WARNING! This blog is about Church experiences and so I am telling you in advance so that you will know that I am not a one Church is the only Church person. Don’t be offended by my “humor” in regard to my experiences. DISCLAIMER
Seriously, I don’t think I have written a blog that really offended anyone. Well, there was the one time someone threatened to sue me and I had to re-write and remove all references to them. And a couple of times when someone thought I was referring to them when I actually wasn’t (guilty conscience maybe?) and so I had to remove a paragraph to make everyone happy.
As you know I am visiting Churches in Tulsa because as much as I love the people and the Church in Muskogee I know me well enough to know that getting up on Sunday morning and driving an hour to Church is not something that I would stick with very long. So rather than prolong the agony of knowing I was gonna need to make a change, I just left pretty much without saying goodbye. I do plan to visit there periodically, maybe every couple of months or so because it was such an important part of my life that I don’t want to lose that connection totally.
The Church I visited last week was a good experience and afterwards, several people came and introduced themselves and asked about me. Through talking to them, they learned that I used to be a Muskogee and was in the choir and bells and so I have received phone calls for both those things this week (I’m being recruited…that’s pretty cool). Today in the mail I got a letter from the Pastor of the Church and though it was pretty much a standard form letter that is sent to visitors, he had taken the time to write a personal note about having been in Muskogee in the 70’s at the “other” Methodist Church there. LOL I found it nice that he added a personal touch to the letter. And I found it WONDERFUL that he or some other Church member didn’t show up on my doorstep this week to visit with me.
I would be curious to know if anyone truly likes the “surprise” visit that sometimes comes after you visit a Church, or after your child visits a Church with a friend or classmate. I personally haven’t known anyone that welcomes these “visits” I realize that there are Churches who as part of their evangelism teams feel it is their calling and their duty to go out and walk the neighborhoods knocking on doors and inviting people to Church. For me, this is the worse possible thing they could do. For when they “invade” my space by showing up at my doorstep uninvited, even if they feel it’s a good thing to call on me to “welcome” me well I tend to shut down and check them off my list.
Now here’s where the “hope I don’t offend anyone part comes in”. One neighborhood we lived in seemed to be the favorite one for the Jehovah Witnesses to “witness”. Had it been once a year or so they knocked on my door I would have probably found it in my heart to be kind, answer the door, and tell them politely that No, I wasn’t interested, yes I was a believer, yes I have a Church…..etc. But these folks seemed to come way too often. Once Andy came in and said, those Bible people are coming down the street mama! I hate to admit it but I shuffled him inside and told him I’d pay him a dollar to keep perfectly quite and still when they rang the doorbell so we could pretend we weren’t home. Awful I know. One day I actually let them in to get a drink of water after they requested it. And almost never got them out of my house. I had to literally tell them to leave this instance. They were “hell bent” on converting me and were not planning to leave until I was.
Now most of my experiences haven’t been that “radical”. Occasionally, in my adulthood I have visited a Church and within a few days had someone at my door with a pie. Once a Church sent a member with a basket of bed, bath and body. That was really extravagant. That was shortly after my divorce when I was looking for another Church (because the memories at the current one were too painful to handle). Still, in the many churches I have attended over the years, not one of the ones that I settled at for any length of time sent anyone out to recruit, welcome etc. And for me that is how I like it.
So the letter today, and the calls I got were welcome. Though I think Joe would have welcomed a pie. LOL
My parent’s church in Kingfisher did this thing called loaves of love. If you were a first time visitor they came and gave you a little Banana bread when you raised your hand to acknowledge you were visiting. Yum! The second time we visited that Church Chris was about 3 and he remembered the bread from the week or two before when we visited. So when the pastor asked if there were any first time visitors, he raised his hand high. I said, no Christopher, we’ve been here before. To which he replied, but I wanted some banana cake Very Loudly. And he got his cake…and a good laugh from the congregation!
When I was a young girl my family didn’t attend Church. At the time my dad was a pretty heavy drinker and my mom though very spiritual had her hands full with 5 kids and Church was just not something we did. My best friend Joni’s family went every week as did my friend Tina’s family. So I was able to go with them to Church periodically and I loved it. Now both of them went to Baptist Churches and Southern Baptist at that. I could be wrong, but every Baptist Church I’ve ever been to has an altar call at the end of the service where “with every head bowed, every eye closed” Just As I Am is played and the opportunity is given to be saved. The first time I walked down to be saved I think I was about 9. The 2nd time I walked down to be saved I think I was about 9 ½. Then 10, 10 ¼, 11 well you get the picture. I didn’t really understand what I was doing I don’t think until the last time at 11. When the preacher would say “God is calling someone in this service down” I always thought maybe it was me and that’s why they kept playing the music over and over. So I would go down, be saved, and in my limited understanding expect that everything in my life would change…suddenly my dad wouldn’t drink and my brothers wouldn’t put cottonwood beetles in my bed and the new shoes I wanted would magically appear. I simply had no real concept of salvation. No one ever really took the time to explain to me.
And always, always, within days of my going down to be saved the preacher would come to my home to “discuss” my decision with my parents. Which prompted my dad’s favorite pastime, what I refer to as his game of “Antagonize the Preacher”. Now, I hope this blog doesn’t embarrass my dad because I have mentioned that he became a Christian when I was about 20 I think and he is a changed person. But when I was a kid, he wasn’t. And he drank a lot of beer. And so whenever he saw the nice car pull up and the man with the Bible get out, he would call out “Betty, bring me a beer, LeeAnn must’ve gotten saved again.” It’s funny now to me but at the time it was pretty embarrassing. The preacher would come in and my dad would offer him a beer. Then the fun began. At least for my dad. He would debate everything the poor preacher said and the more he debated the harder the preacher would try to get through to him and the more obnoxious my dad would become. My mom would sit wringing her hands wishing for it to be over and I would be in my room under the bed hiding most of the time until I heard the car drive away.
My dad tells a story that I honestly can say I remember about one time when I had one of my “salvation visits” Robert was outside playing and he had gotten several beer cans out of the trash can and made a “road” of them on the driveway and was playing with his toy cars when the Preacher arrived.
I have to give credit to my friend Tina’s dad Danny who never gave up on my dad and never gave up on me and did his best to make sure that I knew the Lord. He walked the walk and talked the talk. And I’ll never forget how one day when Joni and I rang his doorbell selling our weaving loom potholders for a dime he gave us a lecture about the Sabbath being a day of rest (it was a Sunday) and we shouldn’t be bothering people. Joni and I were pretty convinced we were going to go to the bad place for that. I remember years later visiting Danny and Martha, Tina’s parents and Danny and I talking about the whole “church as a kid” thing and how truly happy he was when he found out my dad was now a Christian.
I think maybe my aversion to people coming to my door to talk to me about religion, or even visiting me unannounced when I have attended their church as a visitor is probably tied in some way to those childhood experiences.
I have to laugh because when I went to Church last Sunday I bypassed the “visitor desk” not because I didn’t want to be noticed but because there were several people in “line” and according to my watch I had 2 minutes to get in the sanctuary before I would be late. Nothing quite as uncomfortable as waling into a Church service late as a visitor. Though if you do that you are pretty certain not to take someone’s REGULAR SEAT, a mistake I have made before. (so that’s why that little old lady glared at me the entire service)…LOL I dutifully filled out the visitor’s card as requested and placed it in the offering plate. After the service one of the older ladies came up and asked my name and said “be sure you sign up at the visitor’s desk”. I filled out the card I said, the visitor’s desk was crowded when I came in. Oh honey, she said, you need to go out there right now. You get a free gift for visiting. “That’s ok I said” maybe next time. She leaned close in like she was telling me a secret and whispered “its popcorn!” I didn’t laugh about it until I got to my car….I found it kinda touching that she would share that “secret” with me.
I once went to a Church where it seemed the focus was on how many people they could get to attend. Now all Churches I believe should strive to bring people in but this particular Church seemed obsessed by the numbers. And one day as I was leaving a meeting in which the “numbers” were the main topic a friend looked at me and said “wouldn’t it be nice to go to a Church where they didn’t count the people but instead the people counted. And that resonated with me and I have never forgotten that. And soon after when the numbers go so big that a letter was sent out that said we could no longer contact the pastor for our needs because he was “too busy” since the Church had grown so big but instead to call and tell the Church secretary what our “need” was and she would forward it on to the team of “lay leaders” to figure out who best to call us back, I left that Church.
I have to say I love Church. The Bible doesn’t say you have to go to Church to get to heaven. I don’t go for the color of the choir robes (LOL…I was kidding people!) or for which group of my friends go there, or for the sermon, or the music, or the beauty of the building. I simply go because it is there that I find solitude, a haven from the noise and chaos of the world, and feel surrounded by people who care about me and who are seeking the same God that I am. It is in that pew, as the music fills my soul and the pastor’s words give me food for thought, that I feel truly at peace. And that’s why I go. And that feeling is what I had at my Church in Muskogee and what I know I will find somewhere in Tulsa.
For many years I watched a good friend of mine stand solid as a rock on her beliefs. At times, I would goad her even if I agreed with her. I would try to change her mind on certain things. She wouldn’t budge. She was not afraid to speak her mind if you were doing something she felt was wrong. But she loved you anyway. That saying about Hate the sin, love the sinner could have been her motto. I watched her through the years. I cringed when other friends would say she was too Churchy and made them uncomfortable. I would look around uncomfortably if we went to lunch to see if people were watching us as she prayed before every meal…..I watched her maneuver through some really tough situations in her life with the calm of someone who has rock solid faith. And I envied her. I wanted what she had. Of all the influences in my life as a Christian, she is at the top of the list. Her actions spoke a whole lot louder than her words.
May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight. Love that saying that is our Youth group’s “motto”.
And as for why I am Methodist? My son asked me that and I couldn’t give him a good answer because the reason we started going to the Methodist Church was because of friends that went there. It wasn’t until my sons went through the “confirmation” classes that I even really took the time to explore the beliefs of the Church. And I found that those beliefs were a close match to mine and that even if some of mine were different, it wasn’t cause for concern. No one was going to demand that I believe exactly as they did. My relationship with Christ is a personal one. I think I’m in the school of thought that my life should be a witness to my faith. I think that everyone has to find their “fit” All roads lead to the same place. You may choose a different path (church) but the path ends up at the same destination. If someone asks me about my beliefs I will share them. Invited to do so I might even bring a pie.
No comments:
Post a Comment