Welcome to the “Front-Porch.”
With Father’s Day just in our rearview mirrors, we’ve continued thinking about some of our great fathers and grandfathers.
When we left you last week, we were in the middle of Preacher Miller's story, where he faced a life-or-death decision about what to preach the next night at his Kentucky revival in the 1950s.
He had announced to a full crowd the night before that he would preach a controversial sermon the next night. The next day, some of those rough Kentuckian farmers met him at his motel and warned him against preaching that sermon.
One big, strong fella sent him a warning by reaching out and bending his tie tack. Another bully pushed him down and hurled a few snarling insults.
The preacher then sat in the dust, watching as the men got into an old Ford and a pickup truck and sped off.
The preacher was down, but you couldn’t keep him down for long. He got up, dusted off his suit pants, and set himself for what he had to do.
That night, the old country church was standing room only. Regular church members were not the only ones there. Many of the non-church townspeople were affiliated with the controversial organization the preacher had to speak about, so folks came from all around, even from surrounding towns.
On one side of that church that night, Preacher Miller would later say, were folks who were against him. On the other side were those who were in favor.
A sword divided.
“But both sides had one thing in common,” he said. “A good number on both sides were carrying guns in their jackets. And I knew they would not be afraid to use them.”
Guns or no guns, the preacher had taken his stand, and it was too late to turn back. When the singing ended, Preacher Miller made his way to the pulpit, just as he had every night that week – and as he had done several thousand times in his fifty-plus years of preaching.
He reached the pulpit, scanned that ravenous crowd, and bellowed his sermon topic in that loud, raspy voice, just as before, whether in peace or in war.
“Brothers, sisters, and friends,” he began in his vintage style, “I may not walk out of this pulpit the same way I walked up here, but tonight, as I announced last evening, I’m goin’ to preach on somethin’ many of you don’t want me to preach.”
Then he began the sermon he knew he might never finish. He preached – quoting Isaiah, David, and Ezekiel as he went – and sweated for the better part of an hour. He always sweated when he preached and kept a white handkerchief handy, but I cannot help but think he sweated a bit more that night than usual.
He was a bit surprised that, through the entire sermon, both sides of the building sat and listened without disturbance. No one stirred, no one jumped up and shook his fist, and no one pulled a gun. The only commotion to speak of in the whole place was the preacher shaking the rafters with scripture – that, and one of the farmer's hound dogs getting loose and making an entrance into the building and down the aisle like he was a sinner.
Perhaps his adversaries felt that if he had the courage to preach what he believed and if he could back it up with his Bible, they would let this one sermon slide.
When it was all said and done that night, he got in his car and began driving back home to Grandma in Georgia.
“But that wasn’t all there was to it,” he said. “As I drove home down that dark Kentucky road, I kept my eye on the rearview mirror, watching half a dozen sets of car lights behind me, making sure I got out of town. When I got to the Tennessee line,” he said with a slight sigh, “they all turned around and went back home.”
I am glad that – after his stand in Kentucky – the Lord saw fit to grant that great Georgia preacher another four decades of preaching. In the late 1980s, he finally made his last journey to the pulpit, proclaiming the gospel with rare vigor, conviction, and courage. He had lived long. He had preached hard. He had lived what he preached. When he left town for a better city in December 1989, the world felt the absence of one of that generation’s great giants.
In over a hundred years of her existence, LaGrange, Georgia, has had many great men and great preachers pass her way. But I am sure none other ever preached to a church-house full of guns the way Preacher Miller did, and lived to tell about it.
Coach Steven Ray Bowen served as a teacher and basketball coach at Red Oak High from 1998-2012 and recently came out of retirement twice for teaching tours at Ferris and Waxahachie High Schools. He and his wife Marilyn (the “amazin’ blonde”) have slowed down some of their travels and reconvened in their evangelistic work with the Church of Christ of Red Oak at Uhl/Ovilla Roads, in addition to Coach’s work as a writer and author, including the working to publish “Crossing The Georgia Line” that ran in the Ellis County Press. Call or text (972) 824-5197, email coachbowen1984@gmail.com, and see frontporchgospel.com.