Good preaching on Shannon Ga and Textile League Baseball

   I went to Furman on a ministerial scholarship, I think the Brooks Scholarship. Paid about a third to a half of my total costs for four years. I was honest with them that at the time Church Related Vocation was a strong possibility but I was uncertain.

     It never panned out for me in a conventional sense but for many years I have been a student of good preaching. This fall as my 50th High school homecoming is three days away I have been thinking a lot about a Homecoming sermon delivered at Duke in 1967 I have in Willimon's collection of the Best sermons at Duke Chapel over 60 years. The 67 sermon invokes Thomas Wolfe haunting thoughts on October, and has a touching paragraph on a Duke Student who says he wasnt awkward at all having his Dad visit campus. He said I enjoy my father's company.

    All this on the edge of genuine sappy with the soundtrack of John Prine's late song you can find on Utube Summer's End, playing in my head for about three weeks now

    This last Sunday at the Heritage Baptist Church in Cartersville Ga, my friend Lamar Wadsworth preached a sermon, a guest in the pulpit where he is a member, that ranks among the best I have ever heard from the likes of Marney, the great Episcopalian women Fleming Rutledge and Barbara Brown Taylor, Rachel Held Evans, Frank Harrington of Peachtree Prez in Atlanta, and the Memorial eulogy of my friend Furman Chaplain Jim Pitts two weeks ago by his great friend Grady Butler.

      Lamar's masterpiece tells the story of Rudy York and his brothers of Shannon Ga and Model High School. Shannon about ten miles out toward Calhoun from Rome Ga was where my Dad's sister Virginia was valedictorian of Model High School in 1938 or so. My Dad was always talking about the great baseball players from there. Charlie Culberson of the Atlanta Braves and now Dallas Rangers, his grandfather Leon was from there and both Leon and Rudy York of the little village of Shannon were on the 46 Bosox Squad in the Series with Cards with Ted Williams and Joe Dimaggio's brother Dom on the roster.

    I didnt put anything close to the full story together till the last three years with a big chunk coming about 15 years ago with the publication of David Halberstam's Book the Teammates about the Bosox of that era.

    But what Lamar does masterfully and humbly with the York Brothers and the woman who wrote Footsteps of Jesus is beautiful preaching and storytelling behind the sacred Desk. You can check the Website of the Church or his facebook.

    And for me it is telling that among his congregation is Randy Branch, the brother of Taylor Branch,  the Pulitzer Prize winning author of the Civil Rights Era .

    Some of us are talking about a collection of Baptist sermons from preachers of high and low estate of the era of the mid to late 20th Century. I have two stories ready to go and you can rest assured Lamar's great effort will shine through our collection. You'll want a copy if we put it together.