Growing up in the Panhandle of Texas gives me a different perspective of church than some of you. Here’s what I mean. When you grow up in the Bible Belt (and yes, Texas is a part of the Bible Belt, some might even say it’s the Belt Buckle but I doubt that) you grow up in a very Christianized society. In the Bible Belt, we were the last to turn loose of segregation, the Blue Law, and the last people to streak long after the fad had peaked. You didn’t grow your hair long and you didn’t listen to rock and roll. If you were a Christian, you didn’t smoke, drink or chew. And you certainly didn’t go with girls who do. Well, some of us didn’t.
And church was the same way. It was conservative, main-stream Christianity and you read from the King James. The choirs were always full, and when you brought in an evangelist to bring us “revival,” he preached hell fire and damnation. (“If you were to walk out the door tonight and get hit by a truck, where would you spend eternity? Let me see a show of hands if you prayed the sinner’s prayer with me. I see that hand. And that one. And that one.”) Revivals happened every year, usually twice. There was the Fall Revival and then the Spring Revival. And sometimes you had a city wide crusade in the high school football stadium where all the Southern Baptist (SBC) churches came together – but not the Methodist, Church of Christ, or Catholics.
The SBC churches in the Panhandle offered pretty much the same things: Sunday School, choirs, Vacation Bible School, hymnals, suits and ties, hard pews, offering envelopes with little boxes you checked to prove you were a good Christian, the King James Bible, organs and pianos, ice cream socials, and worship services at 11:00 am. You also had Sunday night services, Wednesday night prayer meetings, and visitation on Tuesday where you went in pairs to some unsuspecting soul’s home because he happened to fill out the visitor’s card. The rest of the week is when you had committee meetings.
There were, and still are, a lot of Southern Baptist churches. What happens when you have so many SBC churches in one town is you start competing against one another. I see that a lot today. We aren’t members of the larger body of Christ Followers; we are members of a particular church. If we get tired of the church because it’s not meeting my needs, or we get angry at the preacher, we move on to another SBC church. I mean, after all, there are plenty to choose from and they all want my business.
But in the 70s things started to change. More later.
August 15, 2006 at 11:24 pm
Aaahh! A blast from the past. You did an amazing job describing my experience with organized religion. And I wonder why I struggle so much with my view of God? Thanks for your thoughts!
August 16, 2006 at 12:27 am
Hey T. I know you can relate to this since you also grew up in the Panhandle, but the sad truth is you grew up in this atmosphere a whole generation AFTER me. There are many churches out there today that are still just like this. I forgot to add that women couldn’t wear anything but dresses, and that there was always a printed order of worship and you wouldn’t dare do anything differently.
B~
August 16, 2006 at 2:55 am
It was, and in some cases, still is, the same way in Indiana and Ohio. Oh, and am part of a non-denominational “movement”. You would think it would be different but it’s not. What you described is exactly my experience.
August 16, 2006 at 3:30 pm
Looking forward to ‘the rest of the story’……..
August 16, 2006 at 5:22 pm
This is fascinating. Good job describing what it was like. Don’t take this wrong – but it’s hard for me to imagine this was (is?) reality. It seems like something fictional to me, that things were never really like that. I grew up in So Cal going to a Catholic Church until I was 13 but then left church till I was almost 30! So my experiences with church are much different than yours.
I like the point you are making and can’t wait to hear more…
August 16, 2006 at 7:30 pm
You mean its different than that now???? I would make a rough guess and say at least 50% of the SBC churches here are still like that. The only thing different in the other 50% is they have a “contemporary service” too….
And don’t forget, their evangelism strategies make them the tip of the spear. Helping them be poised and ready to reach the community…… of 1950….
Ok ok, I admit it… there really is a new movement within the SBC that looks like a God thing. Its actually a bit exciting at times.
August 16, 2006 at 10:58 pm
I lived next to a family who were SBC. I was catholic. I thought it very odd that they went to church 5 days a week. I often went just to spent time with my friend.
August 17, 2006 at 2:08 pm
okay…tell the rest of the story! 🙂
This is still kinda going on today here in Texas…
I know it happened up north in Iowa where I grew up. We had Catholics on one side of us, and AOG on the other…we were the heathens in the middle!
August 29, 2006 at 5:40 am
This was me, my experiences, in my church – my Nazarene church – growing up. Church was all of those things. But it also wasn’t a lot of other things: a safe place, free from judgments and condemnations, authentic, relevant, unconditionally loving, experiential, comfortable, relationships-oriented, and Relationship-oriented among the things that it lacked (relationships-oriented meaning relationships with others and Relationship-oriented meaning THE relationship). The lack of all those things meant I, along with several others probably, was left empty, hungry, confused, and frustrated.
Churches of today are a breath of fresh air for people like me whose early experiences with church were less than desirable.