This was a two-day weekend for the interim pastor because the church was participating in the world famous Rice Festival in Weiner, Arkansas.  Lots of rice in these parts and the festival is a way for the whole community to celebrate the harvest.  Pretty big festival too.  Here's a town of 600 folks with a festival drawing 7,000.  The streets were full of folks from everywhere enjoying good food, picking up crafts, buying hand-made duck calls, checking out the latest in camouflage attire, admiring a row of really old tractors, taking notes on the workings of a fully-restored steam engine, listening to all manner of guitar-picking, piano-banging musical groups, watching dance groups, attending the mud races or the demolition derby. Lots of activity on the streets of Weiner!

Well, the First Christian Church of Weiner was serving lunch on Saturday from 11 to 2, featuring Cajun cooking.  For only five bucks you could have your choice of catfish courtbullion (properly pronounced cu-bee-yon) or red beans and rice.  There must have been 140 customers because they took in about $700.

I arrived about 10:00 in time to carry a few pots of Cajun cooking into the fellowship hall.  Then during the serving I was the fly-man.  It was deemed important to keep the door to the fellowship hall open to make an inviting appearance to the great throngs walking by in the street outside.  The festival was literally at our front door which, by the way, is at the corner of Church Street and Kings Highway – Can you believe that?

So the interim pastor was awarded custody of the fly-swat and instructed to protect the tables of desserts from infestation, which task I performed heartily and effectively.  I spotted those pesky flies, followed them sleuthfully, found them lighting on a nearby table, swatted them forcefully, and then offered a humble prayer for another dearly departed whom the Lord had called to "seek his reward," as Bobby L. would say.

I spent the night at the local "Holiday Inn" which is really the extra bedroom at Austin and Helen B.'s house.  Austin is the one with the 1/12 size train and track running in a giant circle around his back yard.  The B.'s were gracious hosts.  After dinner we sat at the table until after nine o'clock just visiting.  Austin has had colon cancer, a stroke, and diabetes, but has to most positive attitude about life of anybody I ever met.  Helen graduated from Weiner High in the class of '49 and knows everything about everybody in town.  She provides a great place to tap into the local grapevine.

Sunday morning I taught Sunday School for Bobby L. who was out of town.  Then I preached the sermon about the ten lepers.  Which sermon was well-received.  We had 38 in church today which is a 25% increase over the usual 28.

Rice and Carlena V. took me across the street to Woody's barbecue stand and bought us all big pork sandwiches.  We went back to the fellowship hall to enjoy our food and had a nice visit.  Directly their daughter Carla and her family (husband Bill who owns a building supply business in Jonesboro,  son Luke – age 4, daughter Anslee – age 3) arrived.  Then we all walked the four blocks to the field which was used on Saturday for the mud races.  I hear that trucks from as far away as Indiana and Kentucky came to participate in the mud races.  But by Sunday the field had been plowed and dried in preparation for the Demolition Derby.  All of the V.'s professed that they were only coming to this event for the sake of the children, but it was a hoot for all of us.  Only Bill and I even admitted to having ever watched a demolition derby on TV, but now we are all veterans.

They admitted seven cars at a time into the circle of death.  At the drop of the flag, the cars raced backward across the field and slammed into one another.  Then they repeated that action until finally one or another could no longer move.   At the end, crunched cars littered the field like wounded metallic soldiers in a road war with bits and pieces of metal bumpers or trunk lids scattered everywhere.  Then farm tractors lumbered out and pulled the dying hulks away, and it all started again.

The cars (if you can still call them that) were specially modified.  Most of them were big old monstrosities from the early 70s, ones with lots of mass.  All the glass had been removed.  The gas tank was replaced with a plastic five-gallon tank bolted just behind the driver's seat.  The transmission lines were run into the passenger compartment and into a five gallon bucket filled with ice to keep the engine cool.  The exhaust pipes were all removed and new pipes ran the unhindered exhaust straight up off the motor.  It was a bang-up good time!

Rice told me that two folks from Weiner were talking about the variety of denominations and how they really ought to combine into just one.  The fellow from the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) observed that the one new denomination ought to be called "Christian."  But his Baptist friend retorted, "I was born a Baptist, I was raised a Baptist, been a Baptist all my life.  Ain't no amount of talking going to make me a Christian."

Sunday night, the festival came to it's religious conclusion with a community-wide Harvest Service at the First Baptist Church, catty-cornered across the street from First Christian.  We had a big crowd there – probably a hundred.  The pastor of the Baptist Church made a big deal out of the fact that he served as their interim for a year, and they finally just asked him to be the regular pastor.  That made me a little nervous.  Over nine hundred dollars was collected for the Ministerial Alliance Fund for the Needy.  Then Helen Barr introduced me to deliver the sermon for the evening.

I warmed them up with the story about Billy Graham coming to preach in a small town like Weiner.  He needed to mail a letter so he asked a little boy where the post office was.  The boy just pointed in the right direction.  Then Mr. Graham said, "If you will come to church tonight, you can hear me tell folks how to get to heaven."  After a long pause, the boy said, "I don't think I'll come.  You don't even know the way to the Post Office."

Well, they liked that one so much that I retold much of my recent article describing the wiles of the Mumsfest.  They loved the part about the Hard Shell Baptist footwashing and the baptism of the 300 folding chairs.

After I had them going with me so well, they were easy to sell on my message which was a review of some of the agricultural images throughout the Bible.  I ended by saying, "Sometimes I think that city-folk cannot understand the Bible as well as you honest country-folk.  Those folks in Little Rock who leave their suburbs with houses packed like sardines and drive their BMWs to the skyscrapers in the concrete jungle cannot understand the Bible.  They don't care if it rains or shines.  They never notice when the fields are white unto harvest.  They don't experience the miracle of a seed transformed.  They don't know the joy shared by a community like this when the harvest comes.  And they don't know what it means when they sing that great Thanksgiving Hymn - Come, ye thankful people, come, raise the song of harvest home."  Then I read the words of the hymn with great enthusiasm to which they all responded with hearty Amens.

Just another week breaking the bread of life in a country church.