If you are ever driving around in the Florida panhandle in an area just south of the Alabama line and you are lost and you see a hand printed sign that is advertising the annual rattlesnake rodeo in Opp, Alabama, make sure you stay in Florida, just south of Opp. The state line is not well marked and you really don’t want to be in Opp during the rodeo. However, you will be pretty close to the first church I ever pastored. Just about the only way you can find that church is to be lost. I understand that now the road running by it is paved, sort of, but you still have to be lost.

Sandy Creek Baptist Church. The church was started in 1823 and is currently on its third building. The first building just rotted away. They built a second building and it lasted almost a hundred years. It needed replaced badly, but the people were attached to the old barn and didn’t want to tear it down. So, one night it was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. The third building was built, and that was the one they were in when our one year old son and Marsha and I arrived. The oldest graves in the cemetery went back to the 18 teens, so there had to have been a place of worship somewhere, but the church was officially started in 1823.

I love history and I would walk around the cemetery every morning and look at the headstones and try to imagine what those people were like. It was actually a fairly large cemetery. Marsha didn’t like it because the only place to park next to the parsonage was in a narrow strip between the parsonage and the cemetery. You actually had to step into the cemetery to get into the car. Absolutely would freak her out. Anytime it was storming during the night she would have her face pressed against the bedroom window and when lightning would flash, she would call out, “I saw one!” When she was a young teenager, she saw “Night of the Living Dead” several times and she was convinced that our cemetery was giving up its dead.

Anyway, I am drifting. The minutes of all the meetings of the church were kept in several volumes in a special place. Somehow, they had survived the fire. The very first entries were from the very first day of the church. The notes were all written in a very precise hand. The handwriting changed every twenty years or so, but it was always meticulous. The language changed, as well, but it was always easy to read. I would read something that struck me as interesting and I would jot down the names and then, on my cemetery walks, I would look for the people involved. I had great times in that cemetery.

For about the first ten years of the church it was a quarter-time church. Then, for maybe the next hundred years, it was a half-time church. What that meant was that one man would pastor four churches, going to a different church every week. Hence, quarter-time. This was common all over the country in those days. In fact, the Christmas song that goes ‘….we can make a snowman, and pretend he is parson Brown. He’ll say are you married and we’ll say no, man! But you can do the job when you’re in town!’ directly references that practice. The distances between the four churches (and later when it was just two churches, thus half time) were often quite impressive for the day. The pastor would leave one church on Monday morning and arrive at the next one by Wednesday or Thursday and then have a Bible study that night and church on Sunday. And boy, would they have church! The preacher would preach two hours and the singing would go on for an hour and then they would break for lunch and then come back for more. But there was always one notation that I didn’t understand. For decades it said, “Mr. Ezra Haughton brought the study.” In time, after Ezra, it changed to someone else, and that gentleman ‘brought the study’ for a few more decades.

We had an eighty year old Reese Haughton in the church and one day I asked him about Ezra. Turned out that Ezra had been Reese’s great grandfather. As Reese explained it to me, the church was quarter time as far as the pastor was concerned, but they still gathered every Sunday at the church for ‘divine services.’ Old Ezra was a deacon, and he would bring a Bible study every Sunday during the service, whether the preacher was there or not. The Bible study was the important thing. The preaching was just extra. In that church it was still that way when I was there.

That was as it was back then. Not just in the Florida panhandle, either. Anywhere there was country and country folk, they went to church on Sunday. The emphasis was not on the ‘worship,’ but on the teaching. Just one example from the Yoke, back in the 1800s the ladies organized a group that would eventually become the Women’s Guild. It was created just for Bible study. No food, no refreshments, no merriment. Just study. People were serious about the Word of God back in the day, and our churches were stronger.

This Sunday we are switching things up a little. Sunday School will start at 9:00 AM and end at 9:45. Church will start at 10:00 AM and it will be over when I am done preaching, somewhere between 11:00 and 11:15. The reason for this is to give Sunday School its just due. As it is now, church is over and everyone stands around and visits, then they go to Sunday School and Sunday School has about twenty minutes. If we have a meal or maybe a meeting after church, Sunday School is eliminated. This way, the most important part of Sunday morning will be given its very own place. If you go to Sunday School on a regular basis anyway, you will wind up getting out of services a little earlier than normal.

I know some of you don’t like this new schedule. Church has been first for a very long time here. It is a tradition, and we do like our traditions. For others, you like to get out of church and either get home early or get to The Fried Egg or Bob Evans before the other church folk. Like if you don’t get there early all the food will be gone. But remember, this is not being done to mess your Sunday up. This is being done to provide Sunday School with the time it needs to do the really important work that it does. Almost every church around (if they still have Sunday School) does it this way, and for the same reason.

Think about why you don’t like this idea. Now does your reason for not liking this serve God, or does it serve you.

This idea doesn’t come from me. However, I completely agree with it. I know you folks know I love you all. I also know that you know I would never back something that would be detrimental to you or the church. This is a good thing.