How Many Pastors Does It Take to Change a Water Heater?

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Though I love my usual “neighborhood,” it was nice to wake up today in another one: Robert Lee, Texas. It’s the Semiannual Pastors of the Shelburne Variety Robert Lee Ministry Conference which I’ve been religiously attending now for thirty years or so. It’s by far the most inspiring ministry conference I’ve ever attended.

Actually, it’s the semiannual convergence in Coke County of my three minister brothers and myself at our Granddaddy & Grandmother Key’s old homeplace in Robert Lee. Lots of fun, it’s worth a ton in relaxation, pure enjoyment, and some fine opportunities for bouncing ministerial ideas, problems, and general ruminations off the graying heads of three other brother clerics all coveyed up for a few days of retreat.

I rolled in late last evening, glad to have seen only one deer in the forty miles between Colorado City and Robert Lee. It was a reverse record. My brother Jim set the record last year by spotting fifty deer along that same stretch of highway, some of whom seemed suicidal. “Terrorist deer,” storyteller Garrison Keillor calls them. Deer ready and willing to commit suicidal mayhem. Only one last night. And not of the terroristic variety.

Jim and I spent a couple of hours solving world problems and then headed to bed, both glad that the pre-tripulation (before the trip tribulation) work flurry was over and we’d actually landed in Robert Lee.

When my head hit the pillow, I was hoping to sink into blissful oblivion; instead, I launched into a nightmare sort of hodge-podge of worship services gone terribly wrong and a few other church-type afflictions. I don’t know what to make of that. Probably nothing. Thank the Lord, fiction is stranger than truth.

I doubt it’s all that unusual for a tired plumber taking some time off to spend the first night or two tossing and turning with visions of gushing pipes or under-the-sink drips drip-drip-dripping all night long on his nose in a kind of subliminal waterboarding.

It’s funny. I love what I do and can hardly imagine doing anything else. But a few days away is a good thing. The Lord knew what he was talking about when he built in, right from the first, some time for rest and even made a commandment out of it, hoping to force his frenetic kids to seek some kind of balance in our all-too-often unbalanced lives.

Anyway, I’m going to avoid chili dogs this evening before retiring to what I have every hope will be peaceful slumber.

Uh oh. Jim just discovered that the old abode’s old water heater seems incontinent. Not a good sign. Pastoral plumbing will be required. More tribulation. Even here. Jesus predicted it. But he also said, “Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”

Now, how many pastors does it take to change a water heater?





Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Thank God for His Beautiful Green Earth

I’m afraid I’ve discovered that I’m not very “Green.”

Whenever we fall to self-righteousness, we are religious about it, but overtly religious people have in no way cornered the market. Chest-thumping of any sort is every bit as effective as Bible-thumping if you want to be a self-righteous jerk. All you need is one or two areas in life where you have convinced yourself that you are a cut above the masses, and you’re well on your way.

I’ve always been pretty partial to green as a color, but I don’t care for it much as a political perspective. It seems off-color. Nauseatingly politically correct. Rife with self-righteousness. Long on hoopla and short on substance. Loud but shallow. Shot through with the kind of deadly sanctimony that always ends up looking silly, fallen in on itself due to the weight of its own pomposity. (Its most serious disciples make me think of dour-faced guppies holding meetings about how to save the ocean which neither knows about, cares about, or needs their help.) The most devoted Green folks display a fervor once reserved for religious experience and seem almost intoxicated by the new truths they have seen and discovered.

Discovered? New? It’s as if they have suddenly set foot on a new continent and planted a flag of bold discovery. Columbus’ discoveries in America were news in Europe in the late fifteenth century, and we can still work up some excitement on Columbus Day once a year, but the whole thing kind of got over being new news a good while back.

I hope we never forget the lessons we learned during WWII, but if I prance around today carrying a sign proclaiming, “Germany Surrenders!” I needn’t think it strange that some might think me strange.

Those who best honor God as the Creator have always been those with eyes most open to the beauty of his creation. The best stewards of God’s good earth have never been those marching on Washington or Rome or Paris demanding Greenness, they’ve been those quietly tilling the soil and taking care of the land for generations knowing that God has used it to take care of them. They were Green a long time before it was cool.

It’s wise to worship and honor God, and, if you do so well, the earth will get her due. But if you worship the earth, it seems to me that both God and the planet end up short-changed. (I like holidays, but Earth Day has always just seemed a tad on the pagan side.)

It is, of course, easy to see why “greenness” as a religion would be appealing. The earth, being impersonal, can’t ask or require a thing of the beings who worship it. Neither can it truly love us, no matter how much we love it.

The best reason for loving the earth is that, even fallen, it still reflects the beauty of its Creator. I love this good earth and care for it best when I love its Creator far more.

Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Cemeteries Help Keep Life in Proper Perspective

I’m weird, and I know it. But I sort of enjoy spending some time in cemeteries. I’m talking, of course, about the times when I want to be there, not the times when I have to be. Big difference. There’s been way too much of the latter recently, it seems to me.

But I find cemeteries peaceful and interesting. Strolling among the tombstones (since I don’t have to mow around them, I much prefer the standing ones), you get the chance to play Sherlock Holmes and deduce all sorts of life stories from all sorts of inscriptions.

Some cemeteries are quite beautiful with well-kept shrubs and trees and grass. And, if I may say so, the folks who populate cemeteries tend to be incredibly easy to get along with.

Since I’ve been a pastor in my community for over twenty-five years, more than a few of the names I see on the stones in our area cemeteries are connected with lives and stories that I know. I stood at the heads of quite a few of those graves and spoke words I hoped would point to the Author of Life just before the earth’s blanket was rolled over those remains.

When I think of my life and the life of our community, it’s hard for me to visualize life without many of the folks I’ve just mentioned. I no longer bump into them at worship or at the coffee shop or wave at them as we pass on the street. I miss that.

But they are still very much a part of me. A part of us. And that’s especially true if they were part of the community of faith. They may or may not have been part of my congregation or my denomination, but so what? Christ’s church is so much larger than the fences we build to try to keep God all tied up and tamed. Thank God indeed, God won’t be shut up in anybody’s box, and he has never been willing to be successfully tamed.

Death is the harshest reminder of all that we’ll never get even this world tamed, much less its Creator. We may not look long upon those boxes that we bury, but they are nonetheless a constant reminder that life can’t be successfully controlled.

Cemeteries help put our lives in perspective. The “drop dead” date for filing federal taxes is almost upon us. (Yes, I was that late this year.) But dead people care not at all. Life’s cost is almost certainly increasing at a steadier clip than your paycheck, but once your heart stops the meter quits running, too. Perspective.

Cemeteries help us divide what really matters from what really does not. What matters most is who we chose to ultimately trust in this life—ourselves or our Creator. That’s a serious decision.

But once that decision’s made, cemeteries also remind us that life is far too precious to be taken too seriously. God is the God of all joy. Those who love him can dance in his presence both here and hereafter. They know better than to think that love and laughter and beauty cease on the other side of the tombstone.


 Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

"You Must Read and Understand These Instructions"

I just bought a new weed-eater. The old one was sputtering along just fine in excellent two-cycle engine form, but two of my sons have just moved into a different house and needed weed-whacking equipment. In a gesture of paternal magnanimity, I donated the old weed-destroyer to the cause. I didn’t tell them that it will likely out-value anything else left in the estate for them when I’ve departed. But they seemed appreciative.

Anyway, I ceremonially handed over the old weed-eater and straightway departed (in a less final sense) to procure a new one. The shopping trip was like all my shopping trips. I wasted gas going to four stores to save money and ended up back at the first store lined up to pay twice as much as I thought the item would cost. Oh, well.

When I got my shiny new weed-whacker home, I was tempted to fire it up just to check out the brand new thimble-sized engine, but it was midnight. And I’d given my (mixed) gas can away, too, and couldn’t buy a new one and get the petrol cocktail mixed up (shaken, not stirred) until Monday. That gave me time to sit the new machine in the living room floor for the weekend and actually look through the instructions.

Once I’d trimmed the two manuals down to the King’s English only, I was left with eighty-four pages of weed-eater literature. Actually, only twenty-six pages of that counted as “instructions.” The lion’s share was the “safety manual.” This is evidently a vicious machine.

Of course, there was very little plot to the two-volume novel. Most of the pages were covered with lawyer droppings. Safety booklets will soon come, no doubt, attached to every nail you buy at your local hardware store. It’s a wonder restaurants don’t include such manuals with their toothpicks.

But I read and learned . . .

The muffler is hot. Good.

The State of California (which knows so much more than other states, except how to balance budgets) knows that sucking in weed-eater exhaust can cause birth defects.

This thing could amputate my fingers. I’d have to be pretty determined to be fingerless, but it could happen.

It’s a bad idea to run it indoors, to use it to shorten power lines, or to operate it when drunk.

And so on.

I’m not finished reading yet, partly because reading these manuals, I’m warned, is not enough. I must “read and understand” all of these warnings. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to check off that last part.

The Maker of this world was kind enough to include a manual that we really should read and, yes, do our best to understand. He wrote it not to keep Heaven out of court, but to keep us out of trouble. But by far the main reason he wrote it was to point us not to the law but to the Savior.




Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Ideas, Good or Bad, Have Consequences

The amazing wordsmith G. K. Chesterton once observed that ideas (presumably, bad ones) can only be conquered by other ideas (presumably better ones), and, alas, “modern politicians have no ideas.”

Ain’t it the truth? And when they do flirt with an idea or two, they seem to latch onto only really bad ones.

I always enjoy the writing of Pulitzer prize-winning columnist George Will. In a recent column, Will pointed his readers to a fascinating book by Daniel Okrent entitled The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.

It is ironic that Prohibition, which arose as an over-reaction to excessive and pernicious drinking, would itself be more legislatively excessive and lead to more pernicious consequences than anything it was designed to combat.

According to Okrent (and distilled by Will), among the unforeseen consequences of Prohibition were the income tax (since the federal government lost alcohol taxes which were 30% of its revenues), plea bargaining (since there was no way courts could actually try all the newly created criminals), a nationwide crime syndicate (folks as truly thankful as the most devout teetotaller for the new law—since it made organized crime filthy rich), Las Vegas (since once Prohibition was over ex-bootleggers needed “new business opportunities,”) NASCAR (since bootleggers needed hotter cars than the law’s), speedboats (same reason but on the water outrunning the Coast Guard), and a “privacy right” (“the right to be let alone”—“which eventually extended to abortion rights.” Not to mention, wealthy federal “Prohibition agents” who “cherished $1800 jobs because of the bribes that came with them.”

By the way, an interesting point in the book is that until the 18th Amendment (Prohibition), only one other amendment in the Constitution (prohibiting the owning of slaves) was designed to tell citizens what they could not do; all the other amendments told the government what it could not do. Government has not since gotten over the idea that it can do pretty much anything it wishes (even regulate trans fat and salt in restaurant fare!).

Alcohol consumption went down only 30% and freedom was held hostage in ways never envisioned by the many who truly thought Prohibition would go far to save the nation. It certainly went far.

If you think this is a column specifically about Prohibition, or teetotalism versus non-teetotalism, you are badly mistaken. It is a column about ideas and consequences. The former lead to the latter.

May God fill our little minds with good ideas so that into this needy world, good consequences follow to bring a little more peace and a little more joy. If we really want more of “God’s will” done “on earth as in heaven,” I think a very good idea is to trust God, and faith, and freedom, more than any law we might ever write ourselves.




Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Belated Birthday Congrats

Hey, folks--On a serious note, I woke up this morning and realized that I’d blown right past an important birthday!

I can hardly believe that nobody in this fine group mentioned it! Bilbo & Frodo Baggins’ birthday is usually celebrated on Sept 22, though there is some discussion regarding the actual date. But the American Tolkien Society has kindly designated the whole week that includes Sept 22 as Tolkien Week, so it’s not too late to celebrate! (Of course, it’s never too late to celebrate. Anything.)

From Wikipedia: The American Tolkien Society first proclaimed Hobbit Day and Tolkien Week in 1978, and defines them as this: "Tolkien Week is observed as the calendar week containing September 22, which is always observed as Hobbit Day", but acknowledges that Hobbit Day pre-dates their designation. Due to the discrepancies between the Shire Calendar and the Gregorian Calendar there is some debate for when to celebrate Hobbit Day. Many celebrate on September 22 of the Gregorian Calendar but other deep students of Tolkien, however, say that the dates mentioned in the narrative refer to the Shire Calendar, which has significant divergences from the Gregorian. More accurately, Tolkien said that the Shire Calendar is in advance by some 10 days (depending on the month) of the Gregorian Calendar. According to calculations, a suggested corresponding date is September 14."

And Bilbo’s was surely the best birthday speech ever! “First of all, to tell you that I am immensely fond of you all, and that eleventy-one years is too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits.” Tremendous outburst of approval. “I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.” This was unexpected and rather difficult. There was some scattered clapping, but most of them were trying to work it out and see if it came to a compliment.”

Anyway, in a world where we often take idiocy seriously and the truly serious with far too little mirth, may I say, Long live Bilbo and Frodo, and God bless J. R. R. Tolkien! It’s a better world because a man of faith like Tolkien lived, breathed, wrote, and created an amazingly fine world filled with hobbits! We’d all be better off if we spent more time with them!

Need Information? Just Google It!

It boggles my mind to wonder how I ever got by without Google.

Every day, multiple times, I “google” some word or phrase looking for a trickle of the amazing flood of information available on the Internet.

I chomp down on a Tootsie Roll Pop late one evening and pop off a dental crown. What to do before the dental office opens? Google it!

My little dog looks guilty. The physical evidence indicates that she’s made a Christmas meal out of M & M stocking stuffers. I know chocolate is bad for dogs, but just how much does it take to fritz Rover? Google it! Turns out the dog would have to really chow down to be dispatched by M & Ms. (So my feeding handfuls of them to the Great Dane was just in vain.)

My motorcycle turn signals start going crazy. I push the button for two turn signal lights (front and rear) to blink, and all four light up the bike. Weird blinking. Looks like a fibrillating Christmas tree.

Motorcycle repair shops don’t like electrical problems. I don’t like paying motorcycle repair shops to deal with electrical problems. My answer?

Google! I got a whole short course in motorcycle wiring and how to attempt to read an electrical schematic. I found out what a turn signal switch or relay would cost. (Way too much, like everything labelled “motorcycle.”) I found out what to check first, what kind of electrical connection cleaner to use, whether lithium grease is electrically conductive, various options on removing a very stuck bolt, etc. I googled all that. And then started playing with wires until it was fixed.

I’ve googled info on home remedies for human physical maladies. I’ve googled up stuff on plant maladies to see why my orchids and plumeria look healthy but won’t bloom. I’ve googled info on a number of DIY projects from building a PVC flute to finding the best 21-degree roundhead framing nails to use in a nail gun when building shed trusses. I even googled, and found, the information I needed on how to “whip” the ends of a large rope for my granddaughters’ tree swing. (Just call me. I’ll show you how to whip up some sail-maker’s rope whipping. It’s fun.) And I googled up some info on the best knots to use for that swing. Fascinating!

Looking for a good sermon illustration or a great website filled with Bible study helps? Google it! I’ve just about gotten to the point that I can’t write a sermon without the Internet up and running so I can easily compare various Bible translations, etc.

So . . . if Google is such a help in finding information on “how to” build or do or fix just about everything, I wonder . . . I wonder why the Creator of the universe didn’t provide us with a treasure trove of information on, say, who to trust as we build our lives?

Oh, wait. He did! Maybe I need to “Bible” at least as much as I google!



Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.