Thanks, Mother Goose

Thanks, Mother Goose
ball_nolan

F. Nolan Ball, Apostle

The Rock of Panama City

In July 1960, Shirley and I and our four children moved to Talladega, Alabama where we had been invited to pastor the small group there who comprised First Assembly of God. We spent six years there, coming to love those people and the little white wooden building on North Court Street very much. Our time there provided us with many wonderful and pleasant memories.

We lived in a little four room house (not four bedrooms, but four rooms total), with no central heat and no air-conditioning. Because of necessity, I had two full-time jobs: preaching at First Assembly of God and teaching at the Alabama School for the Deaf. I preached, because that was my calling and my life’s love. I taught, because for whatever reason, I could not attract enough people to support my preaching! I had and still have this conviction that any man who will not care for his own, is worse than an unbeliever. So, in order to provide for Shirley and our children– Donna, Cheryl, Kathryn, and Mark–I did what I had to do.

At our house, in those days, preparation for Sunday began on Saturday evening. Sunday School lessons were studied, Shirley would prepare for the cooking of a full Sunday dinner, and my main job was to clean and polish all of our shoes. After an early Sunday morning breakfast, I would leave Shirley to get everyone dressed, and made my way to the Alabama School for the Deaf where I would teach a Sunday School lesson to my students. Then it was back to the house to load up all of us and head for our small church building and our small congregation. On one particular Sunday, the song service was first, with Shirley playing piano and me leading the singing. After the offering had been received, it was time for the preacher (me again) to preach. By that time each of the children had stretched out on a pew and had drifted off to sleep…or so I thought.

Good sermons were sometimes difficult to come by in those days; no Google (no internet!), no ready-made sermon-in-a-book from the local Christian Bookstore. I had gotten creative and had reached into an obscure ministry resource: Mother Goose’s Nursery Rhymes, for my message. As I began with, “Once upon a time, there were three little pigs,” suddenly, all of the children sat upright and gazed at me with rapt attention as I began to exhort the people to learn a lesson from the three pigs: Choose carefully the stuff with which you build your life. Everything that can be shaken will be shaken, leaving only that which cannot be shaken.

To this day, that is the only sermon my children ever asked me to preach again

April 20, 2019No comments

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