We don’t do much with Philemon. It sits there in the back of the Pauline Epistles and behaves itself. The biggest controversy I’ve ever had about the letter was with an lady who insisted I was pronouncing it wrong. “It’s PHIL-a-mon,” she told me . . . over and over again.
But I’ve always loved Paul’s prayer in the letter. And his blessing in verse seven is powerful and encouraging. Wouldn’t you love it if someone told you that you, “refreshed the hearts of the saints”?
People are often surprised when they find that I minister to two different congregations. My main work, of course, is with the Kansas Christian Church, an Independent Christian Church in my home town. Prior to coming back to Kansas, though, I served with the Kemp Church of Christ, what many would call “an acapella church.” I can’t say enough about the grace my family and I found at Kemp and their continued encouragement has been wonderful. It occurred to me recently that I have now been associated with the Kemp Church in one way or another for over twenty years. That’s quite a bit of history for us.
We’ve often talked about how good it would be to get the two churches together for some worship and fellowship. When we finally settled on an evening to do it we thought we had covered all the scheduling problems. What could go wrong?
The weather . . . the weather could go wrong.
That weekend a very early snowstorm hit. We still managed to have a good crowd, but there were several who couldn’t make it. We’re going to try again in the spring.
