Donna and I have received the Spiritual Sword publication for more years than I can remember. It’s an excellent publication always full of good articles by sound teachers of the church of Christ. It is a publication of the Getwell church of Christ in Memphis Tennessee. I have visited that congregation many times over the years whenever my family is in Memphis. I always thoroughly enjoy our visits there and I can heartily recommend it to anyone visiting the Memphis area.
They have an annual lectureship that covers several days. They have been doing this for several decades. Donna and I finally were able to go there for the lectureship two years ago. We totally enjoyed it. We were both taught and edified by the excellent speakers there. We were pleasantly surprised to see our friends Keith and Kathy Anderson there when we arrived. We decided that would strive to attend this lectureship each year. Last year though, we were derailed in going by the unfortunate shutdown of the plant where I worked. That very week, I spent multiple long days working to finalize that. This year, with my now being retired, Donna and I had nothing to get in our way of going.
We left after worship services on Sunday. The trip to Memphis was totally uneventful and we arrived at our hotel (Poplar Avenue Hampton Inn) about 4. We like to stay in this area because it’s only about a ten minute drive to Getwell plus we don’t have to venture out on I-240 to travel there. We noticed across the street that the McDonalds offered two Big Macs or two Fillet O’Fish sandwiches (mix and match) for five dollars so we decided to have that for supper. I went across the street and ordered. Per my recent experiences, it took over ten minutes to get our food but at least it was good and inexpensive. We headed to Getwell for the Congregation Singing at 6:30pm. The theme of this year’s lectureships was “Great Bible Portraits of the New Testament”. We heard two lessons on Peter and Paul which were excellent. We went back to our hotel and went to bed.
We got up the next morning and had breakfast and headed out for a full day of lessons. We saw eight speakers over the course of the day and they were all excellent. I even found some Krispy Kreme doughnuts between sessions. The Getwell congregation also provides and excellent lunch for the attendees. Donna and I enjoyed talking with the people who sat at our table. I did make the mistake of mentioning John Calipari though. As you are probably are aware, he is not thought of too highly in Memphis. Between the afternoon and evening sessions, we had a long enough gap to eat dinner with my brother Kevin and nephew Zach (who live in Memphis). We had a really good time with them.
Tuesday was another full day of lessons. Again, we really enjoyed them and had an excellent lunch. Randall Evans spoke on Mary, Martha and Lazarus. I’d had Randall in my teenage Bible class years ago. He did a great job but it sure makes me feel old to see him as an experienced Gospel preacher now. We also saw Ben Giselbach speak on Ananias and Sapphira. He’s spoken several times for us at Central and his brother Brett was our youth intern last summer. We grabbed dinner from Taco Bell and attended the evening sessions then came back to the hotel and went to bed.
We got up Wednesday and attended the morning sessions. We had decided to leave after lunch so we could be back home for Wednesday night services at Central. Donna and I went around to say goodbye to several people we had befriended over the past several days. I gave our phone number and address to a young man who had made the excellent food all week and was also a Cardinals fan. He said his wife and he occasionally made it up to the Western Kentucky area and would look us up the next time they were up this way.
I would heartily recommend this lectureship. We learned quite a lot over the week as well as being edified both by the lessons and spending time with fellow Christians.
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