I’ve blanked a lot out of my memory but I do remember one particularly awkward time where the pastor spent way too long explaining how god designed the asshole and its not for fucking.
I’m morbidly curious about the “arguments”
How about “it’s usually got at least a little poo on it”?
I mean I know it’s not particularly effective, but if it were true of something like ice cream I bet sales would drop. (Tangentially related: https://www.pedestrian.tv/news/coogee-bay-hotel-gelato-poo-2008/)
Oh yuck
When we were young and first married, my wife and I decided to try a church that we had saw online. The website and name made it seem like it would be alright and more modern thinking. We were wrong.
We pull up and the church building is a double wide trailer, a congregation of about 30 people. The preacher appears to be in his 70s.
He sees that he has guests and singles us out and puts us on the spot to introduce ourselves to whole congregation. He never refers to my wife by her name instead just calling her “Wife”. He prays for us multiple times during the service and bring us up during the sermon. (Still just referring to us as TORFdot0 and wife)
Speaking of the sermon, he begins the sermon talking about the gay democrat agenda and how the gays are ruining God’s institution of marriage and how it will soon be illegal to be married to a woman. This gets an audible sigh from the ladies in the front row.
He also preached to cherish our Bible before the black socialist devil in the white house takes them from us.
He compared the Bible to an old hound dog and started barking for going on two minutes. It’s like a dog because it warns us of things to come.
After what seems like an eternity of a sermon, he invites the kids up to the alter for some “Hallelujah” Candy (it’s the Sunday before Halloween). One child takes a second handful of candy and the elderly pastor chastises him and then bends him over his knee and starts spanking him in front of the congregation.
Needless to say we did not give that church a second visit.
Next time I’d recommend reporting them to the IRS for promoting political activity.
They likely won’t do anything. The IRS is extremely gun shy about enforcing that doctrine ever since the Church of Scientology thing.
it warns us of things to come
Ezekiel 23:20
She lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose semen was like that of horses.
Not church per se, but my uncle blew his brains out. At the wake, the priest turned his little speech into how evil abortion is. Yes, let’s talk about killing babies… Anything not to tell about the dude who killed himself.
This is a grand example of how people in such positions, are prone to making any and every moment about something that’s been on their minds when it really shouldn’t be.
(Sorry for your loss. That must have really hurt to get the news.)
When I was a freshman in college, I let this youth group convince me to visit their weird church. The “pastor” was a young guy who spent the entire sermon talking about how he squandered his time in college before eventually dropping out. Fortunately, the old pastor took pity on him and gave him a job as an assistant—running errands, cleaning, etc. Then one day the old pastor died, so our hero basically just took over since no one else wanted to.
When it was done he tried to sell us bags of stale coffee.
Oh my God this brought back a memory. It was probably the time my friend invited me to their church and expected me to speak in tongues. Like wouldn’t let me leave until I was filled with the spirit and speaking in tongues. It was terrifying.
Can you type out a longer, detailed play-by-play so we can eat popcorn as we read it?
It was so long ago, I remember being surprised that such a regular girl belonged to such a terrifying church, I guess if you grow up in it, it seems normal?
We arrived with her parents and sat towards the middle of the pews, there was the usual call and response and singing and a sort of sermon I don’t remember but then one by one the people in the audience started standing up and babbling. Then my friend did and their parents and the pastor was exhorting us that EVERYONE needed to submit and be filled with the spirit, EVERYONE!! Who, me? EVERYONE! I stood up and made some nonsense sounds and that seemed to satisfy them. I was congratulated and hugged and then there was some more churchy stuff not so crazy.
I mostly remember being scared, and also being so confused that this was “church” to my friend. My mom made us go to “church” and it was guys in robes and some singing, a sermon, some praying, a little more singing, a benediction (really pretty - “May the Lord bless you and keep you, may he make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you”) and then walk out in an orderly fashion. Mostly really boring, not scary because I didn’t believe any of it.
But to her, “church” was this mass of people being crazy and babbling and the preacher yelling, and it never, like, coalesced into order, it was literally a pack of shouting mostly adults, who seemed convinced this was an essential sign that God was speaking directly through you.
Being a kid with ADHD, all of them. Each and every service drove me to the brink of insanity. I stopped going once I was old enough to decide for myself.
All of them. But specifically this one place my parents took me to that just started speaking in tongues right in the middle of the sermon. This went on for like, half an hour, everyone just flailing around and speaking in “tongues”, which was just them making up a bunch of gibberish.
My dad said it wasn’t a great service.
He’s right, it was the worst.
Also, that, plus many other stupid and incongruent moments led to my exodus from the church, and religion as a whole.
I’m much happier now, not being forced to attend these silly wastes of time that are church sermons.
The power team. Apparently vast amounts of sweat, tearing phone books in half, bending steel rods and blowing up hot water bottles is godly and there were several alter calls.
Then I had to see them at Jr. High the next day to preach about how bad drugs are.
Here’s an article about a visit.
I’ve got a bunch of horror stories that take some detail to explain, but I remember a couple moments of shock in particular.
Was actually a Methodist service, Easter Sunday. it was when they cut a baby lamb’s throat and it bled. It was great special effects with a real lamb but children started crying.
Also, the time we all went to see Passion of the Christ, 9:00 or 10:00pm showing. There was a mother smacking the shit out of her toddler for crying when the torture started. I’m a different person now and would put a stop to something like that now.
When i was six i had to sit in my own poop for an hour long sermon because nobody would let me get up to go. Course they also had to sit in it with no reaction heh
That is outright neglect. That level of strictness is just ridiculous. If they really wanted you to sit and listen, and take the sermon seriously, you certainly can’t do that while sitting on a turd, while also having the attention span and understanding of a six-year-old.
Yeah the 60s were a different world heh
When I was like six or seven years old, my great aunt Ruth stayed over Christmas eve. She was a nun, so because it was important to her, we were going to open all of our Christmas presents after mass.
Mass was almost three hours. I remember this pretty clearly because I had a cheap casio wristwatch and I was timing it. I probably didn’t hear a word of the sermon.
Making kids wait
toand do anything but open presents on Christmas day is criminal, imo.
Could be hot Texas southern Baptist sermons running way too long while we all fan ourselves with paper fans we made from the printed agenda, or maybe it was a lively one on some random church-hopping day with speaking in tongues and prophets translating, or maybe it was one where my uncle said shit that was masked condescension cast towards his kids, or or or. It was definitely NOT one where I “went to the bathroom” but actually went hiking.
I let my college RA bring me along one weekend to a megachurch she attended. The pep rally vibe I can accept as just not my style of worship, but the order of service was short on scripture and long on homilies of questionable theology.
All of them
I threw up in one once. I actually don’t recall anything any worse than what it usually was. I actually went further into the evangelical baptist rabbit hole as my family drifted a bit from it, but that would reverse and end with me being an atheist-leaning agnostic.
I do remember Sunday school teachers being angry that I was allowed to have D&D books and games. In a different church when I was in middle or high school, I quoted the movie name “Oh God you Devil” and my buddy whose family took me to church slapped me. That was a good time. /s
