Just One Of Dad's Churches

When I lived in Suburbia, my dad found a church to pastor in another part of the metropolitan area. It turned out to be a more rundown area and we traveled forty-five minutes one-way to get there each Wednesday and twice on Sunday. As I became old enough, I was later left at home to watch my two brothers and baby sister on Sunday nights. That was nice because then we were able to watch “The Wonderful World Of Disney” that only came on television on Sunday nights.

This church was a small church. Dad usually ended up with small churches that could barely pay the light and heat bill much less Dad’s salary, so he usually had a job to support us during the week.

I remember several things about this particular church. When you walked in, the little lobby was carpeted and there was a drinking fountain in a corner next to one of the doors that led to the sanctuary. I remember these because when my mirror cousins came to visit us at this church, they taught us to all hold hands, and shuffle our feet across the carpet. The guy on one end of the line would then touch the drinking fountain giving us all a chain-reaction shock that caused us to hold or shake our hands in pain. Then we’d do it again!

All the Sunday School classrooms were in the basement. On Sunday, that was fine to go into the basement, but on a Wednesday or Sunday night, that was one of the scariest basements a kid would ever venture into. When we first started at this church, we spent one Saturday night in sleeping bags in the basement to save us having to get up so early on Sunday. That night we found out that all the mice in the neighborhood came there for ballet and rugby practice. Mom took one look at that, and decided we’d just get up early on Sunday.

That basement held some memories. It was in the kitchen unit of that basement where Bold One and I learned to fill the little communion cups with Dad’s funny squirt bottle of grape juice. After church on Communion Sunday, my siblings and I drank any leftover cups of grape juice.

In the large center area was where chairs were set up for all the kids to hear my mom give the children’s church lessons. My siblings and I seemed to be the only kids who knew the answers to the questions. Mom would give prizes to the kids who answered correctly. She would try to call on the other kids first, but half the time it was just our four hands in the air. There was a lot of “Does anyone know the answer? Anyone? Anyone besides my kids?” That went on for years. Baby Sister has more stories than I do about that.

The baby nursery was in a corner room of that basement. All the kids killed time in that nursery waiting for parents to stop talking and take them home. I remember this girl who always tried to hang around my brother and I, but I didn’t want her around because she beat me in arm wrestling all the time.

The sanctuary was an ordinary one except for one thing. There was a painted picture of Jesus Resurrected on the wall. You know, with the nail prints and the white robe? Jesus’ eyes would follow you all over the sanctuary. That tended to intensify our religious experience. One of us kids was always going forward to the altar with tears in our eyes.

Occasionally, a few of us would come with Dad on a Saturday to the church. Either we had to do yard work, or we’d watch Dad run the mimeograph machine. Hey, this was before computers and affordable copy machines! We’d watch Dad put ink in the cylinder and wrap it with the blue sheet that he’d spend quite some time typing on to make the holes to allow the ink to bleed through to print on the paper. We’d sometimes get to pick which bulletin blanks to use for that Sunday. The best part was when Dad would start turning the crank and the paper would feed through under the cylinder and be printed on. If the first couple turned out good, then Dad would let us turn the crank to print them.

There came a time when Mom and Dad were tired of us running around the church after service. Mom didn’t appreciate the fact that Bold One would crawl around under the pews and end up wearing the dust bunnies on his church clothes. Dad wanted the kids to stop running around the sanctuary and learn some reverence for God’s house.

One day, Dad told us if we didn’t sit in the back pew after church until it was time to go home, we’d get a spanking. Dad liked to refer to it as “a board meeting”. I think that is pretty self-explanatory. I ended up sitting by myself watching my siblings have a wonderful time playing tag up and down the aisles, yelling into the microphone on the platform, and splashing in the baptismal. Then later, I would hear the fallout from the “board meeting.”

This church was not much different from the other churches I grew up in. I learned to ride my bike in the parking lot of one church. Bold One used to take his nap under Dad’s desk when he was a toddler. I learned to operate a lawn mower while mowing church lawns. Sometimes as a preacher’s kid, you just lived at church.

Soylent Green

I found a movie in a book clearance store in the mall. It was called “Westworld”, starring Yul Brynner. As my son and I watched this Sci-Fi classic, we laughed at the 70s’ fashion influences that were projected for the future.

The 70s had a rash of science fiction movies that I remember all the kids in school talking about. I usually had to wait for them to come to television before I could see them.

The big one was “The Planet Of The Apes”. There was merchandising from that movie that was only eclipsed by “Star Wars” at the end of the decade. I was also a faithful viewer of the TV series as well.

I had introduced my son to the movie “Soylent Green” starring Charleton Heston some time ago, so he enjoys watching old science fiction movies with me. When “Westworld” was finished, he was a little disappointed with it, especially with the technology in use in movies now.

After suggesting that we try to find “Soylent Green” again, my son told me what had happened in science class at school one day.

One of my son’s classmates had gotten the science teacher talking about the world’s alledged overpopulation problem. As he was wearing down, my son loudly proclaims, “Soylent Green is people!” It was the startling punch line of “Soylent Green”. No one understood what that meant, not even the teacher, and it died as soon as he said it.

The teacher is twenty five years old. You’d think that if they were going to teach him all that old stuff of evolution, global warming, and overpopulation, that he’d at least be exposed to a little culture like “Soylent Green” and the original “Planet Of The Apes” movies.

Don’t forget “Logan’s Run”.

Juvenile Hymnal Theology

As a preacher’s kid I (or anyone who grew up in the kind of Pentecostal church I did), was exposed to some wonderful hymns. These were the kind of songs that you couldn’t help but learn if you paid any kind of attention in church.

It is written in my baby book by my mother, that I used to love to sing a hymn called “He Took My Sins Away”. Well, I actually sang: “He took my THINGS away.”

“He took my THINGS away and keeps me singing every day. (Hallelujah)
I’m so glad He took my THINGS away. He took my THINGS away!”

Mom and Dad got a few good chuckles out of that. I heard that story until Bold One took over the comedic role in the family.

When I think of that, I have to admit I may have been on to something. We may have to allow the Lord to take some of our THINGS away to grow closer to Him. Then as we have grown, we can truly sing: “I’m so glad He took my THINGS away.”

I’m sure Dad used that in many sermons. It had to be too good to pass up.

When I lived down south, my cousin Patrick and I would brave sitting next to his brother Billy and hear him sing: “I’ve a mansion over there, and it’s free from TOILET CARE.” It was supposed to be “toil and care”, but his way was more colorful, and yet, theologically sound.

That had to be the hardest time of holding in a belly laugh in the middle of church until I told Baby Sister that the grape juice in communion was supposed to be Jesus’ Blood. She wrinkled her little nose and said, “That’s Jesus’ blood?”

I tried to share the “toilet care” version with one of my “mirror” cousins during another church service, but he tried to slug me right there in the pew. Some preachers’ kids have no sense of humor.

The one I really smile at even now is not even a hymn, but is known as a chorus. It talks about declaring your faith and acknowledging Christ as the center of your life. It has a line that goes: “And in Him I live and I move and I have my being.”

I pointed these lyrics out to Bold One at one time and said, “See, that guy only eats one bean a day!” I changed “being” to “bean” just to mess with my little brother. It’s something any self-respecting big brother does.

These little jokes have a way of backfiring sometimes. He had absorbed what I said and was quiet until one day while the family was singing together in the car. He piped up and said, “Let’s sing the ‘one bean a day’ song.” The “one bean a day” song? That’s when I had to explain my little joke to Dad.

At least I had pulled the wool over my brother’s eyes for a little while. He wasn’t usually easy to fool. I think that trait has benefited him well to this day.

Mirror Cousins

I have a set of cousins I like to think of as my “mirror” cousins. As I’ve said before, I am the oldest of four children with two younger brothers and a baby sister. My cousins are three brothers and a baby sister also. They are also preacher’s kids. This fact has its good and not so good points.

It’s very easy to drawn comparisons between the cousins. I will start with the youngest. This baby sister is my age. Her brothers are about a year apart in age and she is about a year younger than the youngest brother. (The actual ages are not mentioned to protect any age hang-ups known or unknown.) This cousin in my mind is the mirror of my baby sister. She was sheltered and protected in the same manner by both parents and brothers. For some reason, she and I didn’t play together very often as you might expect, but I have one pleasant memory of interaction with her.

This was at our grandparents’ house, which was the setting for most of the events between the cousins. She and I were in the back yard alone together. I remember we began a game of pretend where she called the shots. I was the prince and she was Sleeping Beauty. I was a little uneasy with this, because I knew that the prince had to kiss Sleeping Beauty to wake her. I asked her if I was supposed to kiss her.

Looking in her eyes, I could almost see the gears turning. Did I detect some uneasiness in her as well? I also sensed that she knew I was nervous. The haziness of thought seemed to clear from her eyes and she spoke to me.

I was ready for the worst. I think we were ten or eleven, but I can’t be sure, but I was willing to kiss her if she insisted. She was my cousin after all, and in my family this kind of thing wasn’t that uncommon.

To my relief, (and maybe some slight disappointment) she told me I should kiss her hand to wake her.

We ran through the game, and I found she was quite a good actress.

Now I will talk about the youngest boy. This cousin, I usually interacted with along with his brothers. I have one strong memory of just the two of us.

It was at his Bible camp. I was put in his cabin as I was allowed to attend for free because my mom was teaching the younger kids. Here I was, thrust into my cousin’s world like the new kid at school. He was the defacto leader of his group of friends, and he introduced me with an aside that I would be good for the Bible quiz when the cabins competed throughout the week.

I felt that he thought I was some kind of sissy liability he had to tolerate. I was determined to make my own mark at his camp and show them all I was more than the geeky Bible wiz kid. Oh, I’ll hand them the Bible quiz victory, but I was determined to do a bit more.

In the middle of that week, I had read the chapters to be covered in the Bible quiz and came into the chapel ready. We were supposed to discuss each question given to our cabin before standing up to answer, but whenever our cabin received a question, I was standing while the rest of the cabin were still discussing. I knew the answers and won the Bible quiz for my cabin.

At the end of the week, there was a relay race. There were all kinds of wacky tasks to do with the baton run between each one. I begged the counselor to allow me to be the baton runner. I knew I could do a good job because another cousin of mine had started me into running a mile a day. I found I enjoyed running. Because I was persistent, I was made the baton runner although everyone in my cabin had doubts about me.

My cousin was always the model of cool for his friends, so I was curious to see what part of the relay he would claim for his own. He picked the task of chugging a whole can of soda and burping before the baton could be carried to the next task. I wasn’t impressed.

I brought the baton to the finish line to capture first place for my cabin. I was elated. I tried to tell my cousin that maybe I was good for something besides just the Bible quiz, but he didn’t get it.

I had accomplished something I had set out to do and was glad to have done it for myself at least.

The second oldest cousin can easily be compared to Bold One, my brother. He was the bold one of that immediate family. He tended to treat me like a little brother with all that entails. I felt a little condescended to and when I objected, I was knocked down. I didn’t have as much interaction with him as the rest, but I don’t remember ever breaking my “little brother” role with him.

Now the oldest cousin I identify with because he’s the oldest of four and I am too. He and I have successfully maintained a good relationship through the years. He has given me a timely word of wisdom on more than one occasion, and I hope I can do the same for him. He has influenced me in many ways, but the fact that I am writing at all, I attribute to his input.

I had the chance to see him again when he brought one of his daughters to the city where I live for college. I was so glad to see him and feel we can pick up right where we left off whenever we see each other again. I gave him such a hard time when he was tripping over sending his first daughter to live away from home at college. I began to feel bad when his wife told me this, but the visit renewed our relationship.

Now we seem to keep more in touch with each other. I haven’t talked to the other three cousins since my father’s funeral. I’m sure we all pray it won’t take another funeral to get together again.