Reverend Raymond Osborne, Pastor

Please Note That Most Messages Follow
The Revised Common Lectionary

Well here we are again! I mean to tell you that I have looked forward to this day ever since the benediction on Big Sunday evening last year! Camp Meeting! This is exciting isn’t it?! Last year was my first Camp Meeting experience and what an experience it was! The fellowship was wonderful! Sitting out here under these big trees playing the guitar and singing was a wonderful retreat for me. And the FOOD!! Man the FOOD! I ate at so many tables that I couldn’t even begin to remember it all! I don’t even know how to describe the singing except to say it’s included in my image of what heaven will be like. The preaching was dynamic and God-inspired. I have grown to love this experience! Beloved I truly believe this was a God-originated idea! The title of this morning’s message is “Returning to the Old Paths.”

If you were here last year you might remember my telling you how I grew up a Methodist. My theological roots lie deep within Methodism. When my parents moved to North Carolina we visited the local United Methodist church whose pastor informed my Dad that he had as many “foreigners in his church” as he wanted. “Foreigners” was his word for people who weren’t from the South. When our previous DS called and informed me that I was being appointed to the Campground Charge that held an annual “Camp Meeting” I had no idea what a blessing that was! I called my wife’s cousin, who is a Bishop in the United Methodist Church and asked her what “Camp Meeting was. Bishop Sherer proceeded to explain Camp Meeting as a wonderful Methodist tradition and like stepping back in time 100 years. She was right in many ways.

In order for my credentials to be valid in the United Methodist Church I am required to take two courses of study in addition to my already completed Master of Divinity degree, Those courses are in Methodist history, theology and polity. For my Methodist history course I wrote a thirty-some page research paper on the origins of Camp Meeting. Good news!! I’m NOT going to read it to you this morning! I do however want to share some of my findings with you.

Recalling his camp meeting days, A. P. Mead says, “The heart that has offered incense at the cross, is best prepared to kneel at nature’s shrine.” Thomas Flint, a traveler in the South described a camp meeting experience in the following manner:

“The wealthy ambitious and wealthy are there, because in this region opinion is all powerful, and they are there either to extend their influence, or that their absence may not be noted, to diminish it. Aspirants for office are there, to electioneer and gain popularity. Vast numbers are there from simple curiosity, and merely to enjoy a spectacle. The young and beautiful are there, with mixed motives, which it were best not to scrutinize. Children are there, there young eyes glistening with the intense interest of eager curiosity. The middle-aged fathers and mothers of families are there, with the sober views of people, whose plans in life are fixed, and calmly waiting to hear. Men and women of hoary hairs are there, with such tho’ts it may be hoped, as their years invite. Such is the congregation consisting of thousands.”

Ralph Gabriel explains that the roots of Camp Meeting can be found in the frontier, which he describes as “crude, turbulent, and godless.” He goes on to say, “Evangelical Protestantism, more than any other single force, tamed it.” Bishop Francis Asbury said, “We must attend to camp-meetings, they make our harvest times...” We need to understand this morning that Camp meeting is the result of the efforts of early missionaries attempting to bring God into a culture and land that, in their opinions had no knowledge or relationship with God.

Every day as I sit and listen to the news, as I read a newspaper, as I listen to people share their heartaches with me, as I sit and listen to my wife describe her day at work, I become more convinced that our world is in need of a Spiritual Awakening. Just as in the days of the prophet Jeremiah, the Chronicler, and Apostle John, we live in a world that desperately needs to experience the grace of God in and through His Son, Jesus Christ.

Just as in the beginning days of the first Camp Meetings, we live in a world that on many accounts seems to be as godless as the world of the early frontier.

Now I’m not what I would classify as a “negative preacher.” I tend to focus the majority of my sermons on the love and grace of God. I make it my purpose to let people know that God loved them enough to send His only begotten Son that they might through His life, death, and resurrection, have eternal life. This morning however, I intend, very intentionally to wade into some very negative things.

· Do you know that in North Carolina last year there were 100,682 reports of children being abused by their own parents? More than 31,000 of those reports were confirmed. That means that more than 31,000 children were either physically or sexually abused by the very people who they expected to love and care for them. 30 of those 31,000 children died at the hands of their caretakers. Nationally for every 1,000 children 47 will be abused this year.

· Did you know that 90% of high school seniors in our nation are already consuming alcohol and 53% are getting falling down drunk at least twice a month?

· Do you know that suicide is the second leading cause of death among our teenagers today and that suicide for children ages 10 through 14 has increased this last year by 128%?

· Do you know that 8.8% of the households in North Carolina are occupied by people who are food deprived and have no idea where their next meal is coming from?

· Do you know that in North Carolina alone there are more than 43,000 people living in the streets and without homes and that more than 5,000 of those are children?

· Do you know that in 1998 there were more than 2,000 murders and 12,000 rapes in North Carolina?

I could continue but I think you get the picture. We need a Great Spiritual Awakening! Not only in our world, our Nation, our State, and our communities, but right here as well, in our own heart. I may be wrong, but it is my own personal conviction that if we are to see a Spiritual Awakening occur, it has to begin with me, and with you, and you, and you. It has to begin in each of our lives.

The goal of the first Camp Meetings was to introduce people who had never experienced it before, to the grace of God through Jesus. It was about getting away from the hustles and bustles of the frontier to a place where people could focus their attention on their own relationship with God.

Here we are, gathered under this huge arbor, among all these tents and cabins, these beautiful trees on this gorgeous campus with a majestic church sitting just behind us, and I think God would have the goal of this Camp Meeting to be the same. This week we have the opportunity to turn our attention to God and our relationship with Him. I want to challenge you to open yourselves up to the voice of God this week. Don’t be like one man I’ve heard of.

The pastor had tried everything he knew to reach Johnny. One week he decided to devote an entire sermon to Johnny. He sat down and began to pray about it and ask God for wisdom in preparation. That Sunday Johnny who was ALWAYS at church was there. The pastor got up and went through the sermon with power. At the conclusion of the service little Johnny came to the door, “Pastor you really gave it to ‘um this morning!” The pastor was crushed. He prayed about what to do and just couldn’t get the sermon out of his head. So he decided to preach that one sermon until Johnny actually heard it. Over and over, week after week, that pastor stood and delivered the same sermon – just for little Johnny. Eventually the others in the church became disgusted and one by one they left the church. Only Little Johnny remained. When the pastor got in the pulpit there sat little Johnny – all alone. The pastor looked to God and thanked Him that the task was about over. Surely little Johnny couldn’t miss the message. He gripped the pulpit and bore down on it; word for word, just as he had all the previous weeks. When he had finished to took his traditional position at the door. Little Johnny walked slowly toward the door with a big ole smile on his face, took the pastor’s hand and said, “Well pastor you really laid it on ‘um this morning if they’d been here!”

Don’t be like little Johnny. Open you hearts to be receptive to God’s Word this week. Get out in one of these porch swings, or under a tree, or up on a hill alone with God and listen to what He has to say to you! Open your lives to the working of His Holy Spirit and see what God can make of you this week.

It’s not only time we return to the old paths, but also beloved it’s high time we return to God!

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

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