Aboard the ship with dynamic Bible scholar Jimmy McMillan
Raised between Alapaha and Nashville, Georgia, on a farm in the Flat Creek Baptist Church vicinity, Bro. Jimmy McMillan was the special guest at the Alapaha Station Celebration’s Community Worship Service finale. McMillan preached from Genesis 6 to a small albeit faithful congregation on the Old Testament subject of Noah — in the eyes of his sinful neighbors a “crazy old fool” toiling away for decades constructing an Ark — and how imperative it is to get aboard the Lord’s ship in these perilous times. The backsliding of men within households was further emphasized.
McMillan is an old-time Baptist preacher with tenures at St. Illa near Douglas and Edith in Fargo crisscrossing his résumé. No stranger to delivering sermons on Douglas Christian radio, the heavily goateed 69-year-old lives at Bay Meadows [formerly the country music destination Holiday Beach] with unwavering wife Claire. In June Glory Church asked him to preach their revival. Within weeks the non-denominational church a mile east of the the infamous Sheboggy watering hole in Alapaha selected McMillan to be their permanent pastor.
According to Butch Gaskins, his Berrien High School pal and college roommate is a “dynamic Bible scholar who lives what he preaches every single day. Glory is blessed to have him as our pastor. He steps on your toes and makes you squirm in your seat, but we all need to examine our relationship with the Lord.
“Bro. Jimmy taught public school for several years and served on the school board in Clinch County. His favorite hobby is fishing, and Barry McMillan of Barry’s Deli in Nashville is his younger brother. Bro. Jimmy possesses a deep baritone voice and is always happy to sing. He is a fine, fine man.”
As he concluded his sermon at the Community Worship Service, McMillan looked down to the makeshift stage altar and provided a gentle admonishment. “Folks will tell me, ‘Now Jimmy, I can just sit here and make things right with God. I don’t have to get up and go to the altar.’ But when Jesus called on people in the time that he was here on Earth, he called them out publicly. Jesus said, ‘If you are ashamed of me before people, I’ll be ashamed of you before my Father’ [Matthew 10: 33, Mark 8: 38, and Luke 9: 26]. It does not matter what you or I or the person sitting next to you thinks, it only matters what God thinks.”
© Jeremy Roberts, 2019. All rights reserved. To touch base, email jeremylr@windstream.net and mention which story led you my way. I appreciate it sincerely.
