And on the seventh day...

I don’t remember it myself, but I’ve been told that I was first taken to church when I was two weeks old. Since it was my mother telling the story, I tend to believe it. From then until I got married, I didn’t miss a lot of Sundays, and very few Wednesday nights. Church was as much a part of our life as eating or breathing. I never knew anything else.

Our church was small, averaging sixty or seventy in the congregation each Sunday morning, and if you weren’t related to them in some way or another, then you at least knew their business. Most were hard working, God fearing folk. The men wore suits, with blue ink pens and a pack of camels in the pocket of their crisply ironed white shirts. The ladies wore dresses and shoes with low, sensible heels. Their hair was always perfect, held in place with enough bobby pins to shield them from a nuclear blast. When I got older and realized that half of the older ladies were wearing wigs, it was almost like learning that there was no Easter Bunny.

As a child, I remember going to the front of the church for “Children’s Choir” after Sunday school. It was not really a “choir” since we never rehearsed ahead of time. I’m still not sure of the point of what we were doing other than to show off our miniature suits and ruffled dresses, but it was always fun to sing the songs; “This Little Light of Mine,” “Zacchaeus,” “The B-I-B-L-E,” and my personal favorite, “The Happy Day Express.”

If it was just a “dog and pony” show of “see how cute they are,” then we were extremely willing participants. Besides, I can attest that forty years later I remember the words to every single song.

As kids we were never allowed to wear jeans to morning service. It was just not done. We were also expected to behave. No talking, laughing or cutting up was allowed. It was rare, but I did see a few young boys taken by the hand and solemnly led outside by their Daddy, only to return some time later with splotchy, tear streaked faces and a much more subdued attitude. That usually only had to happen once.

We were a small, independent church…full of independent people. We were “interdenominational,” which means we were not affiliated with any specific religious organization. We weren’t Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, Catholic or Pentecostal. As I got older and more cynical, I sometimes joked that “interdenominational” meant that we didn’t know what we believed, but that was far from true.

In those days we used the King James Version of the Bible. Now most people say that it is too hard to understand, but even as a child, I didn’t have a problem grasping the central concepts. I think the fact that the language was different than the way we speak made us think about it more. It’s sort of like the way kids today are allowed use calculators in math class: if you make it too easy, people tend to miss the basics.

I always worry a little about some of the various translations of the Bible. I’m sure that they are all well intentioned, but how many different ways can you say the same thing without losing the original intent? Also (and here’s my cynical side coming out), what if a complete lunatic wrote a translation and people actually believed it? I might know that it would be a bad idea to do a Bible study using “Billy Jim Joe Bob’s Bible Translation,” but some people are always looking for what’s new and different, so I wouldn’t put it past them to take take every word as fact.

When I met Connie, I didn’t know quite what to expect. First, she was a Baptist. Second, she was a preacher’s kid. At the time I didn’t know much about Baptists, except that whenever a stray Baptist joined our little Interdenominational Church they tended to stir up trouble. But I had heard about “preacher’s kids,” and was told that they could go to extremes either way. Either they were “holier than thou” sticks in the mud, or rebellious hellions bent on a campaign to shock and awe.

Connie threw both my preconceptions out the window and was a perfect balance of a good hearted person who was also full of surprises. The only shock was how she filled me with awe and inspiration. We had a Baptist wedding in a Baptist Church presided over by her Baptist Preacher father. Whether I wanted to accept it or not, I was now “Baptist by marriage.”

When we moved to Tennessee in 1988, we weren’t in a hurry to join a church. We had spent most of our young lives attending church services, and although we both treasured those memories, we started to enjoy the freedoms of a church free Sunday. We slept late and took day trips. We communed with nature. There was always an excuse not to go.  It was our rebellious period.

In early 1990, when we learned that Connie was pregnant with Shelby, we knew that it was time to settle down and return to church. We visited a few churches in the area and were almost afraid to keep looking when on three consecutive Sundays at three different worship services, the Pastors resigned. It made for an awkward visit. By the third resignation we began to joke that we might be some kind of jinx, but in the back of my mind I had to wonder if our mixed marriage of “interdenominational” and “Baptist,” along with our prolonged break from church-going, had somehow offended God. It was a little un-nerving.

We finally found a new church home at Robertsville Baptist Church, and they welcomed us with open arms. Connie and I joined the choir and became involved in Sunday school. We developed a close bond with a group of other young married couples and made some of the best friends of our lives.

As I tried to acquaint myself with “Baptist ways” I realized that there were many similarities with my old home church. Primarily, both churches shared a strong preoccupation with all things food. Whether it was a major event like Homecoming, Revival or Vacation Bible School, or just fact that it’s the second Wednesday night of the month, church people can always find a reason to have a meal.

At a certain point I realized that we were going to be raising our kids "Baptist," and I had to come to terms with that.   Any qualms I had were quickly over-ruled by the fact that Connie had turned out pretty well, so between us (and a lot of prayers) we might end up with some well rounded Christian kids.  



(...there's much more to this train of thought, and I might even write about it)