Keeping Up With Jones: The Lonnie Jones Podcast Adventure
Dirty Laundry
I was dealing with the dirty laundry. A friend of mine needed help with his dirty laundry. He knew I needed help with mine. His being involved in helping me with my dirty laundry taught me more than humility...it gave me dignity.
Life lived is life learned. Every experience has facts, concepts and applications. These are stories from the eclectic life of Lonnie Jones, Licensed Professional Counselor, Minister, SWAT Team Chaplain, Outdoor Enthusiast and Quixotic Jedi.
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Want lonnie to speak at your event? Contact: lonjones@bellsouth.net
Check out YouTube for the live eye view while the episode was being recorded. Also look for archived lessons, Skits, and videos showing/explaining some of the rope stuff we talk about. YouTube.com/@LonnieJones
Visit www.lonniejones.org to find links to original art, swag, 550guys and the following books:
"Cognitive Spiritual Development: A Christ Centered Approach to Spiritual Self Esteem"; "Grappling With Life. Controlling Your Inside Space"; "Pedagogue" The Youth Ministry Book by Lonnie Jones; "If I Were a Mouse" a children's story written and illustrated by Lonnie Jones; "The Selfish Rill, a story about a decision" A fantasy parable by Lonnie Jones.
T-shirts, stickers, prints and other art at www.teespring.com/stores/lonnie-jones-art
https://lonnie-jones-art.creator-spring.com/listing/buy-podcast-swag?products=46
#www.worldchristian.org #tkminc2001@twlakes.net #www.hcu.edu #hpcitizensfoundation.org
#faulkner.edu/zorn
Faulkner.edu/kgst
admissions@faulkner.edu
graduateenrollment@faulkner.edu
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lonnie-jones/support
- Duration:
- 23m
- Broadcast on:
- 06 Aug 2024
- Audio Format:
- aac
(upbeat music) Keeping up with Jones, the Lonnie Jones podcast adventure. I am your host, Lonnie Jones. My wife Jackie and I moved to the city of Huntsville in 1986 from me to be a youth and family minister. I have been a minister since 1980. I have served in this community as a police chaplain and assigned to a SWAT team since 1992. And I've been in private practice as a licensed professional counselor since 1998. I'm also an adventure educator and an avid outdoorsman. I dabble in rock climbing and I goof around with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Our life has been full of many wonderful experiences and some just outright adventures. I used to write about those things in a little church, both an article. So now instead of asking you to read those things, we're just gonna talk about them in our podcast. And as we talk about them, we're gonna talk about the facts, the facts lead to concepts and the concepts lead to application. But one caveat about the facts is for the most part, we're gonna tell you the facts just as they happened. But every now and then, we're going to tell you the way other people have told us they remember it happening with a little bit of embellishment. It's all good, clean, fun, and for educational purposes. Thank you for listening and we hope you enjoy Keeping Up with Jones. - The Jack Zorn Scholarship is named after the founder of Lads to Leaders, who is also a Faulkner alumnus. This scholarship is meant to help address the minister's shortage in the churches of Christ. It provides a completely free tuition to qualified students who are majoring in either Bible or ministry and are committed to becoming a minister after graduation. Applicants who have been accepted for admission and completed all scholarship requirements by December the 15th each year will receive priority consideration. You can apply for this at Faulkner.edu and click Apply Now. Faulkner.edu, click Apply Now. Or for more information and a review of the requirements, visit Faulkner.edu/zorn, Z-O-R-N. Faulkner.edu/zorn or contact admissions@faulkner.edu. Faulkner University is a sponsor of Keeping Up with Jones, the Lonnie Jones podcast adventure. Years ago, one of my mentors made the distinction between simply preaching and actually ministering to people. He told me people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. When I became a full-time youth and family minister, I realized how inadequately prepared I was for dealing with the complex challenges facing youth, parents, and families. I honestly cared, but I was not competent. Today's ministers can become better equipped to make this challenge through the master of arts and family life ministry offered by Faulkner University. This program integrates prevention-oriented strategies as well as intervention strategies within a church setting focusing on counseling skills. All these courses may be completed online from the convenience of your home or workplace and at a time that is convenient to the schedule of the student. There is a 50% discount for the members of the Church of Christ. Now, although this program is not designed to fulfill any requirements toward becoming a licensed counselor, it is designed to thoroughly equip the minister by providing courses including but not limited to the skills required for counseling couples, families in crisis, as well as dealing with family dynamics, human intimacy, sexuality, parent and character education, as well as church assessments. If you're interested in more information, contact Faulkner.edu/KGST. That is Faulkner.edu/KGST. KGST stands for Curly Graduate School of Theology. You can also contact graduate enrollment at Faulkner.edu with any questions or to explore the eligibility requirements for the tuition discount. Graduate enrollment at Faulkner.edu. Faulkner University is a sponsor of Keeping Up With Jones, the Lonnie Jones podcast adventure. (gentle music) Don Henley from The Eagles sang. I make my living on the evening news. Just give me something, something I can use. People love it when you lose. They love dirty laundry. To everybody's surprise, the score on my ACT was enough to attend Jacksonville State University on a scholarship. Please check your pulse, hold your heart and realize yes, the perpetual C student scored enough on his ACT to get a college scholarship. And now there were many advantages to attending Jacksonville State University. One of them being, it was very, very close to the home I grew up in in Oxford, Alabama. And at this particular time in my life, they had a certain individual involved in their cheerleading program. She had been a cheerleader at our high school and we were friends. And she's the reason that I free soloed the Devil's pulpit, technically called pulpit rock, but my dad always called it the Devil's pulpit on Chihon Mountain. And officially you can't say that I free soloed it because I wasn't alone and I wasn't unroped. She was with me and we were attached to each other by a small length of rope in case she fell. Now I need about three hours to describe what a reckless, senseless, stupid, irresponsible, moronic, narcissistic, suicidal, negligent, homicidal decision this was. Suffice it to say I was young, dumb, stupid, arrogant and desperately trying to impress her. She will not be identified in this podcast. Number one, for fear that her father may still be living. Put two and two together and realize that there is no statute of limitations on something that idiotic and come and find me. If I knew someone had done something that foolish and dangerous with my daughter, I'd have found them taking them outside and beat them with a copperhead. Now, the downside of Jacksonville State University was that it was known as one of the party schools of the South and it did not offer a degree in Bible. Alabama Christian College in Montgomery, Alabama, also known as Faulkner University offered such a degree. ACC is it was known at the time was a two-year school. Now, by 1984 it would be a four-year school and in 1985 they would change the name to Faulkner University. It was my plan and had been my plan to attend Faulkner or Alabama Christian and there'd been some vague talk with folks there that I was gonna function as a student campus minister and then I would even be involved in a program and travel and speak for Dr. Jack Zorn as part of some special program. I think it started out being called the Vanguard program. I know Dr. Zorn's organization has a Vanguard program. It's not the same thing now that it was going to be then and this all looked well and good. My future was planned out. Everybody that I knew and everybody that I talked to knew that when I finished the summer, I was headed to Montgomery and it all was going smooth until my brother called that summer morning. Probably in mid-July and I remember it quite well. I was sitting in the office that they let me use it 25th in Noble Street, Church of Christ. You see, I was their youth minister and had been their youth minister since the spring of my junior year and I was sitting in the church office and the office phone rang and the secretary buzzed my brother through. Now there are no computers, no cell phones, anything like that. Not not the kind of things you're used to in the instant communication world, but as antiquated as we were, we still had phones and Gerald was a student at Alabama Christian. Now he would end up graduating in the first four year class. In fact, he still lives and works there to this day. On this particular day, he had been in conversation with his friend and mentor, Joe Beam. Joe was probably the most well-known and most popular youth speaker in our brotherhood and he was on the staff at Faulkner University and Gerald and Joe was having a conversation and Joe had forewarned him that in the coming years, there would be an increase in educated people. Gerald was the first person in our family history to attend college. And this was true for many people, Joe said. In this wave of higher education will result in advanced degrees. Masters in arts, masters in sciences, as well as people with PhDs. And therefore the local minister would no longer be the most educated man in the congregation, Joe warned. The days of the self-trained, not formally educated, quote unquote, lay minister, were probably coming to a close. Joe told Joe, we probably need to start looking at preparing our ministers with a degree that has more academic clout that you can get at a two-year Bible college. And so my brother informed me of this and based on his research and his conversations with Joe and his suggestion, there was a university, a four-year university that I should apply to and attend. It's July, school starts in mid-delayed August and all my plans have just changed. And upon his suggestion and his suggestion alone, I applied for admission into a private Christian school and without knowing whether I'd been accepted or not, I drove eight hours from home to pursue a bachelor's degree in Bible. I left my home in a 1968 Chevrolet in Paliname Westwind. It had no air conditioner, no radio. And I had my clothes, my blue jeans, all my T-shirts, a couple of pull-over shirts. One, I saw a shirt that the kids at 25th and Noble Street Church of Christ bought me for my birthday. One suit, my art box, 150 feet of climbing ropes, six carabiners, two white shirts with buttons down the front that were my preaching shirts. And off to school I go, well, I got to the school. They were not expecting me. And we had to scramble to, first of all, find my papers and second of all, to find me a place to sleep the first night I was there. And before I could register for classes, I had to satisfy the ogres and the trolls and the financial aid department so that one day I might possibly live long enough to repay them for the education I would receive. Now, as you know, if you listen to the podcast, before the first semester of my freshman year I had reached midterm, I was out of money and I was about three days from leaving campus and heading home. I couldn't find a job anywhere. I did have a work study program as a janitor in the Bible building, but that only barely paid for part of my tuition. You see, the money I was generating as a work study student didn't give me the money for food outside the cafeteria, didn't give me gas money for West Wind. I couldn't buy art supplies for my second major. I needed soap, shampoo, shaving cream, and just a little dignity. I'll never forget how humiliated I was at the financial aid department. Being unsophisticated in finances, I didn't know anything about Pell grants. I didn't know anything about student loans. I didn't know anything about anything when it came to money. And the lady in the financial aid department talked to me like I'd come from some third world country and was illiterate. The day before I was supposed to pack up West Wind and take the balance of my work study money, because I at least found out from the financial aid folks that if I didn't stay on campus, the money I had accrued by being a janitor in the Bible building, I had a little bit of cash that if I didn't stay on campus, they'd have to give me that cash. And it was basically just enough money to put gas in my Chevy and drive home. The day before I was leaving campus, you know that I found out I was recipient of an anonymous donation from a lady named Ms. Donna Barler of 830 Battery Lane in Nashville, Tennessee. Now I've told this story in another podcast, but I just wanted to remind you, I was gonna be able to stay and the reason I was gonna be able to stay was because of Ms. Barler's generosity. Ms. Barler's scholarship actually would end up ultimately paying for half of my college tuition over a four year period. But as generous as that was and as generous as some of her later gifts were, it did not provide for any of the aforementioned living expenses in the present, but I didn't care. My brother said, "This is where I needed to be." I felt it was where I needed to be and I was willing to make do with what I had. One of my earliest and dearest friends on campus was a girl named Gail Tillery Richardson. She would graduate with a degree in French and teach high school. And she would regale her high school students with stories of Jonesy in our college days. Her future husband, Paul Richardson, would become my closest friend on campus. She told her students in that charming, deep Southern accents of hers, she would talk about what she and Paul would do on campus and then she would say, "And then there was Jonesy and Jonesy lived like a savage." (laughing) She's also the reason my sweet wife calls me Jones and Jonesy instead of Lonnie or Lonzo. Because when Jackie would visit campus and Paul and Gail and I would visit the church where I met Jackie, she heard Gail call me Jonesy and that's what she started calling me. So here I was, living in a dorm room that was a single room. That's the only place I could find to put me. Everybody else had room mates. I could touch both walls with my outstretched arms. It had a twin bed, a small table and a sink. All it lacked was bars to be called a cell. Now occupying the single room next to me by choice, not by force was this character I mentioned named Paul Richardson. He's a thin cross country runner from Georgia and Norcross, Georgia via Dallas, Texas whom we gave the nom digura the Texan. And he was just before mid semester and the Texan knocked on my door and said he had this proposition for me. He said that if I would do his laundry, he'd supply enough quarters and soap for me to do mine as well. I remember walking across campus with my duffel bag and his duffel bag, stuff full of half a semester of clothes for two people. The laundry slung over my shoulders and some adult vista, probably the week of homecoming, looked at me and said son, if you'd do laundry more often you wouldn't have to carry all that to which I simply replied, "Hey buddy, if you want to pay for it, "I'll do it as often as you want me to do it." (sighs) If you go from class president at Oxford High School, graduating in the top 20 of your class, a youth minister at a local church and having a scholarship offer from not one but two universities to being a janitor and a hired laundry guy. Sometimes you look in the mirror and you reassess who you thought you were. I thought that maybe one of the things that I needed, one of the things that was happening in my transformation, one of the things I needed to learn was humility. But what I really learned by being a laundry guy was dignity. You see, I had a friend, not a guy older than me, not a guy younger than me, but one of my peers. The guy lived on the same floor in the same building, the same type of room that I lived in. And he knew I was poor. And his girlfriend knew I was poor. And their families knew I was poor. But they never treated me as anything but equal. You see, Paul didn't pay me to do laundry, but saw it as paying for my laundry to be done at the same time I did his. He wasn't hiring me as a slave. He was allowing me to do something and meet some of my needs with dignity. In fact, he often acted like I was doing him a favor rather than him being gracious and helping me meet some of my just very basic survival needs. You see, it's not our dignity that we need to be so concerned about, it's how we preserve the dignity in other people. It's treating people in such a way that it is our honor to serve them, to help them, to bless them, to share with them, or simply it's an honor for us to be friends with them. And please, please, please indulge me just a little. I want to talk about some things in the list. And it sounds the opposite. It doesn't sound very dignified. And it doesn't even sound like humility. In fact, it will sound a little bit like it. It's full of braggadocious hubris. But since those college days, and I was actually able to graduate, but since those college days, I've had the opportunity to interface with universities to be the keynote speaker on the lectureships, to present various topics for corporations, for people in the manufacturing industry and the space industry, for people in the public safety industry. I've been able to speak to tens of thousands of people over the years in my audiences. And on some occasions, as many as 15,000 people in the same room, I've had three decades of service with first responders. Two and a half decades as a therapist. And if you only count from the college years, 43 years of ministry, there's four decades, all of that, all of those opportunities, not solely because of the graciousness of Paul Wayne Richardson. But it was a contributing factor. It was something that made a contribution to helping me survive in that difficult time of being a college student. And a contributing factor to my life being the way my life is. And I'm so blessed and so surrounded by good people and blessings and opportunities and a lifestyle that I could not have imagined. But a contributing factor to all that is that someone new about my dirty laundry. And they let me deal with it, with dignity. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) The mission of Heritage Christian University is simple. They aim to advance the churches of Christ by equipping servants through undergraduate and graduate programs. Heritage Christian University produces effective communicators of the gospel, focusing on evangelism and a commitment to scripture. Heritage Christian University is accredited by the Association for Biblical Higher Education and offers the following degrees, Associate of Arts and Biblical Studies. Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Studies. Master of Arts, Master of Ministry and Master of Divinity. Since 1968, Heritage Christian University, formerly International Bible College, has offered affordable degrees in Biblical Studies, allowing graduates to thrive in their ministries without the burden of loan debt after graduation. For more information about Heritage Christian University, visit www.hcu.edu, that's three W's and a dot hcu.edu, Heritage Christian University is a sponsor of Keeping Up With Jones, The Lummy Jones, podcast adventure. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (clapping) (upbeat music) Using the tool of short-wave radio, World Christian Broadcasting literally covers the world every day with the gospel. They use two large curtain antennas. One is located in Anchor Point, Alaska and the other in Madagascar. They send now messages that are recorded at their international home in Franklin, Tennessee. They make available 40 hours of broadcast every day. The broadcasts are made in English, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, English for Africa and Arabic. They would love for your group to visit them. You can bring your ladies group, your youth group or your men's group, just give them a call at 615-371-8707, 615-371-8707, or you can go to three W's and a dot worldchristian dot org, find the donate here button and make a financial contribution to support this work that literally covers the world every day with the gospel. World Christian Broadcasting in cooperation with Keeping Up With Jones, the Lonely Jones Podcast Adventure. (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]