Bro. Gary Hawkins 15: Not Sweet Fellowshipping with JRod - Yet

[thoughtful]

22 minutes ago, Xan said:

I don't really know why Gary is there.  He probably thought he'd have a bigger speaking part too.

He may have a turn to preach tomorrow. I don't know how long this camp meeting lasts. They're putting him up in a hotel room - he has nothing to complain about.

Oh, and:

[Four is Enough]

Gooder and Gooder...

[Lillymuffin]

9 hours ago, thoughtful said:

Murphy's Law - as soon as I gave up, the sound came back. Clearly a sign from God that I should stay up and finish listening to this service. ?

The pianist is still playing. People are still moaning, some are weeping and crying out. If some are genuinely troubled, and this is giving them comfort, I wish them well. But it all sounds so overwrought and forced.

Some return to their seats, stepping over the perpendicular man. Eventually he returns to his seat - no accidents were caused. All but one man have returned to their seats, when the pastor says something I can't catch, and they almost all get up, go to the front, and kneel or lie down again, all praying individually, out loud.

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Gradually, they all return to chairs except for one young man (possibly a teen), who has been motionless for 35 minutes (several men have come to comfort him and lie down beside him, so I know he's not dead).

The pianist sounds like she wants to finish. Eventually, she starts singing the song again, instead of vamping.

The young man gets up and goes back to his seat. The pianist keeps playing, and there is a lot of yelling, handshaking and hugging at the front of the church, and quite a few of them, including Becky and Gary, come up to kneel or lie down for a third time.

Eventually, most come back to their seats, but there's a new holdout this time, in the middle of the aisle. One of the preachers gets up and tells a salvation story about a woman who had a speech impediment and never smiled, until she got saved. Lots of shouting ensues.

An hour after the first person came up to kneel or lie down, it looks like everybody is off of the floor, and the preacher is bellowing over the piano. People stand up and wave their arms and whoop and scream, and he does a little preacher dance:

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There are several more rounds of quiet, other than the piano, alternating with shouting and screaming for a few minutes each, led by the pastor or guest preacher. As one point, the pastor says "we got one up here praying," so I think there is someone was can't see, kneeling or lying down at the front right.

The pastor grabs a pair of cheerleader pompoms out of the lectern, and adds shaking them to his rant:

  Hide contents

Guest preacher screams about evil liberals and bad Baptists for a while. During this final rant, for about 10 minutes, two teenage girls are standing at the front right, arms folded over their waists, looking self-conscious. He finally sends them back to their seats.

The pianist finally gets to stop (having played for about an hour and half), and they rise for more shouting and sing Amazing Grace. More hugging and hand-shaking, with the two teen girls.

There's a comment under the post with the video, asking if Ally got saved, and the answer is yes, so that may have been what some of the screaming, hugging and handshaking was about. Don't know if that was one of the teens or someone else.

The pastor keeps them standing for another nine minutes of listening to him talk. Well, at least nine minutes - he's still talking, and they're still standing when the video cuts off at 2:48:42.

 

What the everloving-f*ck?! That’s not church. It’s theatre of the absurd. 

[FeministShrew]

18 hours ago, FundMe said:

I grew up going to the Flounder in Cowpens -- is it the same one?  Gosh, this brings back so many memories!

This is the Flounder I'm familiar with, owned by the Toney family since 1969 :
http://www.theflounderfishcamp.com/?fbclid=IwAR3q09V6p9zhf-vzHajFfh_Jsotwr9WegpVUOuRBkfkPVZmj1cBLCKtoOik

It's near the I-85/I-26 interchange in Spartanburg. A lot of local people still call that the Waccamaw area, because of the big Waccamaw Pottery outlet mall that was there from 1983-2001.

I'm not familiar with a Founder in Cowpens, only the Wagon Wheel. I haven't been there since I was a little girl.
 

 

Also: man, that service is giving me flashbacks. Since leaving religion, I've felt that a lot of the weeping & wailing & groveling on the floor at my old church was to draw attention to themselves : "Look at me! See how spiritual I am!"  Personally, I was miserably unhappy during that time in my life, and sometimes I would go up & kneel & cry & beg God to fix me. But other times I just went up because everyone else was doing it. You risked being seen as hard & cold if you stayed in your seat during the altar call.

Part of it was also probably to suck up to the preacher, or to get the service to just end already.
I do know that everyone loved a good "testimony" service. During one of the first songs, one or two people would get really emotional, and after the singing they'd stand and start talking & crying about what a sinner they were & how unworthy they were & good God was. Then someone else would stand up, & eventually dozens of people would be waiting to testify, popping up all over the church. Because the preacher encouraged emotional display, & preached against "quenching the spirit," he couldn't really stop people from following God's leading, so sometimes it would go on for the whole service. 

After we started going camping with the people in the inner circle (deacons, choir leader, etc.) I learned that they sometimes engineered these testimony services so they wouldn't have to sit & listen to Bro. David scream & rant for an hour & a half. Sadly, toward the end of my time there he started catching on (or just got tired of not being the center of attention) & would shut them down pretty quickly.

To clarify: this was a Free Will Baptist church, which later left the denomination & became non-denominational. I didn't see as much of it in the Southern Baptist churches I went to, or the IFB I went to.
However, some of the smaller, more fundie IFB churches do this, including the one my sister went to when she first turned IFB. The church she attends now is much more formal.

Edited September 16, 2020 by FeministShrew
Added extra thought

[CTRLZero]

22 minutes ago, Lillymuffin said:

What the everloving-f*ck?! That’s not church. It’s theatre of the absurd. 

It looks like they are making their way upstream to spawn. 

I'd be so embarrassed attending a church service like that.  Are pom poms even biblical? 

[Alisamer]

Wow. That church...

Damn.

They are perilously close to snake handling and speaking in tongues. I'm wondering if Gary is feeling a little out of his league. The majority of Baptist churches I've ever visited, kneeling to pray is pretty uncommon and I have never in my life seen people laying facedown on the carpet. I think in my church people would be side-eyeing and edging away from anyone who does that, and the general consensus would be something along the lines of "Didn't Jesus say NOT to call attention to yourself when you pray? Drama queen."

Also, half those screencaps look like Jonestown, the morning after. 

[thoughtful]

51 minutes ago, Lillymuffin said:

What the everloving-f*ck?! That’s not church. It’s theatre of the absurd. 

My description doesn't even come close to doing it justice, and I had a hard time catching exactly what was being said some of the time (besides their sound problems and mine, and the screaming and shouting, even at best I couldn't catch much - my usual laptop is still not letting me in, and I'm still using the little one, which doesn't have powerful speakers).

27 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

They are perilously close to snake handling and speaking in tongues. I'm wondering if Gary is feeling a little out of his league

It's hard to tell what he's thinking, seeing him mostly from behind. But he seems subdued. He could be feeling a mix of disapproval of some of the music, casual dress and nearly-Pentacostal behavior, and/or being nervous about meeting their standards of passionate preaching and musical skill.

Speaking of casual dress, the man sitting behind Gary at this morning's service is wearing overalls - wonder what Gary thinks of that.

Spoiler

The group at the front sings Tell Me That Story, a cappella in close harmony, with a good country gospel sound. Then, they sing Hallelujah to the Lamb, with piano. Guess what the congregants do!

A woman sings The Wonder of Wonders, a cappella, slower and better than the people on the recording I linked. They ask her for more - she sings one I could not find anywhere online, and I Am One of Them Today. Lots of loud shouting, of course.

Pastor comes up, compliments her singing, does some yelling. A woman stands up to testify, weeping - I can't catch anything she says among the shouting. The pastor yells some more, says "Y'all stand for the man of God" and passes the microphone to the guest preacher, who has 1 Peter on his heart, and an impressive beard on his chin.

Spoiler

 

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Peter+1%3A18-19&version=KJV

He's one who puts an "uh" on the end of each phrase he speaks. He starts softly, and gets loud quickly. Blood of Jesus, gory descriptions of Jesus' suffering, etc. There's no such thing as too many times to hear the gospel story - he yells "TELL IT AGAIN!" over and over. He also recites hymn lyrics, from all of the bloody hymns, and tells us that Jesus' wounds plead for us.

Did you know that Jesus was the Great Testator?

I'll give him this - he's good at it. He doesn't dance or come screaming down into the congregation. He has some good metaphors, and he's organized.

The pastor rattles on for a while. Gary, I guess, needs a bathroom break:

Spoiler

 Pastor relives how wonderful last night's service was, and says something like "when it was all said and done, ____ (inaudible) bodies set down and had to go to sleep. Amen, brother Tim?" They all laugh.

So maybe either the teen or the guy in the yellow shirt actually did fall asleep!

Brother Winkler is preaching again tonight (that's the raspy fellow I couldn't even listen to), and the pastor asks prayers for him, since he has a hard time catching his breath.

Then he reminds us that we are living in the last of the last days.

[Jasmar]

I wonder how anyone could sleep with all that shouting and screaming going on. But I guess if they’re used to it…

[FundMe]

5 hours ago, FeministShrew said:

This is the Flounder I'm familiar with, owned by the Toney family since 1969 :
http://www.theflounderfishcamp.com/?fbclid=IwAR3q09V6p9zhf-vzHajFfh_Jsotwr9WegpVUOuRBkfkPVZmj1cBLCKtoOik

It's near the I-85/I-26 interchange in Spartanburg. A lot of local people still call that the Waccamaw area, because of the big Waccamaw Pottery outlet mall that was there from 1983-2001.

I'm not familiar with a Founder in Cowpens, only the Wagon Wheel. I haven't been there since I was a little girl.
 

 

 

I must be in a brain fog from Gary shenanigans and the JRod Circus ---   of course it was the Wagon Wheel!  So so many memories.  My grandparents would take me and my cousins every Friday night  ( in the 70's !).  And if we were lucky, to the Peach Blossom on Sundays.  I'll be lost in memories all afternoon.

Other not so good memories involved my southern baptist  KJB uncle who was,at best, a horrible person and at worst, an abusive predator. I spent too much listening to him preach in those backwoods churches of the upstate..  Guess who reminds me of him?  Yeah, I'll stick with my memories of the Wagon Wheel today.

 

[Dysfundamental]

22 hours ago, Xan said:

(And the "But God" sign is driving me crazy.  What does it mean?  And why didn't they get small letters that were the same size, at least?  Wait... Did they actually use a zero in place of the "o" for God?)

My understanding is that it’s a reference to Romans 5:8: “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

It seems more popular in more mainstream evangelical churches, so I was a bit surprised to see it here.

[Ozlsn]

8 hours ago, thoughtful said:

Did you know that Jesus was the Great Testator?

That is... not a description I have ever heard used for Christ before. Were wills even a thing in Roman-occupied Jerusalem, at least for the non-nobility? I mean I'm sure Pontius Pilate probably had something, and Herod too, but a carpenter-turned-rabble rouser/cult leader/messiah (depends on your perspective) from a provincial town who had been semi-itinerant for at least the past couple of months? 

Spoiler

And I am moved to song:

"Oh yes, He's the Great Testator (doo-we-doo)

Testating His goods away (doo-we-doo),

His coat goes to James, the donkey's for sale,

Apostles the ones who will gain,

Oh yes, He's the Great Testator (doo-we-doo),

Dividing the chattels He owns (doo-we-doo), 

In the face of our grief, we will all get a piece, 

 If only a fragment alone,

Too real is His death up on Golgotha,

His love for us means he divided his things,

Oh... yes, He's the Great Testator!

Not just His words left behind,

His wishes made clear, no intestate  death here,

He thought of us all, every one...

A token of love to hold dear

As we hide in our grief and our fear

The Romans want blood, and our faith's in the mud

We're not strong when He's not around.

But yes! He's the Great Testator!

His Will left for us just alone!

Not just shekels and rings, He has given us wings

We can fly in the face of the storm!

For He is the Great Testator!

And we know we're never alone!

I think the lockdown is driving me slightly crazy. Inspiration in spoiler below.

Spoiler

 

Also that turned out more.. canon than I expected actually!

[thoughtful]

Tonight, Bright Light (hey, I'm a poet and I didn't know it!), The People Who Live In Their Church are back at it.

The pastor begins by asking a congregant who looks like a teenager to come up - he does, turns around to face the congregation, and kneels. The pastor tells them that he is having some health problems, including something about bloodwork, and asks the guest preachers to come up and lay hands on him and pray over him.

So they do, all saying their individual prayers at once, getting louder and louder (it's not a competition, guys):

Spoiler

Then the pastor hugs him.

I guess it would be redundant of me to point out that the entire world is in the middle of a pandemic. But I will update us on Berkeley County and WV in general:

Quote

9/16/2020

The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reports as of 10:00 a.m., September 16, 2020, there have been 493,568 total confirmatory laboratory results received for COVID-19, with 13,196 total cases and 290 deaths.

CASES PER COUNTY:  Berkeley (911)

They stand and sing I'll Meet You in the Morning, while the plate is passed. Then a rollicking rendition of Saved, Saved. After the pastor and the congregation shout at one another for a while, a group sings A Sinner Saved By Grace, and I'm Not Ashamed (there are several songs by that title, but I couldn't find the one they sang).

The pastor sings Let Me Be the One, and, while he's not as bad as Gary, I couldn't help thinking he should let the more musical people in the church be the ones from now on.

The woman who has sung a cappella at several of these services sings I Want to Praise Him One More Time. Another woman sings I Just Wanted You to Know with the piano. 

Pastor harangues them for a while, but I can't hear most of it. Then "stand for the man of God" and up comes Winkler, who seems to have his voice tonight.

He reads some of the story of Noah, and gets to yelling about the family of God not mixing with the family of the devil. He says North Carolina has a "blue dog" governor, and does the "liquor stores are considered essential but not the church" shit.

He and Gary have a little arm-wave together after he screams about not caring what the hoot-owls say:

Spoiler

Looks like they lost their tennis rackets.

He loves the word antediluvian, but leaves out a syllable - "anteluvian." I guess that's the time before the famous art museum in Paris was built.

He finishes yelling, and the pastor yells some more, taking off from the guest preacher's image of the door to the ark being like the door to salvation. He throws in a "young man who said he'd get saved another day, left the church, crashed his car and died" story.

Two men sing My Hope is in the Blood, quite well, with guitar. The pastor talks again, and a few people testify.

At about 1:36, the only black person I've seen in this church (perpendicular guy) goes to one of the guest preachers, says something, cries, shakes his hand and hugs him. The preacher then gets up, and, after a couple of minutes of more about Noah, does what sounds like a cringeworthy clueless white guy speech.

I catch "with all this racial stuff goin' on" "I'm glad I can just sit and praise God with a brother in Christ" (indicates perpendicular guy)," ah'm deep south, praise God, just a rebel 'n' all" "friends, black, Abe Lincoln, everybody's got a little prejudice in 'im."

He seems to compare prejudice to not liking someone's boots, or preferring a Chevrolet over a Ford, and yells "I praise God, thank God, there's gonna be more than just white people in Heaven."

This gets a huge shout of approval, and they all start yelling about leaving this world behind and going to Heaven, and how they just can't wait.

If anyone can hear exactly what he's saying, I'd love to know.

Things are calmer tonight, with no lying down (or even kneeling), but lots of shouting.

 

Edited September 17, 2020 by thoughtful

[Ozlsn]

4 hours ago, thoughtful said:

This gets a huge shout of approval, and they all start yelling about leaving this world behind and going to Heaven, and how they just can't wait.

I hope they have that in writing so no one wastes effort trying to resuscitate them. In fact why are they doing this:

4 hours ago, thoughtful said:

he is having some health problems, including something about bloodwork, and asks the guest preachers to come up and lay hands on him and pray over him

If they're all so desperate to get to heaven? Ignore doctors, just die of natural causes! You'll get there sooner!

4 hours ago, thoughtful said:

does the "liquor stores are considered essential but not the church" shit.

While there are many important reasons why, at least one minor one is it makes it easier for the rest of us to tolerate this crap.

4 hours ago, thoughtful said:

Things are calmer tonight, with no lying down (or even kneeling), but lots of shouting.

This church would weird me out completely.

[Ozlsn]

19 hours ago, Alisamer said:

They are perilously close to snake handling

If they do it with Australian snakes I will definitely watch the live video stream from the other side of the world. Even more so if they choose taipans.  Aggressive venomous snake that will chase you and strike multiple times - what can go wrong here, right?

(I have never understood the snake handling thing, just leave the snakes alone. Argh.)

[Four is Enough]

11 hours ago, thoughtful said:

He loves the word antediluvian, but leaves out a syllable - "anteluvian." I guess that's the time before the famous art museum in Paris was built.

Oh, you mean the ante-de-Louvre-rian!!

Sorry, it's something like 130 days, and I've been playing word games on my phone and I'm just "bored in the house, bored in the house, bored in the house.." I find all kinds of words that the game doesn't accept, in several languages...

Edited September 17, 2020 by Four is Enough

[EyesOpen]

7 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

 

(I have never understood the snake handling thing, just leave the snakes alone. Argh.)

It is a testing of faith... they missed the part of the Bible that says not to test God. I’ll bring the popcorn to watch these dudes handle taipans! 

[thoughtful]

18 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

That is... not a description I have ever heard used for Christ before. Were wills even a thing in Roman-occupied Jerusalem, at least for the non-nobility? I mean I'm sure Pontius Pilate probably had something, and Herod too, but a carpenter-turned-rabble rouser/cult leader/messiah (depends on your perspective) from a provincial town who had been semi-itinerant for at least the past couple of months? 

If I remember correctly, he was saying it in the context of Jesus being the one who makes sure believers get their just reward of going to heaven, the one who makes the contract to get them their "inheritance."

13 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

18 hours ago, thoughtful said:

he is having some health problems, including something about bloodwork, and asks the guest preachers to come up and lay hands on him and pray over him

If they're all so desperate to get to heaven? Ignore doctors, just die of natural causes! You'll get there sooner!

They do defy logic, don't they? The couple sitting behind Gary and Becky at these services has had an utterly adorable baby with them. Looking at that cute face, it seemed to weird to me that they were all screaming excitedly about welcoming the end days. Don't they want that little one to have a life first?

Then I thought, what about the teens, and young adults, and middle-aged people, and old people? Heck, I'm in my 60s, and have had all kinds of health issues, all my life, and I still want lots of time here on earth. Granted, I don't believe in an afterlife and they do, but what's the rush? Why so happy about it?

And yes, why pray for health, if dying and meeting Jesus is such a longed-for gift?

This morning's session starts with I'm Going That Way, I Never Shall Forget the Day, I Know My Name is There,  then Sister Naomi (I finally hear him say the a cappella lady's name) sings Complete in Thee, and another song I couldn't find anywhere - the refrain starts with "more and more of Christ."

Winkler is up again (he was supposed to preach this evening, but needs to go home for a funeral), talks about his gratefulness for this haven in the middle of the
China plague."  He reads:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=exodus+14%3A22-31&version=KJV

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=exodus+15%3A1-2&version=KJV

And shouts about how the Israelites sang after they were safe, and those who are saved should sing as well.

"And reality, the people of the Lord - are the only ones - who have anything to sing about, that is anything that makes sense. Sometimes the World  - sings their foolish song, right - 'Stop the world, so I can get off.' Stupid! Makes no sense to me!"

Um, it's you folks who keep singing about wanting the world to end so you can get off, not us!

Spoiler

And now I need to hear Anthony Newley sing What Kind of Fool Am I:

 

Liberals are bad, the World is hostile to God, everyone should go to church and sing in church, etc.

The pastor comes up and repeats some of what Winkler said about the parting of the sea. They sing If We Never Meet Again.

 

[Xan]

3 hours ago, thoughtful said:

They do defy logic, don't they? The couple sitting behind Gary and Becky at these services has had an utterly adorable baby with them. Looking at that cute face, it seemed to weird to me that they were all screaming excitedly about welcoming the end days. Don't they want that little one to have a life first?

Then I thought, what about the teens, and young adults, and middle-aged people, and old people? Heck, I'm in my 60s, and have had all kinds of health issues, all my life, and I still want lots of time here on earth. Granted, I don't believe in an afterlife and they do, but what's the rush? Why so happy about it?

This puzzles me about all of our pet fundies.  They are obsessed with living forever in Heaven and, although they like things in this world (like restaurant meals), they spend all of their time talking about how they'll live forever with Jesus.  I thought the purpose of living is, you know, LIVING.  If they honestly thought that life was a gift, wouldn't they attempt to appreciate it?  

Gary spends all of his time talking about how he's been saved and has a place in Heaven.  If I was God, I'd be peeved that Gary was spending all of his time sucking up to me and yelling at people instead of appreciating the gift of life that I'd given him.  I'd also be pissed off that I'd told people not to judge and here's Gary being all judge-y and deciding who was or was not saved.  It's a good thing I'm not a deity.  Right about now, Gary would be a big old pile of smoldering ash...

[thoughtful]

11 hours ago, Four is Enough said:

23 hours ago, thoughtful said:

He loves the word antediluvian, but leaves out a syllable - "anteluvian." I guess that's the time before the famous art museum in Paris was built.

Oh, you mean the ante-de-Louvre-rian!!

Yes! Except that it would be ante-Louvre-rian, since what made me think of is the fact that he leaves the third syllable out of antediluvian.

But then, we could be going to "da Louvre" with Bill Swerski:

Spoiler

 

 

Edited September 18, 2020 by thoughtful

[Dana723]

4 hours ago, thoughtful said:

If I remember correctly, he was saying it in the context of Jesus being the one who makes sure believers get their just reward of going to heaven, the one who makes the contract to get them their "inheritance."They do defy logic, don't they? The couple sitting behind Gary and Becky at these services has had an utterly adorable baby with them. Looking at that cute face, it seemed to weird to me that they were all screaming excitedly about welcoming the end days. Don't they want that little one to have a life first?

Then I thought, what about the teens, and young adults, and middle-aged people, and old people? Heck, I'm in my 60s, and have had all kinds of health issues, all my life, and I still want lots of time here on earth. Granted, I don't believe in an afterlife and they do, but what's the rush? Why so happy about it?

 

I'm a Christian and I do believe in Heaven, but I'm not particularly ready to go right now.  That reminds me of a joke:

Father Murphy walks into a pub in Donegal, and says to the first man he meets, "Do you want to go to Heaven?" The man said, "I do Father." The priest said, "Then stand over there against the wall." Then the priest asked the second man, "Do you want to got to Heaven?" "Certainly, Father," was the man's reply. "Then stand over there against the wall," said the priest. Then Father Murphy walked up to O'Toole and said, "Do you want to go to Heaven?" O'Toole said, "No, I don't Father." The priest said, "I don't believe this. You mean to tell me that when you die you don't want to go to Heaven?" O'Toole said, "Oh, when I die, yes. I thought you were getting a group together to go right now!"

 

[mango_fandango]

Cheerleading pom poms? Say whaaaat?

”Gimme a J! Gimme an E! Gimme an S! Gimme a U! Gimme an S! What have we got? JESUS!”

 

[Dysfundamental]

The reason liquor stores are considered essential businesses during emergencies is so that the healthcare system isn’t overwhelmed by active alcoholics forced into a sudden detox.

(My guess is that everyone here knows this, but I have had to explain it to people who were better educated and more intellectually curious than that preacher, so just in case?)

[EyesOpen]

And also liquor stores do sell some groceries and things. in some areas people may not have a car or whatever to get to a bigger grocery store. They also do money orders and check cashing. 

[AmazonGrace]

It's hard to imagine anything less essential than Gary's rants.

[thoughtful]

They (whoever they are) are doing Hellween!

Gary even wants head lice to send their babies to learn about JESUS.

 

Spoiler

 

Edited September 19, 2020 by thoughtful
added comments