September 1, 2014 (Monday)
Today, the first Monday of September, is Labor Day. Every year when Labor Day Weekend comes around, my mind is flooded with memories of Labor Day Weekend of 1948, when I preached my first sermon from a pulpit in the church. That was 66 years ago.
The church was the Liberty Road Baptist Church of Houston, Texas, originally organized as Clark Street Baptist Church. Clark Street was renamed Jensen Drive, and since the church was on Liberty Road near its intersection with Jensen, the name was changed to Liberty Road Baptist Church.
The pastor was away from his pulpit that Sunday and asked me to preach in his place at the morning worship service, and he asked my dear friend, David Foster, who is now with the Lord, to preach at the evening service. It was the first sermon for each of us.
Brother Richard E. Hunt was always encouraging me in one way or another. In due time, he moved to Oregon, known then by Southern Baptists as “Pioneer Missions” territory. Before he moved there, he was a wonderful pastor in Houston. He and his wife were very interested in the youth of the church and did all they could to encourage them. One evening after church, he and his wife and two children went to their car to find it decorated by us kids with the words “Just Married” on the rear window, and lots of tin cans tied to the rear bumper. He took it in stride, and drove away with all of us in a parade behind him and his family, like bridal parties sometimes did back then, with all of us honking our horns. Instead of driving straight home, just blocks away, he drove around for a while to enable all of us to have fun. When he moved to Oregon I was away in college and seldom home for church, but I missed him and his family anyway. Many years later, I became pastor at Rockport and his mother-in-law moved to Rockport and joined the church here. By that time, he had passed away. A wonderful man with a wonderful family.
The entire church encouraged us preacher boys, and there were six of us back then. Even though the church is no longer in existence, it still lives on in the hearts and lives of all the folks who were in that church, especially those who were “young people” in those days. The people believed in those “kids” and helped them in every way they could. The picture of me below was made back in the days when I started preaching.
