fall on his knees and beg us to come to Jesus. Altar calls sometimes looked like the Hebrew children fleeing Egypt. You could be born again but he would convince you that you were actually lost and Hell bound and you needed to get it right this time and be saved. One fellow went forward so often and then was baptized so often I began to wonder if that was when he took his weekly bath. And all of this was only the adult portion of the service of 400 to 500 adults and teenagers. An additional 300 kids were in the adjacent worship center and another 300 were in the basement.

          As time went on, I became convinced that I was being called into the ministry. I knew the Lord wanted me to pastor, but given my limited experience I understood that only as being a preacher. If never occurred to me that being a pastor and being a preacher were two different things. I did, however, know that my pastor was one amazing preacher.

          One day I went to my pastor and told him that the Lord was calling me into the ministry. I had just turned 18 and was still in high school and, unfortunately, did not have the best reputation in our small town. Really, I hadn’t been a Christian for very long. Reputations can be hard to shake, especially if they are not good reputations. When I told the pastor the great news, he sat back in his chair and glared at me. Then he asked me a bunch of questions. Finally, “OK, so you want to preach? You can start with the kids. The young ones first, then the older ones. Every Sunday. We will see how you like preaching.” And just like that, I had two congregations of 300 people each to preach to. I knew absolutely nothing about preaching and he offered no guidance. He actually said that if the Lord was calling me to preach, He would take care of it.

          How bad I was, well, I refuse to talk about it at the moment. First, I went to the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd graders and spoke to them before they had a chance to sing. After I was done with them, two ladies took over and sang with them and told some little story and played games with them. Meanwhile, in another part of the church, two ladies were doing the music and singing and telling a little story to the 4^th, 5^th and 6^th graders until I ran in and then I spoke to them. As the weeks went on, I became somewhat confident. I didn’t go off to Christian college until the following January, so I did the Children’s Church thing all Spring, Summer and Fall and into the Winter. I finally went to the pastor and asked if I could speak on a Sunday night. (Sunday morning was no place for a novice like me.) No, he said, we would wait and see how I did after a semester at college.

          So, I did that first semester, went home and started up with the Children’s Church thing. And then, low and behold, Pastor put me on the schedule for a Sunday night.

          The crowds were smaller on Sunday night. 300, maybe 400. I was used to that. But these were adults. The chances were pretty good that I wasn’t going to have to call someone down for picking their nose. I wasn’t going to be able to get away with presenting a kids’ message to a bunch of adults. I became more and more nervous. Finally, with about a week to go, I went to the Pastor for help. Again, the glare. Then he said, “Follow me.”

          We walked into the sanctuary and walked down to the front pew. He always sat in that pew until it was time for him to preach. Then, he would literally leap to his feet, take three strides building to an all out sprint and then leap up the three steps to the pulpit area. There was a single pulpit in the center of the stage and he would glide behind it and stop his charge. There in the sanctuary he demonstrated his technique to me. “You do this to show everyone that you have a great message to bring them and you just can’t wait to get started. Be enthusiastic and the rest will fall into place.” I tried it a few times and it was easy. However, I still had no idea how to speak to adults.

          Consequently, I began to obsess over the quick sprint, the leap and the settling behind the pulpit. I was going to show those people I had the best message ever and I couldn’t wait to lay it out there! Oh, boy!

          Sunday morning people were telling me they were really looking forward to my message that evening. One sweet little old lady told me the Lord had laid it on her heart that it was going to be great. I was a shoo-in. Nothing to worry about.

          It didn’t make sense, though. If it was a done deal why was I sitting that night in that pew sweating bullets? Why did my Bible want to slide out of my hand? Why did that pulpit seem to be eight feet in the air? And, most importantly, why couldn’t I breathe? I became hyper aware of things. Wow. The pulpit area was huge and behind that there was a low wooden fence like thing and beyond that was this huge choir loft. I sang in the choir. How was it that I had never realized it was 3 acres big? Everything was massive. And, there were literally around 400 people in the congregation.

          The music leader began to introduce me as a promising young preacher, one of our very own, a student at Tennessee Temple University. Brother Wade, come on up!

          I sprang to my feet and began my sprint. I had, in my mind, a mark on the floor where I would begin my leap. Everything would have been fine, except for the fact that I was wearing a three piece suit and dress shoes. Just a little thing, perhaps, but it destroyed the leap. I got the toe of my shoe on the top step, just like Ed did. The hyper extension hurt like crazy, but what happened next was worse. The bottom of the dress shoes were slick, so I slid a few inches. Then my heal caught the step and stopped that foot dead. Now I was stumbling forward, streaking past the pulpit. I reached out to grab it and missed. That massive choir loft was racing toward me. I grabbed the only thing I could grab; the little metal music stand. It barely slowed me down. The little wooden fence was in front of me now. (This was actually called a ‘modesty rail’ and was there to keep anyone from trying to look up a lady’s skirt while she sat there.) It was not designed to stop an athletic young man who was charging out of control.

          Yet, it did stop me. I was bent almost double and I managed to get my hands on it before it slammed into my chest. I stopped and stood up. Still clutching my Bible, I turned around and walked the few paces to the pulpit. Eyes were wide and mouths were hanging open in the congregation. In a low voice I instructed them as to what passage to open their Bibles too. That was followed with a six minute message. I asked the pastor to dismiss us in prayer and then, when he did, I sat down in one of the pulpit chairs. My head could not have hung any lower. The pastor walked up and put his hand on my shoulder. “Brother Wade,” he said softly, “you need more height on that leap.”

          So, Ed, if you are reading this, I want you to know, I wasn’t laughing at you. I was laughing at myself. I did it earlier, I did it more spectacularly, and I did it for a far less good cause. I couldn’t save my sermon, but you saved the cushions and pillows.