A Valentine for Hellraisers Baptist Church

I grew up in a church founded by new converts, most of whom were still members. When I say I grew up in the church, I mean physically. I spent more of my waking hours in the church than I did in my home. No, it wasn't a commune, anything with associated with "commune" was suspect in a church full of God-fearing Americans at that time. The church had a school and my parents were both teachers. My mother had grown up in the church and my grandparents had "come to Christ" through the efforts of the founding members and their first pastor. My great uncle was one of the original hellraisers whose life was turned upside down at a Methodist revival along with a handful of his friends. He evangelized our entire family and a nice-sized percentage of the town.

The people in that little church were very ordinary factory workers and such, but the authenticity of their faith and the obvious difference it had made in their lives was powerful. The pastors who preached there when I was growing up were dull and so lacking in originality that one of them preached the same series of sermons every three years in an ever more bland cycle. The people who formed my faith were the people in the pews. On Sundays, I showed up having been decked out head to toe. The clothes were from my grandmother and the hair (and occasionally makeup) were from my mother. I tripped down the corridors to my Sunday School class where a woman who was usually just somebody's mother became my teacher. Those women were painstaking and creative in their presentations. No one read from the book. The handouts were always prepped. Some of them even set aside the purchased materials in order to present something they'd developed themselves that they felt was more relevant. I was taken to McDonalds as a reward for memorized Psalm 23. Picnics, sleepovers, trips to nearby parks and museums, all of it was given to me by people on ordinary salaries who probably had other things they could have done with the money.

The older folks in that church impressed me. Mrs. Rhineheart, whose heart was larger than the rest of her, tackled the kid's Christmas pageant every year. Her intensity was enough to keep something like 60-100 kids from SS organized and relatively quiet. We were going to produce something to glorify God and that meant we had to do our absolute best. Then there was Mr. Armstrong who carried a toolbox as long as he was tall. He'd come any day at any time to repair the water fountain at school and anything else that got broken. When you're a thirsty third grader such instant service is deeply appreciated. Mr. Summerfield kept patiently ministering to my grandfather until he came to Christ four years before I was born. Mrs. Walters let me help prepare Communion. Mrs. O'Wade not only put the bandaids on extra tight so it wouldn't hurt so much, she redecorated the church and designed a restaurant style kitchen in which she prepared delicious food worthy of the restaurant she had started after putting bandaids on had gotten a little old. Mrs. Hare and Mrs. Wilson put up with all my endless shennanigans trying to get out of schoolwork and Mrs. Rizer took pity on me and taught me how to properly form a q and a g in cursive so that I could finally pass handwriting. All of it was done out of genuine love for Christ and for me.

These were people who were "formerly known as" people. Unlike Prince they didn't go from weird to worse, they went from notorious to notable. They were transformed. We has no idea when we were children, but as we grew older and various and sundry started taking the wrong path a former Dirty Harry or Harriet who'd already been down the road would take the wanderer aside for a chat. We'd all be shocked to discover that Mr. X had done Y, and Mrs. B had done C. These were people deeply grateful for a new life and they lived that gratitude everyday. I used to stop singing in church in order to listen to their off-key joy. We only ever sang old hymns. The unspoken motto was no music from after 1960 and no books from before. Special music was more flexible, especially when Young Mr. Abe came to sing, but congregational singing stuck to the red hymnals. I don't think anything could beat the sound of all those grateful hearts pouring their praise at Christ's feet. If dancing hadn't been the vertical expression of a horizontal desire I'd have been dancing every Sunday.

They weren't perfect. They were passionate and whatever you are passionate about you argue about. They argued vigorously that we kids should be sheltered in the church school and the other half argued that we should be out in the public school evangelizing. They argued about policies. They argued about hiring and firing staff. They argued about whether or not the teen evangelists could go to the prom. Sometimes I just sat back amazed at the minutia that could swallow them up, but I could tell that they really cared about getting it right. They wanted to be sure that they were being obedient. They were passionate people, and I'm a better person because of it.