It can be determined now that I did indeed lose track of how far I ran yesterday. My legs are basically screaming at me today. You can find the story of my Sunday afternoon run/walks in the January 09 section of the blog. It's been a very long time since I missed out on that. Well, I lost count on my laps yesterday while speeding around the high school track. Perhaps it was not really speeding but it was going round and round. My legs are telling me that I added a lap or two to the usual mileage. It was probably looking up at the circling buzzards that distracted me. My best guess is 3 1/4 miles if not 3 1/2 miles yesterday. This is something to learn from at my age. Hopefully by Wednesday I will be ready to return to the running part of exercise.

Most of my afternoon is being spent looking for a very small town here in East Texas. We are having one of our famous Baptist meetings there tonight. The churches in our area get together and share even more reports than we do in the local church. Yes, there is of course food for us to enjoy. The typical meal for such a meeting is either chicken spaghetti or carry out from a local chicken restaurant. My thinking is we may want to serve healthier food at these meetings. Baptist preachers do tend to buy belts that are larger than the norm. Between overeating and the stresses of being a Baptist, we can be very unhealthy. This is why the health insurance from the Baptist headquarters costs an arm and a leg. It is also why my goal is to stay busy working until 70. The sad thing is I am getting far closer to that age than I care to admit.

Also, my social security statement came in the mail today. It seems that now I am worth more dead than alive! The family will be well taken care of should a piece of that chicken go down the wrong way. You should know that more than a few Baptist preachers have to keep working because there is no nest egg for them. We may occasionally have a good bedside manner but we have a nasty habit of not saving for later. I had such a man in my congregation years ago. He was well into his 70s yet needed to work in order to eat. This is one reason why I always encourage my churches to contribute to a cause to help men like this or their families. With $1800 a year we can provide for those who desperately need help.

My intention in posts such as this one is to simply be informative. Sometimes I think being a Baptist preacher is a bit like professional wrestling. We live with illusions we create for a congregation rather than be real. More than a few books are in print concerning the pitfalls of ministry. Articles are written weekly or monthly related to the difficulties of daily church work. Sometimes we ministers will even whisper about this to each other at chicken laden meetings. You just don't always know what goes on behind the curtain. These posts are not meant as complaining or whining. I've learned over the years they are two exercises that do no good. If you read something here about ministry that enables you to understand your pastor better then my job is done. We really are in this thing together. Now if you will excuse me, there is a chicken dinner south of here calling my name.

Bro. Trey