03/26/2026
Points to Ponder with the Deacon Chairman, Ralph Willis, Jr.
"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."
Proverbs 22:6
Easter is early this year. Easter is my favorite holiday. I enjoyed as a child getting candy especially the chocolate Easter bunny and hunting colored boiled eggs. I almost always would find one or two after Easter when I was mowing the yard. Nowadays, they hunt plastic eggs with stuff inside but I digress. Even as a child (I became a Christian at six and a half years old.), I understood the true meaning of Easter and enjoyed going to church with my family. and hearing about the cross and the women finding the empty tomb because Christ had arose from the grave. My two favorite hymns are "He Arose" and "Low in the Grave He Lay" because we sing them each Easter. The latter really gets me when it hits the Chorus. I can see Jesus rising from the grave.
In the past, I did not like going to the Sunrise Service because since breakfast was afterward, we did not eat before we left home. I had a bad experience once when standing for thirty or so minutes on an empty stomach. I nearly passed out. Nowadays I eat something before I go. I am able then to just enjoy the beautiful service.I encourage you to come to this year's service in the City Park. Even though breakfast is being served at the Poulan Methodist Church after the Service, make sure to put something in your stomach so you don't experience what I did as a child.
I know that some of you are wondering how I feel about the changes in music that we are going through after my October 2025 article, but I am fine with it as long as we are not trying to just entertain folks. We have actually not been strickly a hymn singing church in times past. In the early 90's we had a homemade praise hymnal that we sang out of in addition to the regular hymnal. The church still had plenty of people coming then. The only thing that I did not like about it was having to change books so often. That is not a problem today with the words being put on TV screens. Even further back in the late seventies and early eighties when I was a youth and the church grew to 200+ attending, we had choreography as a youth choir and we even toured. So I do not have a problem with what is going on. If it will attract more young people, I am all for it. Music alone will not bring them in. You have activities for them too -- a whole youth program to be successful.
