Like all Baby Boomers, I grew up with television.  I cut my teeth on “Captain Kangaroo” and “Sesame Street.”   I graduated to sitcoms:  The “Andy Griffith Show,” “Bewitched,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.,” “Happy Days,” “All in the Family,” “The Jeffersons,” and “Good Times.” Saturday mornings I woke early and enjoyed the host of characters from Warner Brothers: Bugs Bunny,Daffy...

Johnnette Jallah, a teenager from Lofa County, said her favorite thing about Passport Camp Liberia was making new friends.  Approximately one-hundred and fifty campers from across Liberia had such an opportunity when they traveled to Ricks Institute, a boarding school sixteen miles outside of Monrovia, as they attended Passport’s first ever Liberian-staffed camp and ushered in the New Year.   The importance of such a camp cannot be...

A pastor friend of mine recently died after living to age 85.  He pastored the same church for nearly 30 years.  Well, there was that two-week stint that he pastored another church in Florida.  Yes, two weeks. This large-steeple church lured this pastor to their college town and the South Georgia church said all their teary-eyed goodbyes.   However, once this pastor arrived and began his ministry, he discovered that the picture painted...

As a pastor, I make calls on members in various kinds of care home facilities because these people are cut off from their church community.  It is important for the church community to continue to minister to these people, including those who will not remember our efforts.  These include Alzheimer’s patients. Alzheimer’s patients have a terrible debilitating disease of the mind.  It is first noticeable when a person begins to forget...

If the Baptist churches had Cardinals, Dr. Ches Smith would have been one.   He might have gotten a few votes for Pope, if Baptists had one of those, but that’s one of the great differences between us and our Catholic friends.  We don’t need a Pope but we still need people that help connect us to God.  Ches helped connect people to God, but it wasn’t in a high and lifted up way.  It was in an earthy way.   It was in a “let...

  Brad Yoman has been navigating the swamps around the Altamaha River for over 30 years.  He captains a 12-foot aluminum Jon boat with a 15hp two-stroke engine.  It’s a small boat with a small motor but small is what you need when you are moving through the swamp.  Many places are passable only because Brad has cut his way through with a chainsaw.   Any person sitting on the front of Brad’s Jon boat as it moves 15 or 20 mph...

I’ve been a Rotarian now since 1996.  Rotary is an international service organization.  Our motto is “Service Above Self.”   In most cities around the world, you can find Rotarians meeting once a week, all seeking to make the world a better place to live.  We strive to live a life of integrity and one of the ways we do this is through applying a four-way test of the things we think, say and do.  So we ask ourselves these...