April 14th, 2005 at 12:32 am
by sillyjoe (Church Whatnots, Life and Introspection, Religion)
And you love her
But you know you’ve got to leave her
She’s leaving you with no way out – Derek Webb
So my family’s time at Buffalo Baptist Church has come to an end. The politics of church have taken over the love and community that once was. People who I thought loved and supported us turned their back on us, then turned toward us again, only to spit in our faces. It’s been a rough couple of weeks. I may post a rundown, but it’s not something I feel I can relive now.
Tonight was the first time I attended a church other than Buffalo in five years. It was a strange feeling. To go somewhere, and not be the worship leader. To not be the preacher’s kid. To just be a visitor at this church. I don’t know if I liked it or not. It was so different from where I’ve been for so long now. I hope I can get back to where I can lead others in worship weekly….somewhere. I need that. It’s where I found my strength every week.
To all of those who may read this…please pray for me, my family, and what was once my church. The rebuilding process will be an interesting one for us all.
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October 28th, 2004 at 3:18 pm
by sillyjoe (Church Whatnots, Life and Introspection)
“God has a way of growing us that we don’t quite understand, until we look back and see how far we’ve come.” – jdr
In the year 2000, I was about to finish up middle school, and head to high school. It was to be a monumental year. Y2k was upon us, we were all scared that the world was gonna end when the clocks hit midnight, and then it didn’t. I thought I was gonna finally get a girlfriend, and then I didn’t. And then, in the winter, something happened. We were at church one night, at a business meeting, and one of the men brought up that he thought the church should reenact the yearly vote of whether or not the pastor should remain the pastor. Controversy and much arguing ensued. My dad (the pastor) gracefully stated that he felt a church should not have a yearly ballot with the pastor. The pastor should stay til he needs to leave, and when that day comes, either God will tell him, or the church will. One side of the church folk argued that the vote needed to put into place, and one particular man (whose name I don’t like to mention to this day) stated that he had been getting calls from various people saying they felt that this should happen, because they’d been having problems with the pastor (once again, my dad). I’m a 13 year old kid. I’m confused. I don’t understand what’s going on. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Why do they want us to leave? Well it gets put to a vote, and 11-9 (there usually wasn’t much attendance at the business meetings), the church voted NOT to reinstate the yearly vote. I was relieved. My family was relieved. The scandal was past (or so we hoped). We found out a week or two later that the guy who said people had been calling him lied. He had been the one calling other people, badmouthing our family. Why, I still to this day do not know. He had two kids, elementary school aged, who were in my sister’s Sunday school class. She was the teacher. Because of his disdain for my family, he decided he didn’t want his kids in her class. So he took them out. In the weeks that followed there were several altercations between he, his wife, and my sister…that did not fare well for my sister. She was very hurt, and emotionally traumatized by the events. In the spring of 2000, we left the church. Dad said he couldn’t let his family suffer any longer, and the Lord was allowing him to leave. That summer was probably the roughest I’ve had. We were in limbo. A pastor’s family without a church….is very strange, indeed. We didn’t know where to go. We visited a few churches, but nothing ever felt right. And then, in the early fall, dad got a call from Buffalo Baptist Church in Rutledge, just a few miles away from the church we’d been at. They wanted him to come and preach a couple of Sundays. Well, at the church we’d been at before, I was the ONLY youth my age. There were 7 year old kids…then me…then 25 year old folks just out of college. So I was pretty alone. Well, dad told me that Buffalo had one of the larger youth groups in Rutledge. I was pretty excited! Well, the couple of Sundays became a couple of months, and in December, they asked dad to be the pastor at Buffalo. Now, out of the four years I’ve been there, I’ve gained: a solid group of friends, in fact, all of my best friends now attend Buffalo (my very best friend of 8 years joined the church last fall); a place in leadership (I’m the head worship leader of the youth group, and one of the music directors for the church); and a TON, and I mean TON of wonderful memories.
All of this, because of a few horrible months in late ’99, early 2000.
In retrospect, I wouldn’t change it for the world.
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July 29th, 2004 at 11:51 pm
by sillyjoe (Church Whatnots)
Okay, so here it is, what you’ve been waiting for…all two of you. The rundown of my week at SuperWow. Not everything will be included because, well, I can’t remember EVERYTHING.
Saturday morning at 7 am we met at the church to head down to Jekyll Island. There were about 40 of us, give or take a few. We began the long, and I do mean LONG, drive down to the island. We arrived at our destination somewhere between 9 and 12 hours later. I’m really not sure. We had four houses, one each for the Buffalo guys and girls, and one each for the New Blackwell/Cherokee Hills guys and girls. After we got settled into our houses, we had a little powwow meeting and supper, and then everyone went back to the houses and went sleepy. Sunday morning we had a small church service at the girls’ house. Krusty and myself led worship, and Dad did a small message about love. Sunday afternoon we hit the local mall, where me, Krusty, and our new boy Justin Carroll hit PACSUN and picked up some killer belt buckles. Justin and myself were rockin’ the sheriff’s star buckles while Krusty (ever the different fellow) had to pick up the welcome to Vegas sign buckle. I mentioned to the guys that I had an awesome Wal-Mart shirt that would really kick the western look into gear…so those two rich guys decided to pick one up at American Eagle. We figured we’d go into the first service on Monday night in style. Sunday night we had a talent show….I didn’t enter, b/c I figured these people are gonna hear me play my guitar and sing every night this week. So instead, I played the part of Simon Cowl, insulting everyone even if they WERE good. And THAT was fun. My mom, and two other youth group mothers got together and sang “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” We started calling them the Golden Girls. The stakes were high for this shindig, as the winner would get to eat FIRST for the whole week, at every meal. This is a big deal on our trips…when you got 40somethin people getting to eat first is ALWAYS a big deal. The Golden Girls won it…no matter how disturbed myself and the other two sons of the Golden Girls were. After all this, we headed back to our houses to hit the sack.
I’m gonna go ahead and post this now, to split the days up into separate posts. That way it won’t be another two weeks before you all see something
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June 16th, 2004 at 4:37 pm
by sillyjoe (Adventures in Randomosity, Church Whatnots, Life and Introspection)
until I make my yearly trip to Jekyll Island with the youth group for SuperWow. I’ve been to a few youth camps in my days as a PK…but SuperWow is by far my favorite. 5 days on an island with no distractions, where God is the total focus. I never get tired of it.
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June 2nd, 2004 at 3:45 pm
by sillyjoe (Adventures in Randomosity, Church Whatnots)
So, tonight is Family Night, which means we meet at 6 instead of 7, and everyone gets together…
and eats.
It’s a heavenly thing, and I believe the practice is divinely touched by God.
Why else would fried chicken taste so good?
4 Comments