Mt. Olive Baptist Church

Psalm 75

September 27 2026

September 20 2026

Morning Sermon

Mt. Olive Baptist Church

Mt. Olive Baptist church

Psalm 72

September 13 2026

Most of them were pastors or church elders who also work as pastors.

Now, this one was a public (social-media-based) fight that played out over the course of a few weeks, although it was connected to some other tempestuous batches of social media interaction at times over the last few years. But I think sometimes we are so enamored and frustrated by the current state of public discourse that we forget, rumor mills and character assassination are nothing new.

In fact, if you grew up in church, you likely saw a lot of it. People would get angry over issues, then get apologies, then claim to have forgiven but not really act on that. It’s not uncommon among pastors to note that churches may forget, but they rarely forgive. People will forget why they’re mad, but they won’t forget being mad.

And you know who saw that the whole time? The next generation of church members, where church leaders come from. Those kids you thought were oblivious to the rapid rotation of Sunday School teachers? Yeah, they noticed how stressed each one of them got before it was time for someone new. Or how they’d go from a new teacher who was excited to have them and then it would time for a person who was irritable and not good with kids, but had an important spouse or parent in the church.

They saw the politics. They saw the youth workers that the church get chewed up and spit out because teens that weren’t from church backgrounds dared to show up in shorts on a Sunday night. They saw lies, deception, gossip, slander, backbiting…

And that’s what they began to understand the church to be. It was a place where the carpet was too holy to risk chewing gum and where you dressed up to pretend you were something that you weren’t.

Then, they read their Bibles. They listened to the Holy Spirit. They even listened to some of those church leaders who said things like, “The Church is not a building, it’s the people…”

As they read and listened, they heard the call of God to serve His Church and be workers in His Kingdom…so they went into other career fields and started small house churches. They taught school and small group Bible studies.

But they didn’t add to the Annual Church Profile a “surrendered to the ministry” statistic for the association to look good. They didn’t go to seminary. They didn’t put their life into keeping people happy whose version of Christianity came about in 1910 and never changed, especially when challenged by preachers like Martin Luther King or Martin Niemoller or Gladys Aylward or Lottie Moon or a thousand others who pled that God’s people give their lives not for cultural preservation or institutional advancement but for the sake of the Kingdom of God and God’s agenda: to seek and save the lost; to demonstrate God’s justice and righteousness.

To live as citizens of a Kingdom with totally different priorities.

Most of the people God has called to ministry in the last two decades heard Him and answered. They just didn’t choose to serve in churches that were in conflict to the Kingdom.

First, the videos:

Then, the audio player:

The audio webplayer is here!

Here is what you’ll find: there is an audio player with the sermon audios built-in to it, just click to find the one you want. You’ll also find the embedded YouTube videos of each sermon.

If you’d like, you can subscribe to the audio feed here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DougHibbardPodcast

Audible Link is https://www.audible.com/podcast/Doug-Hibbard-Sermons-and-Thoughts/B08JJND2RP https://bit.ly/3WnLNR2

Spotify is here: https://doughibbard.libsyn.com/spotify

The video is linked on my personal YouTube Page here: https://www.youtube.com/user/dheagle93

Sermons are stockpiled here: http://www.doughibbard.com/search/label/Sermons

Mt. Olive Baptist Church

Psalm 71

Psalm Pseptember 2026

August 30 2026

Mt. Olive Baptist Church

Now, a note that’s worth remembering: “Fire under control” does not mean “fire out.” In this case, it was mostly contained by fire breaks and then the wooded area was burning out. That’s actually a safer situation than sending people in among burning trees and hoping they can put them out without flaming branches falling on living humans. It does, occasionally, mean more trees burn than you’d like but fewer people die with it. Forest management is harder than it sounds. (Also, note: it’s necessary because humans live closer and more intertwined with the forest than we used to.)

While a post in praise of firefighters and emergency management wouldn’t be misplaced, that’s not where we are. Where we are this:

By 9 this morning, I saw a half-dozen social media posts stating that the airport had been destroyed, the country club destroyed, the golf course blackened to nothing.

Folks, please, please, remember that no matter the crisis, there is just no way you can make it better by spreading rumors. A rumor is anything that you heard but had no way to validate and that you cannot put people back on the source.

One of the big failings of that last 20 years is that most news sources are now rumor-reporters. Any time you see a news article lead with “sources are now saying that…”, you’re seeing a rumor trying to be turned into a news report.

Now, it’s not impossible that by the time this fire actually goes out, there will be serious damage. After all, we haven’t had significant rain in more than a week, everything’s dry and hot, and fires love dry and hot. But overall, you’re not helping.

This is also applicable in many, many situations. Rumors are like weeds that grow, starting off looking like a good plant. Then, they are taking space and energy that should go to useful things.

Oh, and when you are a person who is mainly a rumor-starter? Your credibility goes downhill pretty quick.

First, one of big traps appears to be pastors over-quoting the unique language of commentaries. This especially shows up when it’s the same commentary series or commentary author over and over again. For example, you might be a huge fan of N.T. Wright (he’s a New Testament scholar at Oxford) and so you read everything Wright writes about a given subject.

If you then put yourself in an echo chamber and do not read any other points of view, only reading Wright and people who think like him, you are more likely to unintentionally parrot, thinking you’re sharing your own thoughts. The same thing can happen if your theological hero is John MacArthur or John Calvin or John Wesley.

It’s not a bad thing to have your theological preferences. Logic would suggest that a Baptist would tend to read commentaries mainly from a Baptist perspective, Methodists from a Methodist, and so forth…although probably you’re going to see more of a “conservative evangelicals” in one stack and “liberal Protestants” in another, with “liturgical Protestants” in yet another.

Where this becomes a problem is that many of us read not to expand our horizons but to confirm our preconceptions. The result is an echo chamber, where the preacher hears things in repetition and then repeats them. If that’s what your study time is doing, then either shorten your study time (and do other stuff, I guarantee there’s something else the church needs) or make sure you’re broadening your reading. If you are a firmly-convinced reader of Calvinist Presbyterians, then add in some other people.

I see this danger in my own reading and study. My favorite commentary on 1 Corinthians, for example, is Preben Vang’s volume in the Teach the Text series. I had Dr. Vang years ago, and not only do I sometimes quote him from memory, I unintentionally do my best Danish impression. (I have permanently been banned from Denmark for offending everyone, even the Lego Bricks.) But you have to spread out what you’re reading or else you’ll slip into this accidentally.

The second danger is hastiness in sermon preparation. There is a temptation to determine that your sermons have to have a high degree of zap and pizzazz. Strangely, preaching has endured as one of the primary parts of Christian communication for 2,000 years or so, most of that without movie clips, tweetable lines, or snazzy slides.

But in the haste to match up with others who use such things, it’s very easy to buy a “sermon kit” from an online source and then just use it without paying attention. Or to hire out the bulk of the work—the study, etc— and assume it will come back different enough to not be close to other people’s work. The problem here is that, ultimately, you are responsible for what you preach. Don’t just hand off the work. Help with prep? Fine. You still need to do the bulk of the work yourself. Even if that means fewer bells and whistles.

Again, preacher, as a reminder: your integrity cannot be bought back. Don’t give it away taking shortcuts. And it’s better to push that possibility of an accusation away from you by being over-cautious than to have to defend yourself. Defenses always end up ringing hollow.

First and foremost, let’s establish what “plagiarism” is: it’s the use of someone else’s words and intellectual property without acknowledging you got it from them. That’s my summary, if you want a full definition, here’s a good link. It’s essentially theft: someone else did the work, invested the resources to study and develop, and then the plagiarist stole it and used it as his own.

This is not the same as research, where one works from sources and then creates a new product. Research uses resources that were created to aid the preacher in developing a sermon: the author of that commentary expected you to read the commentary, learn more about the passage, and work what you learned into your sermon.

One difference in sermon plagiarism and academic plagiarism is that most academic work is written-first, even if the paper is delivered out loud in a seminar or lecture. The written document is part of your presentation and typically available for review. Therefore, the footnotes on the paper show what your sources were, your bibliography section shows additional places you found general info. (If you have endnotes, you have succumbed to the evil. TURABIAN FOREVER!)

Sermons are not sermons until they are preached. It’s a delivered medium, even though written sermons also carry the truth, a sermon is intended to be preached. Now, in an ASL (or other Sign Language church), it’s preached with the hands but there is still a live component. I would assert that this is necessary to make it a sermon. Otherwise, it’s a letter, a note, an essay…it’s a bit hard to check the footnotes of a sermon in the midst of the delivery. It would also be quite disruptive to either pause and cite or wrap-up the message with 3-5 minutes of source disclosure. You’d sound like a medication ad with the fast-talking fine print.

Typically, when we talk about sermon plagiarism, we’re talking about lifting direct quotes from other authors without giving any attribution. For example, lifting a paragraph directly from a commentary without making note that you are using those words exactly. Or quoting another preacher but presenting the words as your own.

An example here would be if I were to preach on prayer and say that “Prayer isn’t preparation for the work, prayer is the work.” That’s pretty close to the way Oswald Chambers puts it in My Utmost for His Highest. I should attribute that to him, because I didn’t think of it and the only places I’ve seen it are either Chambers or people quoting Chambers.

It gets a little sticky when preachers use material from other preachers, even if you have permission from the other preachers. You should still be forthcoming that someone else put it the way you are putting it.

Truth be told, no Biblical sermon is original. Someone else has been part of your formation and development. You’ve read Study Bibles, devotionals, commentaries, dictionaries, histories, and essays. You’ve heard sermons, lessons, hymns, and lectures. All of this forms the preacher.

What, then, do we do?

First: make sure your church knows that you are using resources to grow. If your church, like mine, has more than just Sunday morning times, use one of those to introduce attendees to your resources. I try, every time I start a new series (usually I’m preaching through a section of the Bible,) to use either a Sunday night or a Wednesday night to walk through “this is where I’ve been studying for this sermon series.” It’s a bit nerdy and you have to do it without being boring, but the main thing here is to show that you are learning.

It’s also helpful for your congregation to hear you attribute your learning to others. Mention pastors, preachers, professors that have influenced you.

And if you use something very direct, make it plain that it is direct: ‘Folks, I was at the State Preacher Extravaganza and heard a sermon on this. I thought I would try to share some of the same thoughts here.’ Or, ‘I just finished reading this book, and I thought the outline of this chapter made for a great sermon. So I wrote the sermon, here it is.’ I don’t think you should preach a sermon someone else wrote. I don’t even think you should preach a sermon someone else did more than 25% of the work on, but that’s another post.

Now, a few caveats:

I think there is a place to preach historically significant sermons if your congregation will listen and you believe God is directing you to do so. (You should never preach something God is not directing you to preach.) But set it up properly: “This is D. Elton Trueblood’s sermon, Conversion in the Church. I want you all to listen to it, though I won’t quite sound like him. After I’ve been through it, I’ll tell you why I think his way of looking at this text is so good that it should come from him.” That’s a rarity, but sometimes it works.

There’s also a place for an unattributed quote that isn’t the key to the passage. Especially if some folks will recognize it. I have a tendency to occasionally drop science fiction quotes and allusions into sermons. Folks who get it, recognize it. Folks who don’t get it, usually don’t remember it anyway.

Finally, I think if you are dealing with something that you have attributed many times before, there comes a point where you can say “As we’ve heard so many times” and just leave it at that.

TL;DR: Your sermon works in people’s lives through the Holy Spirit and your credibility buys it a hearing. Do everything in your power to ensure there is nothing in your sermon preparation and delivery that compromises your credibility.

The shortages are appearing in a couple of categories. The first is the progression in average age of those employed in full-time ministry. This is not meant as an insult to those who have spent their lifetime serving the church, nor to those who have come later life into the responsibilities of ministry. My own father’s one of those, but his whole story is his to tell. Short version is that his retirement from his second career (post military retirement) has led to him serving as a pastor of a rural church.

But the reality is that, depending on the study you read, the average age of a pastor (most of what I’ve read excludes Roman Catholic and the Eastern/Greek Orthodox traditions, but loops Anglican-type “priests” into “pastor”) has moved up between 15 and 20 years in the last couple of decades. This makes for a looming crisis, because as we all get older, we’re not seeing younger ministers move into similar roles and responsibilities. Even similar ones to the roles we had at that age. Personally, I’m 49 and have been an ordained minister since 2005; I have pastored a church as the “pastor” (more on terminology issues in a later post) ever since. Spiritually, I was as responsible for the well-being of the body of Christ at 28 as I am now. (suffice to say, hopefully I’m better at it by a little bit)

That tells us that eventually, we’re going to be see mass vacancies even if we don’t see them now. It’s one thing to see roles in society age-out as the need decreases: you still need a few payphone repairmen but not as many as 3 decades ago. The aging average of pastors means we have experience now, but it’s not going on to the next generation. We’ll lose that experience while also seeing vacant pulpits and empty offices.

The second aspect of this problem is trying to work through the Biblical requirements of being a pastor. We’ll also deal with that in a later post, but as you look at expectations, many Christian groups have requirements based on Scripture that our culture makes more challenging to achieve. Whether it’s a problem with lifetime celibacy or taking the “never divorced” understanding of “husband of one wife,” people shifting through the difficulty of culture may come later to ministry than to the requirements. Someone may have divorced young before ever considering ministry. (Or married, Roman Catholics!) What do we do with those situations? The stronger the filter, the harder to fill the roles.

The third aspect is the concentration of ministry folks in larger church contexts. While a significant number of churches (75-85%, depending on the article) have fewer than 75 people in attendance, one batch of research suggests that more than 50% of people who attend church go to churches larger than 200. That means there are more specialty jobs and people going into those rather than general practitioners.

Those are just some general thoughts. I’ll develop those more later.

Most of the pre-existing links should still work, but the categories probably don’t work. Also, the audio podcast automatically creates a post in the Substack, so there is some redundancy there.

Here is what you’ll find: there is an audio player with the sermon audios built-in to it, just click to find the one you want. The video is now native in Substack, but there is a link to the YouTube page here if you would prefer the centralized site.

If you’d like, you can subscribe to the audio feed here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DougHibbardPodcast

Audible Link is https://www.audible.com/podcast/Doug-Hibbard-Sermons-and-Thoughts/B08JJND2RP https://bit.ly/3WnLNR2

Spotify is here: https://doughibbard.libsyn.com/spotify

The video is linked on my personal YouTube Page here: https://www.youtube.com/user/dheagle93

Yesterday’s sermon was Hebrews 13:8 focusing on the eternality and unchanging nature of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Hopefully all of that worked!

Looks like the audio player did not work. Here’s the audio only.

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August 16 2026

Mt. Olive Baptist Church

Morning Sermon

First thought, as I sit here with Spotify running through an Amazon Echo: our kids grew up with CD players in their rooms. We made mix CDs of soothing music for them, burned them on our laptops. There was instrumental music, playtime music, etc.. 

Now? They've got phones and bluetooth speakers and their Spotify accounts. Our middle child, 23, actually still has physical CDs but I'm not sure the other two do. 

Second, physical media of movies. We were still buying VHS tapes when our youngest was born. The kids watched TAPES. Tapes of singing vegetables and tapes of a rabbit doing opera. Tapes that taught wrong nature facts, because coyotes are faster than road runners....

Now? Stream it! Although we still have a stockpile of DVDs and Blu-ray, and even a few VHS tapes. I know, the physical media degrades. But it also cannot be altered remotely. And when I was a kid? Fast-forward, rewind, all those tricks with tapes. Generally, though, you want Bugs Bunny? 9 AM Saturdays.

Life changes. Technology evolves and develops. The rhythms of life adjust. After all, when I was a young adult, you could meet people at the gate for incoming flights. (Little Rock National Airport still needs to catch up with 2001 and build out an arrival area, it's been a quarter of a century.)

Some general thoughts on the nostalgia moments:

1. Remember the good parts and forget the bad ones as best you can; but just don't deny that it wasn't perfect. Again, nothing wrong with holding more tightly to the good than the bad, but there are challenges with everything. Sure, we walked to school and thought nothing about school shootings and such, but was it really safter? Stats show a mixed picture of the good ol' days. Plus hidden faults were just that, hidden.

2. Don't miss the good in the now just because you remember good from then. You're right: it was awesome to be on the field/on the stage/in the band. Now you're not. Is there anything good about your life and how you can enjoy it now?

Likewise as college move-in hits: sure, those were crazy days. But can enjoy the adulthood? (Except that sleep apnea garbage. Take it away!)

3. Listen to the joys of the people in your life in what they find good. And listen to others about what they found good. Realize that many of these judgments are subjective, not fixed. You can have a different opinion and still get along (unless you believe baseball is better with the universal DH, then you're just wrong). Let people enjoy their things, you enjoy your things, and build relationships together.

Thanks for taking the time to read! Doug Hibbard

However, it's predicated on the assumption that you will get everything written down.

And that you will check back on it.

See, it's not that simple for most folks. There are learning curves and habits to be made.

That's why you try and try and try again until you find tools for self-discipline and self-direction that work for you.

Thanks for taking the time to read! Doug Hibbard

If you're happy with the probable results of your habits, stay consistent with them and you'll get those likely outcomes. 

If you aren't happy with the probable results of your habits, make a change and be consistent with it.

Either way, bouncing back and forth will keep you from getting anywhere. 

The road of life is covered with flattened squirrels that wouldn't stick with a direction.

Thanks for taking the time to read! Doug Hibbard

As I'm working on my own health, there are certain realities in adding exercise.

First, I have more excuses than exercise enthusiasm. I'd rather just not. I can come up with a variety of reasons why I can't exercise. After all, there's some truth to the challenges of having a bum knee and asthma. However, these realities do not undo the necessity of some form of exercise.

Second, an important truth: imperfect is better than perfect; done is better than undone. There are some levels of "wrong" to avoid: you can lift, do a sit-up, even stretch wrong and hurt yourself. But, you can also start toward exercise by doing intentional repetition of movement you already do. That way, you are not putting your body under strange strains for exercise.

For example, walking is a great exercise. If you are walking, even a bit slowly, even with a bit of support, then you've already got the motion down for one of the best, most durable exercises you can get. You may not move fast. You may not move much.

You may even do what the old joke was: put a concrete block in the middle of the floor and walk around it twice, claiming you "walked around the block." But that motion and that movement helps.

More than you might realize. The goal is to get into motion.

So start there: what are you doing that you can do at regular intervals through the day? Can you make the time to get up and walk, even 200 steps? Go to the bathroom that's farther from your office? It may add 5 minutes to each trip, but if you are being productive when you are at your desk, that might be feasible.

And it's better if you are doing a half-sit-up than doing no sit-up. Do it right, do it slow, do it halfway. Or do a push-up from your knees. Push off from the wall.

Lift 5-pound dumbbells if you've got them. instead of 10s. Do something.

Third, do it repeatedly. Make it part of your habit. If your lungs won't let you do long cardio, do short cardio. If your knees won't let you take the stairs, take the ramp twice.

We often make picture-perfect, instagram exercise the goal when our bodies just need us to get the blood circulating.

Take the small win and build on it.

Thanks for taking the time to read! Doug Hibbard

If you’d like, you can subscribe to the audio feed here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DougHibbardPodcast

Audible Link is https://www.audible.com/podcast/Doug-Hibbard-Sermons-and-Thoughts/B08JJND2RP  https://bit.ly/3WnLNR2

Spotify is here: https://doughibbard.libsyn.com/spotify

The video is linked on my personal YouTube Page here: https://www.youtube.com/user/dheagle93

Sermons are stockpiled here: http://www.doughibbard.com/search/label/Sermons

August 9, 2026, saw us get into the last chapter of Hebrews. We'll be there this Sunday, take a break as CJ Womack from the UAM BCM will bring the word and share a bit about the ongoing work of collegiate ministry, then finish off Hebrews at the end of August.

So, on to yesterday: Hebrews 13:1-7

Thanks for taking the time to read! Doug Hibbard

August 9 2026

Morning Sermon

Mt. Olive Baptist Church

Well, today I need to engage in my hobby, as it is something I do both for fun and it provides a benefit: I roast my own coffee. Do I do this because it's cheaper than buying already-roasted coffee? No. Eventually, the equipment purchases might break-even and then buying unroasted (green) coffee will save money.

For now, we're not going to pretend that this is cheaper. I do it because I like it.

So, how did I start? First, I started with one of these: 

First Coffee Roaster

Mine has a different brand name on it, and you cannot buy one from the same link on Amazon that my order history shows, but a very similar device is here. This took about an hour a batch, and ultimately led me to realize that I wanted more control. Still, you can follow easy directions here and it takes a *lot* to burn the coffee if you use a stirring roaster like this. Set it, let it run for an hour. It's not easy to remove the beans from the roaster, though. One of these, though, can also be used to roast peanuts, cashews, cacao beans...so we still have ours.

After roasting in one of these for a couple of years, I wanted something a bit more focused. The friend who first showed me home-roasting uses one of these, FreshRoast.  Specifically, mine's a FreshRoast SR800 with an expansion tube. I bought the package from Amazon that had all these accessories, based on the assumption that the salesmen knew more than I did. Probably wasn't true. The great thing with the FreshRoast is that you get more fine control over heat and time. The AMAZING thing about the FreshRoast is the chaff basket at the top which helps you have a cleaner bean result after it's over. That's very, very helpful.

That's equipment. Your equipment will include guidelines on how to get the results you want along the grading of coffee roasts. I personally like a "Viennese" or "Full-City" roast, though a bit of flexibility is in order.

Now, if you just want to buy everything from Amazon, you can get "Green Coffee Beans" there. Some of mine have come from there, I've enjoyed the beans I've gotten from Smokin' Beans brand there. 

However, you could also go with a specialty coffee show. Burman Coffee Traders has great varieties. They are also a reasonable source for equipment and have some good how-to guides available. 

The other thing you can do is check with local coffee sources to see if they sell Green Beans. My personal favorite coffee comes from Leiva's Coffee in Little Rock, Arkansas. I have met the owner, I've been to his shop--both the old one he got started in and the new one that has a fancy coffeeshop attached to it!

I love the mission and the work that Geovanni Leiva is doing through coffee. And he sells green beans (coffee ones) for as good of a price as I get anywhere. Almost all are sourced from the same general group of coffee farms in Guatemala as his roasted products come from. So, when I'm low, I get green beans from him. 

(Also, I still get roasted coffee from him, especially flavored coffees. His Dolce Amaretto is my favorite.)

The beans I do not get from Leiva's are decaf beans. This is another place where the health concerns match up with the hobby: I need to cut back on my caffeine. I decline to eliminate coffee and 100% decaf is a bit bitter. Plus "cut back on" does not mean "eliminate" and I like the coffee. So I buy decaf, usually from Burman, and roast decaf and regular beans and make my own blend.

A few tips as you get started:

1. Watch your beans as you roast them. Especially if you're using something quicker like the FreshRoast. The 15 minutes you are roasting are NOT multi-tasking minutes. Focus. 

2. If possible, roast outside. There's a bit of smoke, just enough to lightly color your ceiling. If you do a lot, you definitely want somewhere ventilated. In the winter, if you live where it gets cold, you'll want a warmer area. Right now in the South, it's too hot and humid. Roasting is pushing back moisture and you're going to need to be inside for that.

3. Roast THEN blend. Different beans from different sources roast slightly differently. And decaf roasts differently. So today I'll do two batches: regular and decaf, then I'll blend it.

4. Don't skip the "let the beans degas" step. They get bitter quick if you seal them in early.

5. Remember, there's a lot of heat here. Be careful with yourself.

Thanks for taking the time to read! Doug Hibbard