Dear Pastor Whoever

Dear Pastor Whoever….

I wrote a novel a while ago that might interest you. Pulpit Power started off with random thoughts swirling freely in my upstairs about a plumber and a pastor, about a pretty good church baseball team, a suicidal ex-marine, a cranky elder and an ancient pulpit. To my surprise I felt the Lord instructing me to organize these haphazard thoughts into a novel. Like Really? thinketh I. Does the Lord actually like novels? Could be. He did speak in parables.

The story begins with Reuben Tanner, a friendly and well-respected plumber, timidly asking Pastor Mac for permission to use the pulpit to give a message to the congregation. He claims to have a word from Lord Jesus to the people. This simple request is the beginning of a major disturbance for sedate Bread of Life Assembly. It may sound like a sluggish storyline, but tell me…

Tell me, Pastor Whoever, how would you respond to someone asking to give what he believes to be a message from Jesus Christ? Your initial reaction might be to flatly deny him. But on what grounds? How can you justify speaking from the pulpit hundreds (thousands?) of times and yet deny him one occasion? What Scripture verse forbids him to speak? And suppose he really did have a message from Jesus? You would be denying the very “King of kings”. But, but but…. if you say yes, doesn’t that open a scary door? How can you say yes to one laymen but no to all others?

You might wonder what a plumber could say to the people that you haven’t said a dozen times already. You offer to simply relay his message to the congregation on his behalf, but the plumber won’t have none of that. What to do?…. what to do?…. what to do?

I can only tell you what Pastor Mac did. Second thought, maybe I won’t. You can read it yourself, available at www.larryjones.ca

Many blessings on you and your congregation,

Larry Jones