|
Our Pulpit Guest for Sunday, June 22, is Mike Queen, another good friend of Dr. Foust. Keeping with our summer theme, ‘Searching for the Real Jesus,’ Dr. Queen will offer a sermon based on The Gospel of Mathew 23:23-26 and Micah 6:8. The title of his message is, ‘Pew Cushions or Pancreatic Cancer?’
Mike is a native of Huntington, West Virginia. His family was very active in Fifth Avenue Baptist Church, affiliated with American Baptist Churches, USA. He is a graduate of Wake Forest University and Southeastern Seminary. He was Owner/General Manager of Tradewell Supermarkets in West Virginia between his degrees at Wake Forest and seminary. From 1981-1986, he served as Associate Pastor of First Baptist Church of Greensboro, NC. He is currently Pastor Emeritus of First Baptist Church of Wilmington, NC where he served as Pastor from 1986-2011. In his retirement, he has served as Interim Pastor for First Baptist Church of Greensboro (2012-2013), First Baptist Church of Winston-Salem (2014), Winter Park Baptist Church of Wilmington (2015-2017), Ardmore Baptist Church of Winston-Salem (2018-2019), and has served as Coordinator for the Carolinas, Center for Healthy Churches since 2014.
Mike has been very active in service to Baptists and his community. He served as President of the General Board of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina (1996-1997), Trustee of Wake Forest University (1990-2013) and was named a Life Trustee for Wake Forest in 2015. He has also served as a Trustee of North Carolina Baptist Hospital, Biblical Recorder, and the Center for Urban Ministry. He has been a trusted leader among Cooperative Baptists in North Carolina. He has been a Board Member of Cape Fear Habitat for Humanity, Cape Fear Area Council of the Boy Scouts, and the Good Shepherd House. He has guided mission teams to Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Honduras, and Guatemala. In 2014, he co-authored with Jayne Davis the helpful book, Hopeful Imagination: Traditional Churches Finding God’s Way in a Changing World.
Mike is married to Bobbie. They have two adult children and four grandchildren. A couple of months ago, it became necessary for Mike and his children to provide more thorough and round-the-clock care for Bobbie, Mike’s wife, who is living with dementia. One of their granddaughters, Emma Grace, needed to write a poem for her creative writing class. She chose to write about her grandmother (her Grammy). Although Bobbie’s disease has been difficult for the entire family, this poem, while sad, made the family members feel God’s blessings as they considered so many wonderful memories. I share Emma Grace’s poem with you so you can pray for their family and to introduce you to Mike and the commitment and compassion he will bring to us as he steps into the St. John’s Pulpit next Sunday.
THE HOUSE REMEMBERS, EVEN IF YOU DON’T
You move through your own house,
The one you have had for decades,
Like a guest.
Always pausing in doorways,
Searching for something.
When I ask
“Whatcha lookin’ for?”
You respond,
“Hold on, it’s on the tip of my tongue.”
You never find it.
The echoes of you are all around,
In the chair that rocks even though you never sit,
In the family recipes,
Ink quickly fading.
Your echoes are all over Wilmington, North Carolina.
Do you even know
That’s where you lived most of your life?
I talk to you, but sometimes,
It’s like throwing words into an abyss.
You nod and you smile,
Like you always do,
But I can spot it—
The emptiness in your brain.
The brain where I once used to live.
You lose the pieces,
Day by day,
But I gather them.
I tuck them away until one day,
When you are no longer here,
I’m going to need them.
I hold them in the quiet space
That you,
Sadly,
No longer fill.
Day by day,
I lose more of you.
To think of when I lose all of you—
I can’t.
But when the day comes,
And my name is just a whisper lost into the strong winds,
I will hold your hand, squeeze it so tight,
And remember for the both of us.
| 
