Other Little Ships

By John D. Bain

Other Little Ships by Dr. John D. Bain represents the formal publication of a collection of brief devotional thoughts on the teaching about Jesus in the four Gospels in the New Testament. The chapters are a sample of some of his earliest writing and self-publication. The author looks between the lines, examines often overlooked details, and comments on aspects of the life of Jesus that do not often get attention.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John D. Bain
• Release date: Oct 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310454288

John D. Bain

Dr. John D. Bain is a resident of Hartselle, Alabama. The son of John W. and Elizabeth Bain and the husband of Terri Evans Bain. He has two children and two grandchildren.He was ordained into the pastoral ministry in 1977 and has served as a Southern Baptist Pastor for thirty-seven years in seven SBC churches.He was graduated (National Honor Society) from the Morgan County High School in Hartselle, Alabama in 1974 (now Hartselle High School), from Belmont College in Nashville, Tennessee in 1979 (now Belmont University – Bachelor’s Degree ), from Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary in Memphis, Tennessee in 1982 (Master’s of Divinity), and from the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in New Orleans, Louisiana in 2012 (Doctor of Ministry).In 2006 he left the full time pastorate to serve in associational missions and as a bivocational pastor in smaller SBC churches.In 1990 he was introduced to the world of the Personal Computer – he incorporated the PC into his ministry and pastoral work and eventually gained expertise in their use, maintenance, and repair. Thus electronic books!

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Preface

I became a Christian in 1970 at the age of fourteen. I began my career of public speaking, teaching, and preaching a short time after my salvation experience. From a professional point of view I did not know enough about anything to be speaking to others with authority, much less to volunteer myself as a teacher or a preacher in any setting.

I could tell others my personal story, however. I could share my own testimonial information as evidence that something important had happened in my life, and I did that enthusiastically.

All communicators are story creators, witnesses on the stand, and in some form or fashion, ultimately writers. So, I began writing notes and outlines from which my messages and lessons would spring. I wrote notes on my observations and thoughts that arose and grew from constant Bible study and reading from every book that I could posses. I did not know, in the beginning, how to record entire manuscripts for my messages and devotions (I would learn that discipline later in seminary), but writing helped me collect my thoughts and order them. Writing helped me examine what I was thinking upon the black and white of the page and it made me test the information that was the fruit of my study before I delivered it to those who would graciously listen.

I kept journals and notebooks, reams of loose leaf, lined paper with miles of scribblings and scratches that flowed from a river of ink and a heart and mind that burned with spiritual curiosity and an eagerness to learn. I read, studied, wrote, and stood up to speak every time that someone gave me an opportunity or an invitation. There were many.

Writing assignments in high school were never very challenging, and only one writing class was offered in four years before graduation, but it helped and gave my writing, story-telling, and speaking a little shape and a little more precision and clarity. College required me to be more focused and seminary gave me the research and recording tools that would be foundational to my first messages that were truly worthy of being heard, and writing that was worthy of being read.

I could discern from the testimonies of others, their reactions to my communications, their responses to my words, and their reflections upon my work, I was improving.

Speaking, teaching and preaching from a pastoral lectern and pulpit expanded into a radio broadcast opportunity in my second pastorate. I self-published my first book while serving there (Among the Sweetest – a history of the Vanndale Baptist Church in Vanndale, Arkansas in 1985). My third pastorate began with a local weekly radio broadcast as well, I was invited to publish brief articles in the Ardmore Shopper over a ten year stint, and I published a brief history of the Wooley Springs Baptist Church before being called to a church closer to home.

A member at Wooley Springs introduced me to the world of the personal computer, and when I traveled to my next assignment I was armed with the most important tool that I have found for putting thought, data, information, and passion to paper. The offices of the Oak Park Baptist Church in Decatur, Alabama had a data fax machine (another technology that was new to me) and I was soon writing one-page articles, devotional thoughts and observations and sending them out to every business and location that I knew that possessed the ability to receive my words.

During my ten years as pastor at Oak Park I was sought often by a local television ministry to appear as a guest speaker. I continued to study, read, preach, teach, and write.

The collection of bite-sized devotional thoughts that you are reading now represents all of the material that I sent by electronic facsimile during a year and a half period while serving at Oak Park. The very first rendering was based upon a message that was delivered by a fellow minister during Pastor’s Conference while I served at Wooley Springs. The speaker’s text was Mark 4:35-36, and for the first time in all of my years of reading the New Testament, my attention fell upon the Other Little Ships mentioned in the gospel story.

I saw a world