June 27, 2015
Introductions
For Roy, retirement is that time of life when his wife will realize she never gave her husband’s administrative assistant enough sympathy!
I heard there was lots of chicken where Roy grew up (Georgia).
Frank Perdue, the chicken king, had a brilliant marketing idea to help sell more chickens. He called Valley Forge and requested a private audience with the General Secretary. The request was granted, and a few weeks later, Mr. Perdue was ushered into a room for his meeting with the General Secretary.
After explaining who he was, Mr. Perdue began. “Your Humble Servant, I have a proposition to make that I think will help both of us. I’d like you to change the words of the Lord’s Prayer from ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ to ‘Give us this day our daily chicken.’ It’ll sell a lot more chickens, and I’m prepared to pay the church a million dollars for this.”
The General Secretary shook his head vehemently and said, “No, I’m afraid that’s quite impossible.”
Frank Perdue persisted, “Well, would you take $10 million dollars to make the change?”
Again the General Secretary shook his head. “Mr. Perdue, the Lord’s Prayer has remained essentially unchanged for 2,000 years. We can’t tamper with it.
Perdue raised his offer. “Would you take $100 million dollars?”
This was a huge amount of money, and the General Secretary, aware of the needs of the poor, the hungry, the missions and the myriad other financial burdens of the church, thought for a moment before answering.
“Mr. Perdue, you’ve got a deal.”
A meeting of the NEC along with the NLC was quickly convened by the General Secretary. “My dear colleagues,” the General Secretary began, “I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that we are receiving $100 million dollars from Mr. Frank Perdue to change the Lord’s Prayer from ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ to ‘Give us this day our daily chicken.’ The bad news is that we’re losing the Wonder Bread account.”
Introduce Pat Medley.
Bill Frederickson
Jeff Woods
Leo Thorne
Roy Medley
Basket of Gifts
- Dunkin Donuts Coffee to enjoy a slower life as you sip on your morning brew.
- MacDonald’s gift card to take Isaiah for a Happy Meal.
- Restaurant and movie gift card to enjoy a night out with Pat.
- Map of Freehold, NJ—since you know how to travel in many places around the world, it’s now time to learn how to get around the town where you live. Yesterday is experience. Tomorrow is hope. Today is getting from one to the other as best we can.
Closing
Abraham Joshua Herschel said, “The course of life is unpredictable…no one can write his autobiography in advance.” Tonight, you can.
“It’s great to be great, but it’s greater to be human.” Will Rogers
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” Soren Kierkegaard, Swedish philosopher, 1813-1855)
Sunday is the day when we bow our heads. Some of us are praying and some of us are putting.