September 5, 2024 - Good Morning! It's Thursday, September 5.
Part of my job at First Baptist Center is to choose songs for worship services. When I began my ministry career, four decades ago, there was only one source for all those choices - the hymn book. If it wasn't in the Baptist Hymnal, we weren't going to be singing it. In the 21st century, our worship song sources are multitude. Planning worship can be complicated, and challenging.
The same thing is true regarding Bible translations. I like the app Bible Gateway that lets me choose from more than 60 versions or translations of God's Word. Exciting! Convenient! Complicated! Growing up, it was always, and only, the King James Version. Everyone used it, everyone memorized scripture from it. The old saying was, "If the King James was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!". Today, I prefer the New International Version. It's based on the oldest and earliest manuscripts, but has a modern, readable feel.
Change has brought us many choices - and that's a wonderful thing. But sometimes I find myself longing for the old days when everything was simpler. The times when our pastor preached from the King James, and everyone would follow it with their own copy, held in their own hands. The times when we would open our hymnals and rise and sing "Holy, Holy, Holy" and "Amazing Grace."
Simpler times.
Meet you back here tomorrow,
Bro. David
dmathis@fbccenter.org
