If you have visited my website before, you may have noticed I post many of my speaking engagments.  You also may have noticed that I try to delete them immediately after I’ve fulfilled them.  This comes from a lifetime pet peeve of seeing the circus poster still in the drugstore’s window two months after the animals have left town.  Even as a kid, I always wanted to go in and rip them out of the window.  So I try ( and just watch – I’ll probably slip up and leave an old announcement on here longer than I should) to keep the postings up to date.  I usually only post the ones open to the public.

I’m not real sure how I got to being a pulpit supply.  I never intended to be a preacher and am certainly not qualified.  But after my first book came out in 2002, I started getting requests to speak at clubs and booksignings and book conventions, mainly talking about the book and how and why I wrote it.  This was fun and I did only the ones I wanted to and felt comfortable doing.  Then the minister at my home church, Joe Brandon at Olivet Presbyterian, nudged me into turning that book talk into a Sunday morning message.  I’ve been teaching a Sunday School class there for 25 or 30 years (I’ve lost accurate count) and one week when he had to be gone the next Sunday on a family emergency, he said to me, “Would you just tell them a Bible story or something next week in the pulpit?”  Trying to be a responsible Elder, I said, “Sure, anything I can do to help.”  And thus started the pulpit supply.  He continued to ask when he was gone and other ministers asked and pretty soon I was doing more ‘sermons’ than book talks.

To be completely honest, I don’t say yes to every request.  I like teaching my Sunday school class each Sunday at Olivet and don’t like being gone a lot.  My son, Langdon, is my assistant teacher and always covers for me.  So call it contentment or just retired, I sometimes say “yes” and sometimes “no thank you”.

But I got a call recently that I just couldn’t refuse.  A lady from the Springhill Presbyterian Church in Springhill, Va asked me to come speak at their morning worship service.  Now Springhill is not even a blip on the map.  There ‘s not more than two dozen houses in the little village that the church sits in the heart of.  Lots of farms in the area and lots of good country folks who fill the pews every week.  But the main draw for me was this was where my mother was born.  This was her church.  This is the church she attended as a little girl.  The one she moved from when she came to town and got married.  She and my grandparents and so many loved ones called this little white, steepled church home for so many wonderful years.  And there I was back….home.

I felt her presence when I stood in the old wooden pulpit.  I saw her in the faces of so many of the people who knew her and had stories and comments to share with me about her at the end of the service.  And I did something that Sunday morning I haven’t told anyone about.  Whenever they ask me if I want to choose the hymns on these speaking engagements, I always say yes because that way I can be assured we’ll sing some of the old ones.  And I said yes, I’ll pick them when Springhill asked because I knew what I wanted to do.

I smiled when the congregation stood and we sang the first one, “Revive Us Again”.  And I smiled and got a warm feeling down inside on the next one, “There Shall Be Showers Of Blessing”.  But on the last one, the smile faded and I saw tears in my eyes and felt them on my cheeks when we sang, “Blessed Assurance”.

That was Mom’s favorite.  And I did it all for her.

DR         July 23, 2009   1:20pm

I just got some good and interesting news I thought I’d share.  O Little Town, which had a great Christmas season thanks to all you folks who bought it (and I hope read it), has won an award.   It’s called an ADDY award and it’s given by the American Advertising Federation.  It’s for the book cover and I have to thank all of the David C Cook people for this design as they had much more to do with it than did I.  When I first approved the picture for the dust jacket, I was very much taken by the car which I think is a Nash Rambler.  I’m not sure of the year so I’ll leave that to you auto-pop historians who can tell by the window shapes and door handles what year it was made.  But I must share a funny story about the tree on top.  A good friend of mine, after seeing the cover for the first time, pointed out that the tree was backward on top of the car.  He said if you drove a tenth of a mile it would be on the ground in shambles because of the wind drag.  I looked again and had to agree.  But he has been the only person to notice.  I wouldn’t dare embarrass him by telling you his name but he goes under the indentity of Bryan Kennedy.  But that just goes to show you what you know Bryan.  It won an award!

The next good news came in the form of a nomination.  The ACFW, American Christian Fiction Writers Association gives out awards for books in all kinds of categories.  Well, it appears O LITTLE TOWN has been nominated for Book Of The Year in the Ficton class.  I am humbled and honored by both of these recognitions.

But on to the future.  I get a lot of emails and questions about upcoming projects.  In a previous blog I had stated that two new novels were forthcoming and this brought on the question of “when?”.  Well, now I can answer that a little better.  My next book has already been delivered to the publisher and a date of release has been set for August 2010.  That seems a long way off but it takes nearly a year to get all the things in motion, editing, artwork, printing and etc. before it’s ready to ship.  Plus, this gives O LITTLE TOWN another Christmas season on the shelf before a new book comes on the market.  There is a working title but I’ll share that with you as we get closer to the release date.

Right now I’m working on the next book which will probably be out in 2011.  I can’t share that title with you either because I don’t even know it yet.  Just like writing songs, sometimes the title comes first and sometimes it comes after the song or story is completed.

Hope you’re having a nice spring.  And hope the summer is gentle and warm.  Stay in touch and God bless.

DR

Friday afternoon, 4:05- March 13, 2009