The Pulpit

The pulpit I preach behind turns 35 this month. I had barely completed a year serving as the pastor of the Harmony Baptist Church in Atoka, Oklahoma, when I saw a small, black and white picture in the Baptist Messenger of a pastor standing behind a cross-shaped pulpit. I was immediately attracted to the sleek design. At the time, I was using one of those pulpits that looks more like a cockpit than a lectern. It had room to store lots of stuff but seemed like a barrier of sorts between me and the congregation. 

I clipped the picture out of the Baptist Messenger and took it with me when I travelled to Hobart to visit family.

“Do you think you could make a pulpit like this?”

I baited my dad with a challenge. I knew he could make anything he set his mind to make. I don’t remember any of us kids ever handing him a picture of anything he could not make. After we returned from visiting for the holidays, Daddy went to work. He called me a couple of times and checked dimensions on Bibles and Hymnals. By the middle of February, he came with Momma to visit their grandchildren and deliver the pulpit.

I have no idea how he built it to stand up straight and strong. I have just enjoyed using it over the decades. It is light enough to carry yet sturdy enough to lean on. It has room to attach a microphone yet no place to accumulate junk. The shape of the pulpit reminds me of my Savior. The materials in the pulpit remind me of my dad. He built everything with solid wood so it would last. 

The messages preached from that pulpit also last because the messages are taken from the Bible. Grass withers, flowers fade, and people die yet the Word of God endures forever.  Just like Jesus, the Word of God remains the same yesterday, today and forever. I have preached hundreds of funerals and thousands of sermons from that cross-shaped pulpit. Some day that pulpit will be replaced, as will the pastor preaching from behind it. However, the message being preached from it will continue until Jesus returns.

Isaiah 40:8, 

Earl

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This Week at FBC

• Dominican Republic Informational Meeting (All ages Invited) – This Sunday at 4:15 pm in the FLC Youth Room
• Songs From the Loft – Sunday night at 6:00 pm in the Worship Center
• Sunday Sermon – “Changing the Water into Wine” – John 2:1-11
• LifeGroup Attendance – 732