The Overflow
"Lost Week-End"
Charles R. Jackson, author of 'The Lost Week-end," prize winning play depicting the horrors of alcoholism, was arrested recently in Brattleboro, Vermont, and fined $75—for drunken driving.
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How Not To Hire A Preacher
Then there was that Alabama church that needed a preacher a few weeks ago. They'd heard some fine reports of a brother in another state, and had information that he was interested and wanted to move to their town. They decided they'd invite him down for a Sunday that he might preach to them and discuss the work with the elders. So they put in a long distance call for him—collect. The last we heard that Alabama church was still looking for a preacher.
Add Another One
For a long time Jimmie Lovell and Ernest Beam have been trumpeting the charge that there are "twenty or more" divisions within the church of Christ. Well, the way they count "divisions," we've run across another one they can add. Some years ago there was a church in Texas that was split from top to bottom over tobacco. There were four elders; two smoked, two didn't. The two non-smokers made tobacco a test of fellowship, and locked the door against their smoking brethren. Ernest Beam puts instrumental music in pretty much the same category, and feels that those who cannot worship with it are in much the same case as the brethren who made tobacco a test of fellowship.
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Can You Top This?
Brother Mike M. Young who now lives at Gerard, Texas, moved to Colorado in 1932. Shortly after arriving there, he sent in a report of conditions in that mission field, telling of his work and his plans for the future. After remaining in Colorado four years, brother Young returned to Texas. He had been back in his native state for two years when he got his paper one week—and read his original Colorado report. It was just six years late! In a way this encourages us.
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Maybe we've been too impatient with our brethren, wanting them to see the same dangers we see in some of the present "trends" within the church. Could be they just haven't got around to it yet, and will be properly alarmed over these matters some thirty or forty years hence.
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From Yesteryear
While we're on the subject, we'll just add that our brother editor of the Firm Foundation isn't always as imperturbable and impervious to alarm as one might thing. In 1909 he and C. R. Nichol had a sharp clash over the matter of Sunday School literature. Brother Showalter was deeply alarmed over the "innovation" and felt sure that its use would land the church smack in the middle of "infidelity and sectarianism!"
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Letters Are Wonderful—but,
We get a heavy volume of "fan mail" — which we appreciate, of course. But the fan mail that really gives us a thrill is that which says, "Enclosed you will find check for the following ten (or twenty or thirty) subscriptions," etc., etc. The Guardian has been on a weekly (not weakly) basis for two years now; it is deserving of your support. You do a favor to any man to whom you send the paper. How about it?
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An Inquiry, And Answer
"Will someone please explain the difference between "The Lubbock Plan" and the "Lufkin Plan" of churches cooperating in doing mission work at home and abroad?" (Signed) Anxious Inquirer. Answer: "My Dear Anxious: If you truly and honestly can't see any difference between a commercial publishing house selling its products to churches and individuals on the one hand, and a congregation becoming the controlling and directing agency on the other hand—if this is actually the state of your mind, then you are misnamed. You have absolutely nothing to be "anxious" about, and least of all your eternal salvation. Does this answer your question?"
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Concerning Television
"Now elbow-deep in middle age, A viewer I'm of video And some of it is beautiful, But most of it is hideo.
And there are less exalted scenes I view upon the video;
The lady wrestlers make me sick.
Perhaps I'm too fastidio.
And evening vaudevideo, I view it with alarum, I can't determine which it's for, The nursery or the barum.
You ask me to your house to view, And be there imidiate, For all the world is video, And I'm the village videot."
-Ogden Nash
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Also, And Furthermore ...
"When you are tempted to oppose a good work such as caring for orphan children, preaching the gospel abroad, or providing children with a Christian education, consider this poem:" (Quotation from Firm Foundation of March 20). We don't know who wrote that (it appeared unsigned), but we'd like to add to it: Every time the writer of those lines feels an overwhelming desire seize him to gouge out the eyes of his dearest friend with an ice-pick, and to cut off the heads of all his grandchildren, and to spit tobacco juice in the face of his dear wife—whenever such impulses and temptations seem about to overcome him, let him read the same poem!
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Starting Young
Please send me a copy of "Gospel X-Ray." I have a son four years old, and I want to teach him so that some day he will be a preacher of the gospel. I want to get all the good material like this book I can, that it may help me, and later help him—I hope."
Mrs. Clark B. Butcher Fairview, W. Va.
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Increasing Attendance
Did you see that story in the Memphis Commercial Appeal a few weeks ago about how a certain Methodist pastor in the city was building attendance at his Sunday night services? He reserves the balcony for "dating" couples, and has all the lights turned out in the balcony during the service! We hear he has a big attendance in the balcony—but we'd opine that those who come get very little out of the sermon. That would also be the case if they listened.