Half a Dozen Awesome: Actual Quotes From Baptist Church Youth Retreats I Personally Attended, 1988 – 1991
Internets, I was raised Methodist, and spent a lot of time in our Youth Fellowship activities. Everyone – and I mean pretty much everyone – in our high school was in his or her church’s youth group, and we all went to one another’s stupid damn retreats, where you’d go to someone’s, like, lake house and stay for the weekend, getting corralled into lots of wholesome activities, cookout funtimes (kids love hotdogs and ice cream! wheee!), and many many Bible-study sessions, with separate-gender overnight arrangements involving sleeping bags and modest nightwear. Generally these things were hosted by Big Cheeses from the church, and emceed/directed by some “hip” “with-it” young visiting Youth Pastor with very straight white teeth, a slightly overweight khaki-shorted wife, an immobile haircut, a camp counselor’s build and a name like Chuck or Skip who was just filled with the Lord. One retreat blended into the next – but it was the Baptists who had the most awesome things to say, as we Methodists didn’t go for extremes in any direction, really. So, without further ado:
--“Girls: You are like a cake. A beautiful, freshly-baked cake. And if you don’t save yourself for marriage, if you sleep with a boy before you’re married, it’ll be like letting him take a slice out of that cake. And another, and another, for every boy you sleep with who isn’t your husband. And think about that – how messy, with crumbs everywhere, pieces missing – who would want to take that cake from the bakery?”
--“You think you’re saved? Maybe you are. But Jesus sure would like to see you down in the front of the church this Sunday, witnessing for him, before the whole congregation.”
--“This girl, she was fourteen years old, just like you girls. A good kid, got good grades, respected her parents and teachers, went to church. But when I asked her if she would accept Jesus into her heart, she said she wasn’t sure. She had to think about it. She had to think about it. And I prayed for her, I did. But the Lord saw what was in her heart. And not one week later, she was helping her mom* with the dishes, and BOOM! She had a brain embolism and dropped dead right there in her kitchen.”
--“Petting? What’s petting?”**
--“It’s possible to stay right with God and still go out on the weekends with your friends, even to parties. But if there’s drinking going on – if there’s booze there – you can bet there’s no Jesus there. And that leaves more room for the Devil.”
--“OK, a lot of you have asked me in our one-on-ones, ‘Is this a sin? Is that a sin? How do you know if this or that thing is a sin?’ And I can tell you: Anything you wouldn’t do in the living room with the lights on and your parents in the room with you, that’s a sin.”
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*Of course it was her mom – you think Pastor Chip would tell us a story about some girl with a dish-washing Nancine for a dad?
**Regular reader AF said this, in a tone of near hysteria, which set the rest of us off and got us all in big trouble with the hostess who brought up the subject in the first place.
--“Girls: You are like a cake. A beautiful, freshly-baked cake. And if you don’t save yourself for marriage, if you sleep with a boy before you’re married, it’ll be like letting him take a slice out of that cake. And another, and another, for every boy you sleep with who isn’t your husband. And think about that – how messy, with crumbs everywhere, pieces missing – who would want to take that cake from the bakery?”
--“You think you’re saved? Maybe you are. But Jesus sure would like to see you down in the front of the church this Sunday, witnessing for him, before the whole congregation.”
--“This girl, she was fourteen years old, just like you girls. A good kid, got good grades, respected her parents and teachers, went to church. But when I asked her if she would accept Jesus into her heart, she said she wasn’t sure. She had to think about it. She had to think about it. And I prayed for her, I did. But the Lord saw what was in her heart. And not one week later, she was helping her mom* with the dishes, and BOOM! She had a brain embolism and dropped dead right there in her kitchen.”
--“Petting? What’s petting?”**
--“It’s possible to stay right with God and still go out on the weekends with your friends, even to parties. But if there’s drinking going on – if there’s booze there – you can bet there’s no Jesus there. And that leaves more room for the Devil.”
--“OK, a lot of you have asked me in our one-on-ones, ‘Is this a sin? Is that a sin? How do you know if this or that thing is a sin?’ And I can tell you: Anything you wouldn’t do in the living room with the lights on and your parents in the room with you, that’s a sin.”
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*Of course it was her mom – you think Pastor Chip would tell us a story about some girl with a dish-washing Nancine for a dad?
**Regular reader AF said this, in a tone of near hysteria, which set the rest of us off and got us all in big trouble with the hostess who brought up the subject in the first place.
Labels: booze makes things better, clean livin, cryin' amazacrazy, half a dozen awesome, Jesus H. Christ in a sidecar drinking tequila
posted by Gleemonex at 12:13 PM
6 Comments:
Thank you for this post. It confirms my long-held belief that pooping is a sin.
Ha! That's the kind of thing I never would have thought of, thus that's why I was in their thrall for so unreasonably long. ("They" being the Church Folk, who really kind of had my number back in the day.)
My favorite youth group memory? Our teacher telling us "a secret." The secret - sex isn't that great. CK's response, muttered under her breath, "speak for yourself."
(I still feel bad about dragging you to retreats.)
Oh my GAAAAAAAAAAHHHHD!!!
AF -- tears of helpless, helpless hysterical laughter! Holy smokes that is the FUNNIEST THING I'VE SEEN IN FOREVER! Oh shit ... I miss having that girl around, don't you???
But see, I thank you for dragging me to those -- else what would I blog about, lo these 20 years later? ;-)
okay, but, if it was my husband who messed up the cake in the first place, before we got married, does that count????
scary scary shit.
okay, growing up catholic where we had zero fun going to ccd and memorizing the same long, boring prayers and names of the disciples over and over, we were totally attracted to awana and any retreats the baptists were offering. even though they were unreasonably strict, they were social. the catholics would never do an overnight trip with boys and girls together. my neighbor's grandpa was the preacher at this huge baptist church and she'd take me on her awana retreats. but then i'd always get real nervous because all the kids had memorized all the psalms and could quote stuff from the bible from memory and i was like, "i'm catholic. i know nothing about the bible. but you wanna hear me say the rosary?"
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