148 thoughts on “Being Plain Old Obnoxious”

  1. I don’t know how I survived cold bus calling – one Sat our bus captain was acting like he was on speed, running from house to house. One guy in a yard put his hand up and yelled “stop right there!” when he came running up. If that guy had a gun he would have cocked it. Mr. Self-Righteous started giving him the gospel from the sidewalk, “If you don’t leave right now I’m calling the police!” Persecution.

  2. Nice. While trying to …. presumably … lead people to Christ, lets piss them off and then DOUBLE DOWN and laugh at them.
    They, of course, see nothing wrong with what they are doing, because since they are Fundys, whatever they do is right.

    I had an experience with my Fundy mom like that. She seriously hurt me, but her actions were completely in line with her fundy church, so she could not see what she had done….and could not even understand me when I was trying to explain. It was like I was talking to a Dali painting.

    Fundy people like this have an awful experience at the feet of Jesus coming up.

    1. Dear Joe Cool:

      Years ago, I knew a guy who would visit places of people he didn’t like after dark [best in winter months when it is dark early], drop a brown, paper bag on the doorstep, set it on fire, ring the doorbell, and run. Anyone opening the doorbell would see the fire and stamp on the bag to put it out. Only on returning inside would they discover that the bag had been filled with dog crap.

      Hence the expression, ‘karma’s a bitch…’ I’m sure you take the meaning 😉

      Christian Socialist

        1. Dear Joe Cool:

          Well … I’m not sure it was pretty. But that guy who did it certainly would agree that it was funny …

          Christian Socialist

    2. I remember resisting the calls to ‘witness’ and getting our pastor’s favorite sermon on the subject ‘What Happens If You Get To Heaven And Can’t Claim To Have Led Anyone To The Lord’. When he left, the next pastor’s favorite evangelism sermon was ‘You Aren’t Really A Christian Until You’ve Led Someone To The Lord’.

      I remember my typical silent response was “At least I won’t be trying to explain away having driven anyone away from him!”

      (Because we all know that one verse about some sowing and some reaping ain’t really Bible, haymen? I really should have destroyed all those carefully tended genuine friendships with nonChristians who’d been too hurt by bad witnessing to trust Christians in one massive hard-sell witnessing fest that would have led no one to the church, the way everyone who heard about them wanted me to, because Jesus would have totally praised me at the gates of heaven for destroying people that way, right?)

      1. I definitely have been there. Heard messages about how uncompassionate, unloving, and in-other-ways-bad Christian one was if one didn’t (1) do cold-calling (2) have a goal of number of people to see saved this year. If salvation is a work of God, #2 always seemed to be wrong to me.

        Brought up to dislike door-to-door “salesman” and have never liked going door to door, but felt extreme pressure from previous church to conform to “everybody must do it” rules, unless you want to be a 2nd-class member.

      2. You are right, of course. If people can’t see the truth through my suit, and my scary stories about gays and the boogie man, and whatever else, and the fact that I’m at their front door…at night…, then there is no hope.
        I was always terrified to go ‘soul-winning’. I went a few times and was even more scared.
        I invited a co-worker to my church back in the day and she finally came a few times. Then one night, after dark, two men showed up at her and her husband’s front door, unannounced. ( This was called ‘visitation’. She laughed and said that sounded like an alien encounter.)
        Her husband would not let them in. They quit coming after that and after two or three of my pastor’s screaming sermons. I was crushed.
        The one time I went on ‘visitation’, we visited a family that had visited for the first time. They were very nice, but the husband was very clear that they would not be coming back because our pastor seemed so angry during his sermon and said some things that were just plain mean.

        1. Yep, you went to my former fundy CEO’s kingdom gatherings, and we certainly must know each other.


    1. “Would like a tract, sir?”
      “No thank you.”
      “Take the tract, sir.”
      “Take it, sir.”
      “Sir. Take. This. Tract.”
      “Leave me alone! I don’t want your tract!”
      “Take it now, sir!”
      “Your obnoxious persistence… it has moved me. See you on Sunday, brother!”

  3. I want to read this fascinating tract, but a google search left me empty-handed. I suppose if you are deathly afraid of all those things, you don’t use the internet much either.

    1. You raise an interesting hypothetical situation: could there be a subset of Fundy even deeper in their craziness than what we find online, but whose exploits go unnoticed due to their shunning of the Internet?

  4. When I was a teen, our church had us teens go out “calling” every Saturday or we couldn’t go to the teen events that week. The biggest pain was that we always went to the same huge huge subdivision and to the same streets and to the same houses. We ticked off the same people every Saturday. Or we talked to the same people who were already attending. I saw a big map in the church office with all the roads and streets and houses of the subdivision. I suggested that a better approach would be to mark off what streets we had gone on and to NOT go back to those because there were so many more streets we’d never been on. (Ticking off new people would have at least been different.) Of course, my idea for organization was frowned upon in that establishment so we continued to go to the same houses, etc.

    It always perplexed me, even as a teen, why the church sent out basically children to invite grown ups to church and to “save” them. I knew if a teen came to my door, even being a teen, I would not view them as an authority on anything.

    It was terrible being trapped in a useful mind even as a child, questioning what I heard in church, wondering why no one else thought the same things and did something about it.

    1. I sort of feel the same as you do. I could sort of psych myself into feeling like it was really important and we were saving the universe or something, but thinking back I’m sure most people were just annoyed that we woke them up on Saturday morning.

      1. Same here. I’m embarrassed at how many people I annoyed on Saturday mornings, I was annoyed myself at having to go hand out church flyers to people who didn’t want them. I felt even worse when people I’d obviously woken up tried to be nice about it. Who ever thought Teen Saturday Morning Tract blitzes were a good idea?

    2. Ugh. Talk about going through the motions! Even if one agrees with door-to-door visitation, why would anyone choose to keep knocking on the same doors over and over when there were other streets to visit? This is NOT “redeeming the time.”

  5. Lickspittles, Buttonholers and Damned Pernicious Go-betweens by Johnna Adams



    I’m sorry. I saw “lickspittle” and about busted a gut. So, being ignorant of the quaint word I had to do what every twenty-first century scholar does, GOOGLE it.


    P.S. I know, this has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand, save for LICKSPITTLE…MWAHAHAHAHAHA!

    1. That’s one of many reasons I like this blog— I always manage to learn something new that has nothing to do with fundyism. And to think I could have gone through the rest of my life not knowing what a lickspittle is. Wow.

    1. How about: Shoot first and ask the big question later. If the wound turns out to be mortal, then at least I tried and their blood isn’t, uh.. on my hands…. huh.

  6. 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we commanded you, so that you will behave properly toward outsiders and not be in any need.


    I copied these verses from the KJV so obviously they are in Stancil’s bible. Apparently they don’t apply any more.

    1. A “friend” of mine posts these obnoxious so-called Christian memes on Facebook. One was “Warning: Biblical Truth spoken here.”

      I responded by asking when arrogance had become a virtue and walking humbly with God had become a vice. He never answered.

      His FB postings are increasingly aggressive and obnoxious. He doesn’t want a meek and gentle Savior. He wants a Warrior to smash all who disagree with him.

      1. Dear rtgmath:

        In other words, remaking God in his own image. Here in Ohio, we call this ‘idolatry.’

        Christian Socialist

        PS: Getting settled in your new place yet?

        1. Sometimes I wish fundies would just switch to Norse mythology and be done with it.

          NeoPagans who used to be conservative Christians are the worst kind of NeoPagans-especially the newbies.

        2. Ah, the “convert’s zeal” is something special, and is always about the same, whether the person is a convert to Christianity, Paganism, atheism, Communism, Hare Krishna, or veganism.

      2. rtgmath–I think you captured it completely. There is this mindset in America of a warrior Messiah who is not a meek servant any more. But Revelation really shows us that the way to victory is through the Lamb–its through humility. In Revelation 5–the declaration is look at the Lion who is triumphant–John turns to see a Lamb freshly killed.
        We want a warrior and God keeps giving us a Servant. Some cannot accept that.

    1. A Christian Science practitioner would pray for you to realize that the door is not really broken, because an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God would never allow such things. As for how God can allow you to be so mistaken… (crickets chirping)

  7. “Pastor John, it’s seems that we have a problem with people being really offended and annoyed by our outreach efforts!”
    “Eh, that sounds like a “them” problem to me.”
    The fact that it never crossed anyone’s mind’s that their innefective approach shows that they need to ask themselves why they’re doing all this outreach in the first place.

        1. Twerking works better in that sentence.

          “Their ineffective approach needs twerking” Yes, much better that way.

        2. Twerking works better in that sentence.


    1. amen! They really don’t get how unlike Christ and Scripture their attitude is….they keep all the rules about not drinking, wearing modest clothing but they simply cannot keep the commands of the heart.

      1. There was once a Jewish rabbi from the wrong side of the tracks in Galilee who said that, but all the fundy religious gnat-straining camel-swallowers hated him for it and conspired to get him killed.

  8. Before social media, at least this kind of exchange was not seen by the public. It went on but only amongst themselves. This is truly off putting. Do they not realize that even the smallest bit? Such huge egos and teensy tiny intellects.

    1. I think they assume that anyone who disagrees with them would respond at the same level of oblivious rudeness, so they allow themselves to one-up their real and imaginary naysayers in uncivility. And it may be true, at least if you live on the internet; two opposing groups who take each other (and themselves) way too seriously tend to hurl insults and inanities like toddlers throwing toys at each other.

      They don’t care about being heard (taken seriously). They just have a need to yell about something, and the more people they annoy the more accomplished they feel.

    2. It is astounding how many people don’t realize that putting anything online without requiring a password is JUST LIKE stapling it to a random 40 percent of all of the public bulletin boards on the entire planet. That’s how many people have Internet access. Call them on stuff they put in a public forum and they are shocked and frightened. Folks, it’s the World Wide Web.

  9. After they’re done “calling”, they will probably return to their church share how they all “suffered for Jesus”, not about the suffering they brought to the people they visited.

    There are so many great ways to reach people nowadays, many of which do not involve knocking on doors.

    1. “After they’re done “calling”, they will probably return to their church share” refreshments made by ladies wearing denim jumpers and white sneakers, which eased the suffering a little.

  10. Dear Brent Stancil:

    I don’t suppose it has ever occurred to you to use the lectionary, to translate one of the passages each Sunday, to outline the structure of the passage and follow its development, to unpack the meaning of the verbs, to study the vocabulary of that lesson in the immediate and then more remote context, to study the nouns for any symbolism, etc., to look at relationships in context of that lesson, to identify how that specific lesson teaches the gospel, and what it contributes to the main themes of that book and then of the testament, and then the whole Bible?

    I don’t suppose that it ever occurred to you to take the principles around which that canonical narrative was constructed, or to ask how those principles apply in our own time, or package these things so that instead of throwing verbal RPGs at people, you drew them into the text, so that they heard their own thoughts and attitudes addressed in the words of the Scripture…

    I didn’t expect you to have …

    Christian Socialist

    PS: Should I visit your church, Brent, analyze YOUR sermon, print a review which includes prolific notes on what you OUGHT to have preached, but didn’t? Should I publish that online, and return the following week to leave notes here and there around your facility for people to FIND that review? Face it, Brent — you certainly DESERVE it …

  11. It’s a shame that many well meaning men have decided to adopt this type of attitude, and don’t have the wisdom to see what damage they are doing. This post from Stancil is the epitome (as so many of you have recognized and pointed out for years) of the fightin fundy, and serves to further alienate them from their communities. Why on earth would one respect a man who would respond in such a fashion?

  12. Theology in a Trailer Park:

    This may be a little off-subject, but this makes me think of some of my own door-knocking experiences at my former church many years ago. Another teenage girl and I used to visit all the kids on our bus route every Saturday (as well as knocking on new doors). There was one kid’s mom who was really friendly, and she used to invite us in to her little trailer where we would have some interesting discussions about theology and life in general.

    She was a young single mom in her 20s, and I was in my late teens and going to college at a local non-fundy U. She worked a low-wage job and always encouraged me about finishing college so I could get a good job in the future. I genuinely appreciated her encouragement. Of course I would witness to her and invite her to church each week, but she would never come herself, even though she let her child ride the church bus.

    She seemed to enjoy discussing God and the Bible, but didn’t like the idea of attending church. I asked her why. She said that she didn’t want the people at church to judge her for how she dressed. I told her that no one would judge her, that we would just be happy if she came. She said, “I know you girls wouldn’t judge me, but there’s people at your church who would.” I tried to argue, but in my heart I knew she was right. She went on to say that wearing skirts and dresses made her feel extremely uncomfortable . . . something about the way she said it made me think that she had had an extremely traumatic experience while wearing a dress at some point in her life (rape or child abuse?). And there we were, in our sneakers and tee-shirts and ugly long narrow khaki skirts, the kind that make you waddle when you walk because you can’t take a full stride, trying to tell her about Jesus.

    All the men in church leadership imposed the “no pants” rule on the women and girls in their families. I wore pants at home and to school and work, but always skirts and dresses to visitation (and to other church activities), because we were “representing the church.” I knew better than to show up for visitation in pants; I would not have been allowed to go if I had worn pants, and I genuinely cared about the kids on my bus route and wanted to be there for them.

    It would have been so much better if we could have worn normal-looking jeans, representing Jesus to real people, rather than wearing our goofy-looking church outfits and representing the church. I really think our skirts were a stumbling block, keeping this dear young mother from hearing what we were trying to tell her about the Jesus who loves and cares.

    It’s been years since that conversation in that little trailer, but it left a lasting impression on me.

    1. This broke my heart. Someone I know has a long history with husbands, illegal drugs and alcohol. She sat in a Sunday School class one day where some older women were going on about how bad divorce is. She was mortified and to the best of my knowledge, she never went back. Legalism=/=Christ.

      1. I was in a Sunday School class at a more liberal church I had joined after a divorce from a crazy mentally abusive husband. The topic had something to do with the Christian home. One young lady with a decent husband informed the class that any marriage would succeed if the wife would be submissive to her husband. I was surprised to hear that level of naivete from a secularly educated person. I knew there was no point in trying to open her eyes to the reality of people not so sheltered as she. I’ve never met anyone of that mind set that could be convinced otherwise.

      2. Wherever we have a formulaic approach to Scripture or to life in general we forget that others are not in our circumstances, do not have the same advantages (or disadvantages), and that people have been living differently from us for thousands of years.

        What right have we to determine that our manner of living is The Right One and issue religious mandates to that effect?

  13. I can’t believe he used “C U next week”. Let’s say they go door-to-door on Tuesdays. And then let’s say one of his lickspittles (love that term) decides to use the same abbreviation/nomenclature to announce their next visitation with the phrase “C U Next Tuesday”. Doesn’t that violate the commandment of avoiding the appearance of a slippery slope?Or something like that.

  14. This is not just obnoxious but arrogant–to assume that someone who refuses a tract is not a Christ follower is arrogant.

    And they seem to completely ignore the Scriptures that tell us to be peacemakers, that love is not boastful or rude, love is kind….
    But then again–Fundies are real good at rule keeping but letting God change the heart and attitude seems to be missing. Our mouth speaks out of the depths of our heart–in this post you can tell there is no humility or love in them.

    1. I still have at least one of the Gideon testaments that were forced on me in college.

      For some reason, they never got the idea in their heads that when you do giveaways every year at the same campus, some of the refusals will be other Christians who took one to be encouraging freshman year but don’t want to waste your resources now that they have a pocket testament and their own personal Bible(s).

      The only time I remember them ever letting a student through to lunch without taking one – including about-to-graduate theology-school-bound Christianity majors – was the year they were there two days in a row. And then you had to say you took one yesterday, last year didn’t count.

      I still have at least one relative who thinks I owe the Gideons $5 for the testaments I didn’t need, when I was forced to take them in order to eat.

      1. Joe Aldrich, a past president of Multnomah Bible College had a term for this type of behavior (described in so many posts here):

        “Spiritual mugging”

        His alternative was “friendship evangelism”-forming a relationship and earning the right to be heard.

      2. I and my classmates were given a Gideon New Testament when we graduated from our local state university. The only person who declined was Jewish but then she accepted one when someone told her the Psalms and Proverbs were included.

  15. When we were newly married and living I a new town on the other side of the country we visited a church. I was young and naive and filled out the visitors card. I made sure to check the Do Not Visit Us block, yet two days later I have several women from the church at my doorstep. I was pregnant, had just thrown up for the third or fourth time that day, hadn’t showered and was overall feeling awful, and here at my doorstep were a group of strangers who kept knocking. I wouldn’t open the door or acknowledge them. They stayed there for 15 minutes in the afternoon desert heat. My husband called the pastor the next day to ask why they felt the need to ignore the fact that we had checked off the do not visit and that we had also checked off that we were Christians. The pastors response left such a bad taste in my mouth, even 15 years later. He said that they always ignored that box and that they felt they had to put their proverbial foot in the door so to speak to make sure everyone heard the gospel. Needless to say we never went back.

  16. “We pass out a tract now called Common Core, Planned Parenthood, LGBTQ Agenda, Global Warming, and Liberalism as a Whole!”

    And this would be the good news of Jesus Christ because . . . ?



        1. I think Trump’s core support is racists and dimwits (not mutually exclusive categories, but not identical ones, either).

        1. If I remember correctly, this song was originally on Dylan’s first album, but the record label dropped it from subsequent pressings, presumably because they were worried about boycotts or blacklisting.

          I could probably Google the song and check my story, but today I prefer my memory/imagination’s version of it to mere documented facts.

  17. From the FB comments:
    “Some folks need their brain washed”

    They’re right. Relentlessly slapping the same crap on a person’s door, thinking that if they’re mad, it’s because they don’t want to hear about your amazing belief system that “fixes everything as long as you follow your bullshit rules” is the prime example of a brain that is washed.

  18. I guess I’m missing something here.

    An angry lady calls up, does not give her address, but demands that the church not leave any more tracts on her door. Without an address, they may well hit her house again.

    He’s merely pointing out that if you don’t leave an address, they cannot mark your house as “do not visit or leave tracts” – that doesn’t seem particularly obnoxious.

    I’m never in favor of being rude or obnoxious, but don’t see why his original post is obnoxious.

    If you change the recipient from an IFB pastor to a UPS manager — someone who called and said “don’t deliver today; I won’t be home” and doesn’t give an address would be mocked. Instead, this site is mocking the UPS manager.

      1. I took it that the lady left no address or any means to identify her, so they would likely hit her house again. I don’t think that’s “obnoxious” – perhaps “sarcastic” is a better word.

    1. I read that she didn’t say which door didn’t mean she didn’t give an address but that most homes have more than one door–instead of going to the front door, we’ll go to the side door.

      And there is a difference between an IFB soul winner and the UPS –UPS only comes to my house when I have ordered something. I am welcoming them to deliver something. I have not invited those who feel they need to save my soul.
      So therefore, it might do good if they do not joke about this person requesting people not leave their tracts at her house. perhaps the Christian thing to do is to respect her request.

      1. Leanne: That’s the way I took the statement as well. So in a condescending way he is saying: “Thanks for your feedback. We will honor your request by not leaving a tract on your front door. So we will leave it on your side door. C ya next week!!!”

        I can hear the assistant pastor at my old Fundy church making a statement like this. Everytime he spoke it was usually in a condescending tone.

        1. I may be biased because a similar thing happened to a pastor I know — someone called up, left voicemail, did not identify herself or her address, but was angry that someone from the church had left a post on the door. The pastor was not angry or upset or nasty — just amused that someone would make such a demand and not identify herself or her address.

      2. Leanne / Fundy “Mental” – if your interpretation is correct, he is certainly being obnoxious. I didn’t read it that way because of a similar recent event.

        1. I can understand your thought that she didn’t leave her address. I would still say he was quite obnoxious in how he addressed this in his post. The C U next week is quite snarky.
          If I was writing this post in a more kind manner I might have said, “A lady called asking us not to leave our brain washing propaganda at her door. She didn’t leave an address? We would like to oblige but an address would be helpful.”

          All though I would think “she didn’t say which door” does not mean address–I am thinking he would have mocked the fact that she didn’t leave an address. The door seems like a smart ass reply.

        2. Not entirely sure what “snarky” actually means — if she didn’t leave her address, it is very possible that they will be calling on her next week.

          I can also see where it may be taken as “now that we know you are bothered by us, we will be sure to visit you” – that IS obnoxious, but not how I read it.

  19. Good point guilt ridden. Obviously we have read it incorrectly.

    I’m sure many of you have/ had similar experiences of people being upset at you (if you’ve done door knocking or street preaching type activities). Looking at the past I can say that some of people’s unkind responses were brought on by my behavior and some were not. I also want to say that many of the times after doing “soul winning” activities the group I went out with would almost immediately begin talking about “this one guy,” or “this one crazy lady,” etc. It never felt right to me, it was like they really didn’t care about these people, they were just participating in the scheduled times of outreach because “that’s what were supposed to do.” That lack of compassion and sincerity is one of the major problems within ifb churches, and is one of the reasons why the churches are losing influence and people.

      1. Yep; that’s what we were peppered with. EVERY position in the church required that one “go soul-winning” (which meant to turn out on Thu or Sat to listen to a mini-sermon about how important this was (a waste of time), then driving and pestering people in their homes. Many people were busy with their lives and didn’t want the interruption; some would occasionally listen to us. Occasionally, we could get someone to say the magic prayer, but, in hindsight, I wonder if they just thought it would be a faster way to get rid of us – they didn’t want to have anything to do with church; showed little interest in spiritual things — nothing like the changes that showed in people that trusted Christ in the Scriptures.

        Eventually, we evolved a system to manipulate people into coming to church: we’d ask them to try it “just once”; we would then call them the night before; we would give them a ride so that they couldn’t leave until we left; we would call them Sun morning as well. (such heavy-handed tactics made me sure that something was wrong)

    1. White boy… good points — enjoyed the post.

      I’m afraid so many look at “soul-winning” at a duty, and are just glad to have it over with for this week — there is no real compassion, and there is no thought to ever be a witness anywhere else.

    2. Yeah, like the “lovely Christian young people” who told their parents, oh so piously, that they had given a homeless lady walking down the highway, a ride into the nearest town and bought her a meal. They did indeed do that but my kids were in that car and told me what else those little rich bitches did. They photographed that poor dear lady, close ups of her toothless mouth, her un-kempt hair and clothing. Then they sat and video-taped her eating and they laughed at her, to her face. They mocked her, those children who had everything given to them, mocked a woman who had been beaten down by cruel people for longer than they had been alive. That was the last time my kids had anything to do with any of the church young people. Drug addicts are kinder and more trustworthy.

      1. I can’t really think of any words that do justice to how disgusting what those young people did to that woman was. Serious question though– Canada has socialized medicine: wasn’t there some way that, at a minimum, that woman could have obtained access to taxpayer funded dental work and maybe a pair of dentures?

  20. If one of the local IFB churches starts this tactic in my neighborhood I will respectfully tell them to leave and never come back.

    If they come back, I will answer the door nekkid. That’ll scare hell out of them.

    Good to be retired. No worries about job repercussions.

    1. Trolling door-to-door Witnessing teams is a fine art.

      Besides answering the door butt naked, there’s always the black robe and bloodstained atheme with “Ave Satani” from The Omen on the stereo (just interrupted a ritual), the similar “interrupted serial killer” act, and the Anton LaVey beard and haircut and Psycho Smile of that one tow truck driver who towed me years ago (he called it the “Psycho Tow Truck Driver Act”).

      1. Ooooo! I want to do some of these (or come up with some of my own).

        Thankfully, we don’t get too many door to door callers, Jehovah’s Witnesses more than anything.

      2. An SCA group was having an event at a member’s house, so of course they were all dressed up with steel at their sides and cloaks hanging on the pegs, many of them were wearing long, flowing garments, and they had candles on the feast board for ambience. Witnessing team knocks; they see the crewcuts and Bibles through the peephole, hit the lights, throw on their cloaks, pull up their hoods, take out their steel, open the door, and say, ”Yyyyeeeessss….?”

      3. A Monsignor I know actually did something like that to some JWs who kept pestering them. Scared the crap out of them; they couldn’t get away fast enough. It helped that Msgr was a really tall burly black guy with a sonorous bass voice. He didn’t play metal, though. He played Gregorian chant in the background. Apparently it sounded pretty spooky.

        1. Ha! If you played Gregorian chants to me, I’d ask if I could come in and listen.
          But then, I wouldn’t be out door-knocking, either.

    2. None of my business, and a stupid question to boot, BJg, but did you just retire recently? I thought you were still the top cop in the North Slope Borough. In any case, congratulations!

  21. Ok.

    Here is the skinny regarding my personal experience of IFB door-to-door “witnessing:”

    Way back in the late 1980’s, in Old Bowie, MD, I was stationed at a local military installation. I left a Falwell-styled Baptist church (Riverdale Baptist) for a new-found local, tiny, filled with older folk, Independent fundamental baptist church where the pastor’s (a 1950 BJU grad) son (a 1991 BJU SAS grad) dragged me to soul winning Saturday.

    I recall clearly one morning that we lighted upon the covered porch of a Jewish woman who did not take kindly to said pastor’s son’s gospel advances. The pastor’s son, once the woman slammed the door and cursed loudly as she was heard walking to the back of the house, began to pray an imprecatory prayer upon bended knee…praying most earnestly and loudly for her damned soul. He left with disgust for the next victim house.

    I was embarrassed and ashamed that I was a part of the way he treated people.

    That was the beginning of the end for me, though the end finally took me to a mere few years ago before I realized the folly of the IFB tradition (which is filled with anger and self-exaltation).

    Maybe I should chronicle my experiences. Or not.


      1. Interesting…I’ve not heard of Adelphi even though it is near College Park! I flew in and out of College Park when I was learning how to fly in the early to mid-80’s.

        In those days it was Herb Fitzpatrick who captained the Riverdale Baptist ship there in Upper Marlboro. Now it’s a BJU grad of whom I know little about. I’ve heard it’s really taken off since Fitzpatrick has passed on.

        1. Adelphi is an unincorporated area of PG County, just outside the Beltway (New Hampshire Ave. Exit.) I lived on Riggs Rd., which is State Route 212.

          We often went to College Park for the restaurants, and occasionally for the ice cream sold by the University of Maryland.

          I’m sure you remember the “Vous.” I never went inside, but heard that it was a vile place.

  22. In response to commenter who said the Gospel wasn’t meant to taste good…

    Hmmm, doesn’t a Bible verse say “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”

    Whatever. They peddle poisonous fruit anyway.

  23. I went to a small Bible college (non-fundy) that did door to door visitation very differently.

    Instead of going out and trying to invite people to our Sunday services, we went out, knocked on doors, let them know a new semester was beginning and that we were starting up community service again. We then gave them the school’s contact info and let them know that if they needed any help with house or lawn work, etc., to please give us a call. (We also only did this once a semester, or three times a year, so we didn’t become obnoxious.)

    We actually had a long list of people we were out helping every Saturday. It’s amazing how much more people liked us when we were offering to help them instead of asking them to show up somewhere they probably didn’t want to be.

    1. What a wonderful idea!

      (I came from IFB circles where “social service” activities were seen as somehow compromising, at least if the church did it. We were of course encouraged to be good neighbors individually but never corporately. It seemed that officially the church had to limit itself to verbal presentations of the Gospel.

      I am glad to no longer have to live by that rule.

      1. We learned in Seminary that Harry Emerson Fosdick, a noted modernist in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy of the 20s and 30s did social type of good, feeding the poor, helping drunks, etc, and they called it the social gospel. the conclusion was that if you did any of those things without including a clear presentation of the gospel, yea, Romans Road, you were on the slippery slope to Liberalism. And I am not kidding.

  24. I got so sick of having tracts on my door and mailings that I called the church and asked to be taken of their lists.. When they ignored me I signed them up and paid for a subscription of Hustler magazine. Once I was sure they received their first copy I called back and asked how they liked their Hustler. Then I told them I’d send everyone on staff a subscription unless I came off their lists. Never saw another tract or mailing.

    Another time I bought a decorative wooden star, mounted upside down on my front door. Never heard anymore from anyone. LOL

  25. Offering gospel tracts or Bibles in public is one thing, but going ‘door to door’ is another. That certainly plays right into the IFB’ers (easy believism) “numbers game” mentality.

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