It was Wednesday night, June 28, 2000 after the notorious Panty Sermon was delivered, we decided we were going to leave eventually but as soon as possible.
The next night was the weekly-held Thursday night visitation.
Visitation was when adults and young people broke up into groups to make house calls to new move-ins in the area, prospects who had already visited and/or others who had been missing church for whatever reasons, and more.
It was the highlight of the younger children’s week.
Each night of visitation, a different married couple or other teamed-up adults were assigned to care for the children of the parents who would be going out and visiting.
The kids loved visitation nights.
There were games, snacks and other sorts of fun activities for them. Some of the caregivers went above and beyond to provide the most fun possible. The favorite couple assigned to watch, was on the schedule for this visitation night and my younger children knew this.
Of course, as always, we had planned to be there.
But earlier that day, The Preacher told Paul not to come back… AT ALL.
Not believing what he was hearing, Paul asked, “You don’t want us to come at all?” He restated that he did, in fact, NOT want us to come at all. He went on to say that since we were determined to leave anyway, he did not want us to come back… at all.
We had prepared to take 50 or more kids to camp on the following Monday. All monies and applications were completed. Paul asked if this means he didn’t want us to go to camp? What about the Institute classes he taught, etc. etc.?
He said he did not want us to come back for any of it and that he would take care of it all.
We were devastated to say the least, but not nearly so much as our 4 younger kids: ages 12, 10,
10 and 9.
They looked forward to visitation every week. They really looked forward to going to camp. Two of my nephews were being brought up from Houston to go to camp with us. All were beyond heartbroken.
Paul asked if we could at least send the younger kids to camp with them (they are his nieces and nephews after all) but his response let Paul know he really did not want them to but didn’t expressly say, “no”, so Paul withdrew the request.
He wasn’t sending his kids anywhere they weren’t genuinely, enthusiastically wanted.
Our older 4 kids discussed an idea they could drive up to the camp for one of the evening services so they could still have a small part in the event and visit with friends. Their intentions were leaked to the ‘higher ups’ and were quickly, emphatically forewarned that if they showed up at the camp, none of their church friends would be allowed to speak to them.
They would be shunned.
So, we gathered a small group from the little church with whom we had already committed to helping and took them and ours to another Baptist Camp.
It filled the void, but that was about all it did.
We lined up fun things to do with the younger 4 kids to help fill the void from the visitation activities as well as other scheduled events they knew they’d be missing.
That helped, but the loss they felt was still painfully obvious.
To this day, I am bewildered by this blatant contradiction between the Independent, Fundamental Baptist interpretations of how we treat one another and what the actual life and teachings of Jesus reveal to be The Truth on that subject,
At the end of two decades of progressing radicalizations toward the extreme by this one individual who we allowed to become our judge, jury and executioner, we could no longer tolerate nor accept his interpretations and judgments.
But this ‘Rome’ was not built in a day.
And as we have since learned, there are causes….
Cult-like mentalities thrive in a vacuum.
This will be the subject of my writings going forward…
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Youth Group at our house circa 1996-1997 |
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