By DAVID EPPS
Pastor

It was in my high school days, back in the Jurassic age, that I first took notice of radio and television preachers. It wasn't then like it is today. Today, you can flip through the 473 channels on the handy-dandy remote and I just betcha that you can find a television preacher at any given moment somewhere on the airwaves. Why, you can't swing a dead cat these days without hitting a TV preacher. It wasn't always that way, of course.

Personally, I was partial to Billy Graham. Billy had a way with words, was down to earth, and, I swear, you'd think he was talking right to you. Besides, Billy was a Southerner and a Baptist. I knew that God loved him enough to let him be born Southern and I was pretty sure He would forgive him for being Baptist.

Billy came on over the radio nearly every night on the "Hour of Decision" program (which was really only half an hour which, I figure, accounts for how Baptists count attendance and, thereby, reckon to be the largest Protestant denomination) at about 10 p.m. Even though it wasn't cool and I kept it a secret from my closest friends, I loved Billy Graham.

Then, on the other hand, there was Brother Leonard Repass who came on every Sunday morning on "WCYB-TV (Bristol, Kingsport, Johnson City), Channel 5 on your television dial, serving all of Upper East Tennessee." And, yes, you do capitalize both "Upper" and "East," because we liked to think of ourselves as in a world apart from the rest of the state.

Brother Leonard spoke like Festus Hagin on "Gunsmoke" (or try a really, really countrified Forrest Gump accent, if you are too young or too elite to remember Matt and Kitty and Doc) and represented everything about the hillbilly, cornpone, illiterate mountain people that passed for true Southerners that I despised. Think "Gomer," or Snuffy Smith, or Li'l Abner.

Brother Leonard, who hailed from the coal fields of West Virginia and murdered words in a fashion that would send Mrs. Massengill, my junior English teacher, right into a coma, received the full brunt of my scorn and ridicule each Sunday morning. I laughed with devious glee the morning he asked his television audience for donations and promised to send each donor who gave over a certain amount a "genuine autographed picture of Jesus Christ." I knew that he meant that he, Brother Leonard, would sign his own name on the back of the lithograph, but I reveled in his misstatement. "What a rube!" I proclaimed out loud.

Sometime later, perhaps a year or two, I preached my first sermon at Mountain View Methodist Church on Orebank Road in Kingsport. Mountain View was in an upper-middle-class section of town, known as Preston Woods, and the ancient church had recently built a fine new sanctuary. The small, white frame building that had served for nearly a century was still standing, but a growing congregation, populated with the professional and the educated, filled the new brick building.

I worked hard all week and spent about 25 hours preparing for what would be an 11-minute sermon ("Ah, those were the days," I hear my congregation sighing). I delivered the sermon in the style and manner of my hero, Billy Graham. In fact, I quoted Graham several times in that short mini-sermon.

After the service, Lynn Armstrong, a student a year or two younger than myself, excitedly reported that he had recorded the sermon on his reel-to-reel. We hurried to an empty room to replay the sermon as my mouth grew dry from anticipation. The reel began to move and the tape hissed as Lynn adjusted the volume control. Then, there it was. It was absolutely unmistakable. I sounded just like Brother Leonard Repass. I could almost hear God belly-laugh amidst my anguished cries.

But, life goes on. I did work on my hillbilly, cornpone, countrified, hicksville accent over the years and, while I still don't sound like Billy, I'm not quite Brother Leonard, either. I do still slip and say "yallow," instead of "yellow," and I still have a tendency to say "dest" instead of "just" (as in, "I'll dest stand over here."). But I have learned something far beyond diction through those same years.

I have learned that God can do great and mighty things through a Brother Leonard who is totally sold out to Him. The Bible says that God "chooses the foolish things of this world to confound the wise."

When I was young and wise, I despised Brother Leonard and his embarrassing, uneducated ways. Now that I am old and dumb, I just hope that, somehow, God, in his mercy and humor, can use me to touch as many people for Him as did Brother Leonard Repass from the hills of West Virginia who was faithful, Sunday after Sunday, to deliver the Word of God to Upper East Tennessee on WCYB-TV (Bristol, Kingsport, Johnson City).

[Father David Epps serves Christ the King Charismatic Episcopal Church in Fayette and Coweta counties. He may be contacted at FatherDavidEpps@aol.com or at www.ChristTheKingCEC.com.]

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