Church Services

Commandments Concerning Mid-Week Services

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For we know that in old time (6000ish B.C.) the Lord didst command the Sabbath day to be Sunday upon which no work should be done except by the staff down at the Golden Corral and sports announcers on TV. And upon that best of days it was ordained that there should be held two church services — just in case somebody needed to get to an altar but alas the conviction didn’t really start to set in until mid afternoon. And thus there were only two church services for many years.

But now in these last of days when the heart of man waxeth old like a garment and the whole earth groaneth and travailaeth and decayeth and corrupteth, we give also this new commandment: that thou shalt leave thy unimportant secular job in a hurry and tell the kids to ignore their homework and go to a midweek service such as is meet for thee. For in the day that thou shalt not attend that third service thou shalt in no wise thrive: nor thy wife, nor thy children, nor thine ass. For the hours in a week number one hundred and sixty and eight and if thou shalt not return to the Lord a tithe of seventeen hours (for verily, the Lord doth always round up) then he shall execute great vengeance upon thee with furious rebukes. And also your house might burn down.

And the order of the midweek service shall be on thus wise: a song, a round of self-congratulation for coming out on such a busy weeknight, another song, a whole passel of prayer requests for various weak livers and worldly livers, a prayer, another song, and a sermon. These shalt thou do at a bare minimum but thou mayest also take an offering if it doth delight thy soul (and we know that it doth).

Then thou shalt pronounce a blessing upon the people contingent on seeing them back again next week. For we all know that people come to church on Sunday morning if they love the church, and Sunday night if they love the pastor but verily they do come to mid-week service to show that they love Jesus. Amen.

Independent Baptist Book of Everlasting Rules and Requirements p 168.

174 thoughts on “Commandments Concerning Mid-Week Services”

  4. The Donut shop, and the gas station employees should also be working on Sundays! 🙂

    1. As well as the pastor, music pastor, youth pastor, bus director, bus drivers, bus workers, choir members, Sunday School teachers, etc. It was always weird to hear anyone call Sunday a “day of rest”!

      2. Precisely. When my husband (and me by default) worked for a church, Sunday was the busiest day of the week. And trust me, that’s saying a lot.

        1. I remember when I was living in my folks’ house in my early 20s, coming home after my Saturday night fun at around three a.m., and having breakfast with my father, just getting up to put the last touches on his sermon and get to the church to start his workday before 5. I’m sure any fundy family would’ve had me out on the streets for such behavior, but I was the beloved daddy’s girl in a mainline family, and you know what? I will always remember the love and peace and specialness of that odd pre-dawn time I spent with my dad on Sunday mornings, talking about church and family and life. I guess this is off the topic, I just thought of it when people were talking about the crazy workload a pastor bears on Sundays. This is what I think fundamentalism distorts, by terribly misunderstanding both human and divine love: that God is indeed (among many other things) a father who treasures us and wants to spend time with us, however strange the hour, however busy the day, however much nonsense we’ve been up to lately. 🙂

      3. BTW, I thought about including church staff, but I left it to “secular jobs that needed to be staffed so church people could enjoy their Sunday” ala Golden Corral & Professional Sports people.

      4. It was always weird to hear anyone call Sunday a “day of rest”!

        Sunday…a day of rest. Ha! That often gets confused with Monday, the actual day of rest for the Mog and family who get to take the day off cause he’s on “salary” ~so who needs to work a 5 day week, amen?~ Nevermind part of the church members (who have to get up early the next day and go to work) tithes’ are funding that.

      5. Don’t forget, because Sunday is so chock-full of things to do you should go to bed at sundown Saturday so you’ll be all rested up for your day of rest.

  6. Is there a page reference so I can prayfully study this commandment in the Independent Baptist Book of Everlasting Rules and Requirements? 😉

      1. Thank you. Now I can reflect upon this commandment tonight.

        After the mid-week service of course.

  7. I do like it when a pastor shows appreciation to the members for attending the services. I’ve been in churches where visitors were fawned over, but the members were treated rather badly by comparison.

    It’s great to have visitors, but the members are what make a church “tick”. I very much appreciated the churches I’ve been in (both as a member and as a visitor) in which the pastor shows some appreciation for the members being there. Is this self-congratulatory? I hope not!

    Of course, the Biblical example appears to be to meet daily.

    1. I know of Korean congregations in the U.S. that actually do meet every morning before work or school, and sometimes again in the evening.

      1. Also, BG, I live in an area that has a high Korean population. I drive past their churches almost every Sunday on my way to my in-law’s. They’re often not out of church till two in the afternoon.

      2. So true, BG. There is a Korean church (multiple denominations through scheduling) in my neighborhood of South Philadelphia but one must be very careful not to park in front of it ANY morning from 7:00am-1:30pm or you will be ticketed. For comparative purposes, the local RC church does not allow parking from 8:00am-12noon, but the local (non-fundy) Baptist church only prohibits parking from 8:00am-6:00pm on Sunday. (All of these churches are within a 2-block radius.)

        2. They petition the City for their requested parking and, if their request(s) are approved, the City puts up the signage and enforces it. The same holds true for handicapped people…they can petition the City to designate a HC spot in front of their home…the kicker there is that it is not just for their use; anyone with a HC placard/license can use it.

    2. I used to think that a “daily meeting” was the “biblical model” too… but I now do not think that is the case. Religious “worship” gathering evolved as Christianity formed out of the jewish religion it seems that they probably met in houses as much as possible and probably daily to keep the religion going and grow it. The common jewish family probably did not go “worship” the way we do now. Infact they probably only went to the tabernacle or synagogue once or a few times a year depending on how far they lived from it. This constant turn style religious meeting to sing and hear lectures is a modern organized invention to keep money coming into the plates – my current theory. Here is a link from a site ran by a former “Pastor” now athiest; its an interesting and valid critique: http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2013/07/why-does-fundamentalist-christianity.html

  8. When I left fundamentalism, the church I left had required, with heavy guilt trips and shouting rants from the pastor, that we attend four services on a Sunday (SS then morning service and in the evening an adult service at 5.00 with the kids in children’s choir and then the evening worship service) and two services on Wednesday…prayer meeting and then a worship service. The pastor would shout and holler about how rebellious people were who didn’t attend all the services that he had set and that to rebel against him was to be in direct rebellion to God.

    1. I grew up Methodists, and we have Lay Preachers. One of them had – still has – a lot of things to say about “Christians” who only go to Church once on a Sunday. Sometimes I go back to the Church I grew up in and gone to the evening service, where this particular guy speaks quite often. As sure as night follows day he will say that those who do not go to Church twice each Sabbath – he prefers that to Sunday – “Lack Commitment”. My own Church (independent) only meets once every Sunday, in the morning, but we have small groups two Sunday evenings in the month. I guess we have “Laodicea” written all over us….

      1. They also remodeled the church and the men were all expected to take at least a weeks vacation from work to help. The pastor shouted about how they could all take a weeks vacation to go to Disney but didn’t have the commitment to the things of God to do it in order to “fix God’s house”. I was condemned because I had very severe morning sickness at the time and didn’t cook a meal for the men to eat. Never mind I couldn’t stomach the smell of food and that I had three small children already. I wanted my husband to stay home when he wasn’t working and help me out because of it, for which I was dubbed selfish and uncommitted. The pastor then for weeks preached about how we should all donate money for new pews since the old pews no longer matched the carpet (although there was nothing wrong with the pews) because he had decided that the church needed red carpet to symbolize the blood of Christ. It was amusing when I saw that the new pews didn’t really match the carpet either. LOL.

    2. “All the services that he had set.”

      “All the services that he had set.”

      Y’all come on over to the wishy-washy liturgical side, those who haven’t already. The prayer books specify what services are to be held and when and how long–including services at which no clergyperson whatsoever need be present!

    1. My old MoG actually preached against the 3 to thrive. He called it 6 to survive:

      Sunday Morning
      Sunday Night
      Tuesday Night Soul Winning
      Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting
      Thursday Night Soul Winning
      Saturday Bus Route/Soul Winning (Required 6-8 hours)

        1. Actually he stole it from another MoG in the movement, I guess to be as cool as he was.

      2. Okay, I’ll show up to your work for all those hours if you do the same for me 🙄

      3. Gee golly, it’s as if he didn’t want you to have any sort of friendship, social circle, or emotional resources that didn’t take place under the observation and control of the church, thereby increasing your isolation and vulnerability to the threat of having his displeasure leveraged against you in any future disagreement.

    2. I always thought that the “three to thrive” concept was silly; Christians should be in fellowship with God daily through studying His word and praying. The public attendance and work at the church should be an outgrowth of the private walk. (in my opinion)

    1. yeah…..about that…..reminds me of my childhood/teenage Wednesday night services. My uncle was the pastor, and my mom and dad were (gasp) separated. I remember every Wednesday,for almost a decade, my uncle would sanctimoniously stand behind the pulpit, and name my dad by first and last name, to make sure the congregation prayed for him to get his heart right because he 1)was a smoker 2) did not choose to attend that particular church and 3)because he and my mother were separated. Used to piss me off beyond belief. (the audacity of the church, not my dad LOL)

    2. Very true. I had a friend who would reveal other’s sins and failings by asking other people to pray for them (and, of course, mentioning why). I pointed this out to him and he denied having this motivation. He was lying. 🙄

    3. Oh . . . I should mention in full disclosure that I used to watch Pastor John Hagee for entertainment when I lived in Houston. Once I called the prayer line during his television program and asked the lady to pray that Pastor Hagee be delivered from the sin of “gluttonuh.” She was very uncomfortable with that. 😈

  11. If you phrase your “requests and praises” properly, you can do a lot of both bragging and gossiping and be praised for it.

  12. It’s one of the things I remember most about my fundy days – how you were only “faithful” if you attended at least two services a week, and how those “faithful” were considered much better Christians than others.

    One of my many steps out of fundystan was having a conversation with a Lutheran friend, who wanted my wife and I to join a volleyball league that played on Sunday evenings. Halfway through the conversation she said something like “Oh, I forgot. You Baptists and your two Sunday services.” It really got me wondering why there were not only two services, but also why you were supposed to go to both.

    1. Many Catholic churches have several masses every weekend (a half-dozen or more in a large parish), but you’re only expected to attend one of them per week.

      1. Exactly. Much like the Lutheran church we now go to – 3 services between Saturday night and Sunday morning, but it would be strange to go to more than one.

  13. I command my wife to make breakfast, lunch, and dinner on Saturday night before midnight. It is a sin to work on the “Day of Rest.”

    1. FF, I condemn you for not being a good steward with what God has given you. You’re supposed to go out to eat after church – you don’t have to tip on Sundays because the servers are being ungodly by working!

      1. That reminds me of my sister coming home from her job as a waitress complaining she hated working Sundays and how everyone tried to be off on that day. She said Christians coming after services were the worst tipping people and she and the other servers dreaded Sunday lunch and late dinner crowd. Sad really.

        1. Stiffing the waitstaff? What a lousy testimony that is…far worse than wearing jeans and ordering one glass of wine with your meal.

        2. People really do underestimate what kind of testimony tipping is! I used to work in a diner where the last folks there on Sunday were always a big group of Pentacostals from a church down the street. They were a lot of work, but so very kind, and reasonable-to-good tippers, that it honestly did change my perception of Pentacostalism altogether — I had some vague sense that they were all crazy snake-handling, mouth-frothing types. And I don’t know, maybe there were snakes and frothing at the service; I never went. 😀 But now those nice people in their dowdy outfits and unfailing courtesy are always the thing my mind jumps to when I hear about Pentacostalism. And that’s how you conduct yourself if you want to win friends and influence people.

        3. My fundy leaders always told us to tip well. Of course, you would leave that good tip in a tract. We were always told that if you leave a tip in a tract, it had better be good, otherwise you’d be a bad testimony.

        4. @Semp: Wow, that’s an exception in a million! Most tract tippers leave a tract as the tip. Sometimes a tract that looks like money on the outside.

        5. “The tip in that tract has an eternal value that will far exceed any monetary tip you could give.”

          With Love, from your Local KJV1611AV Sin-Hatin
          Bible Thumping, Bus Driving, Skirt Wearing, Tip-Skipping Mog.

  15. Once I heard a fundy preacher reacting to the fact that “trick or treat” night fell on a Wednesday, and the town council refused to change it to another night. He said his family would be in church on Wednesday night “just like it’s been done since Bible days.” Seriously. He said that. Face palm.

    1. since the bible days….

      I never quite got this one. The question of why we a required to not forsake the assembling of ourselves on a Wednesday night, still lingers, unanswered, somewhere above my old fundie church.

  16. I am not sure but I ‘think’ it was Charlies Finney who instituted the mid week prayer service back in the 1800s. I’m not sure where the Sunday night thing came from. Those things and Sunday school are rather recent innovations and I also think they were unique to the American worship experience.

    I am happy with my one hour Mass on Sunday with the OPTION of attending week day Mass. 😀

    1. I am not sure if this is accurate but I believe that the Sunday night service came about around the turn of the century. It would take people quite a while to make it to their church. Traveling by horse or foot perhaps. Once the service was over rather than turning right around and treking back home, they would have all brought something to eat. Everybody brought something so it turned into a big meal. Since everyone was there it became custom to have a second service.

      And there you have what fundies consider to be straight from the Bible. aka Ye Olde Paths.

      1. Not totally. The early church (as in right after Pentecost)and the children of Israel in the OT participated in morning and evening worship. I haven’t found a biblical imperative to participate in evening worship, but it’s been around a long time.

        1. I was told that the Sunday evening service was based on the fact that the disciples were in the upper room on that first “Resurrection Day” when The Lord appeared – this we should be gathered together its in the Bible.

      2. You are a wealth of knowledge, Scorpio :mrgreen: . I was familiar with the concept of coming together and eating afterwards (due to the travel time), but did not know that was the genesis of the evening service. I actually really like the idea of getting together for worship followed by a meal. Saints should love to spend time with other saints. I think this model most closely resembles the early church (getting together once, but spending greater time together.)

    2. Tithing, faith-promise giving, Sunday evening services, Wednesday prayer meetings, revival meetings, tent meetings, the itinerant evangelist, altar calls, etc. are all recent (relatively speaking), mainly American inventions. So when there’s that yearning to return to the “old paths” or being “old fashioned” that really means the period generally between 1850 and 1950.

      1. The first Christians would have met exclusively on Sunday nights. Since they were all still Jewish, Sunday – being the first day of the week – was a work day.

        The biblical precedent then would be to never have a morning service. Is it a sin to have a morning service if they didn’t do it in Acts??? ❓

    3. In the Church of Christ where I grew up it was widely (if quietly) acknowledged that our Sunday evening service started during WW1 or WW2, so that military members had the opportunity to get to church after their required day of work on Sunday. Whether this is true or just a COC legend is a question I can’t answer. Also, Sunday evening service was certainly not treated like just another option by the time I was growing up in the 80’s.

      1. Since I’m not CoC, I hadn’t heard that particular origin of Sunday evening services but when I was in Church Music Programming class (at a school where music majors and minors actually HAD to know music) we were to have the worship hymns for the mock a.m. services, and evangelistic songs for the p.m. The rationale was if someone attended a non-gospel preaching church, they were free to come to another church in the evening. I’m sure it was a holdover from the days when there wasn’t much else to do on Sunday nights. I had at least one Christian school teacher tell the class that she was sure “The Wonderful World of Disney” was scheduled for Sunday nights so families would stay home instead of going back out to church.

        1. I remember the thing about Disney. I loved Sunday Night Disney. 🙂 I remember being happy about being able to stay home and watch ‘Born Free’ one Wednesday night on TV because mom and I couldn’t find a ride to church. :mrgreen:

        2. I remember my grandma telling me that Satan had Disney on Sunday nights so that good Baptist boys and girls would beg to stay home instead of going to church.

        3. Bonanza was on Sunday nights. Also, yearly showings of The Wizard of Oz was always on a Sunday night. I never got to see the movie past the field of poppies until I was an adult. Maybe a good thing. The flying monkeys still creep me out.

    4. My understanding is that Sunday Schools were started in England and Scotland (late 1700s-early 1800s) to teach poor children to read, write, and do arithmetic. They were literally schools held on Sundays. Child labor was the norm then, so working-class kids couldn’t go to school during the week because they were working (often 12 hours a day or more). Sunday was their one day off, so Protestant churches created opportunities for them to gain basic literacy. Religious education was also part of Sunday School.

      When free, compulsary public education was established nationwide, Sunday schools became strictly religious in their focus.

      http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/asktheexpert/whendidsundayschoolstart.html
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_school
      http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1745

      2. From some research I did a few years ago based on one of the few things I remember from my days at TTU, it seems that Robert Raikes is credited with the invention of the “Sunday School”.

        It was originally a school on Sundays to teach kids from sweatshops so that they may have a chance to better themselves. Its main purpose was the “3 Rs”, although the Bible does seem to be his main textbook. There was also Catechism taught, since Raikes believed education and God together would help the children escape the slums.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Raikes

        2. And yes, that’s what we learned in Intro to Christian Ed at the same aforementioned college. I am guessing that the Sunday night/Wednesday night/evangelistic services grew out of people living in town and wanting something to do in the evenings. Farmers with cows to milk couldn’t exactly go running into town several times a week.

  17. Back when I was strungout on the kool-aid I remember this saying was a very popular way to heap guilt on folks:

    “Then there’s the worldly crowd that don’t have enough God about them to be in his house on Wednesday night.”

    Also:

    “If you don’t have enough God on you to be in church three times a week you’d better check up and get right with God.”

    to which I’d raise my spiritual glass of kool-aid shout “Hey-men!” and drink deeply to such wisdom.

    *sigh* 🙁

    2. If we had not bought into the system hook, line, and sinker, we would not have been this hurt when we finally realized the truth and left.

    3. Aaaahh glad you were able to shake off the poison, Don. “Get right with God” – a phrase fundies don’t even know the meaning of as its completely made up. It doesn’t even make sense if you buy into their own orthodoxy.

        1. I would totally drink a beer at the “thriving ass”…like, every night.

        2. I think the Thriving Ass has a dress code requiring a minimum of 8 fingers down from the collar bone! 🙂

        3. 8 fingers?!? 😯 That’s, um, a lot. 😮

          Oh, I just measured. Apparently, it’s not as risqué as I thought. Carry on. 😀

        4. I just pulled the number out of the air. I figured for bars it probably wasn’t that risque.

        5. Considering I have a couple 8-finger shirts I wear to church, it’s not indecent. Or is it? 😈

  20. My church used to have Sunday night services; I am ashamed to confess that I would sadly shake my head over those families who preferred to have family time on Sunday evenings instead of coming out to church to be with the rest of us good people. I was younger then, though, and less experienced. If we were to reinstitute the evening service, I wouldn’t go.

    I do have a problem with the American version of churchianity’s mid-week service – not so much with the service itself, but with the pressure to attend and the subtle manipulation by guilt that goes on.

    1. Our newly found family time on Sunday nights has been an awesome thing for our family.

      My marriage is stronger, our relationship with our children is stronger and all kinds of good things are happening even though our church does not have a Sunday night service.

      1. Don’t forget scheduling choir practice for right before or after the Sunday night service, or else right after the midweek gathering. So you can a) look like a jerk for leaving after practice and not sticking around another hour; b) look like a twerp for trying to tiptoe in at 7:10 and not be noticed; c) try to sing and get the parts worked out after you have shoved dinner at the kids AND ran around listening to Awana verses. Then getting home at 9:15 and hoping the aforementioned children are headed to bed. At least we weren’t both in choir at the same time. Then we would have been putting babies to bed at 10:00.

        1. Yes, yes and yes. I used to be the choir director/music leader. My wife and I HATED Sunday evenings when the choir was in full swing (well, we hated Sundays anyway, as a whole, but the evenings were so much more stressful). At 4, she’d make sack dinners for our little kids so that they wouldn’t be ravenous by 7:30. We’d run to choir practice, push the food at the kids at the appropriate time, etc. It was stressful. That was when I’d cluck at our friends who rarely came for evening services; secretly, though, I envied them for their family time. However, that didn’t fit into the “suffering for Jesus to prove we love him even though we’re not Catholic” mindset that, while not strictly put out there by the church, was privately held to.

          Now, we have no Sunday night service. It’s awesome to be able to unwind a bit before the new week starts. The pastor doesn’t beat people up for missing Wednesday nights; it’s available for those who want it/can make it.

    2. Oh just one more thing concerning the guilt. Since we left the fundie church, we had a shutter (decoration) fall off the front of our house during a storm. The MoG at my old fundie church used that as an example of the chastising hand of God for us going to a liberal church that does not have a Sunday night or Wednesday night service.

  21. Sigh.

    My version calls out the numbers in a week as one hundred three score and eight.

    I’m afraid Darrell has begun using one of those modern (per)versions.

    I’ll put him on the prayer list tonight.

    1. I never understood why they couldn’t just use numerals instead of saying stuff like, “and the people were six hundred three score and seven thousand”. What’s so bad about using digits?

      1. It’s just an archaic way of enumerating, which can still be seen in use in German. As rhetoric, it’s a gripping device in English; consider the opening of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

        1. Not really gripping if you’re trying to convert all those big words into numerals.

      1. I hated working with other bases. What was the point? I can understand using metric conversions, but base conversions? For the love of Mrs Horton, why?

        1. I is just to understand how numbers work.
          Plus, you have to grasp binary numerals in order to understand what computers do.

  22. True story. My church once belonged to a softball league called the Fundamental Christian Athletic Association. It was composed of several far right IBF churches. Among the rules was that in order to be eligible to play in a game that week a player would have to attend at least two services in a week unless “providentially hindered”. And Sunday School and the Morning Worship could not count as two separate services.

    Even when having fun, Fundies love their rules.

    1. phrases like “providentially hindered” and “committed core” always just made me laugh. In fact I began using them in normal conversation and some at my fundy church began to look askance at my obvious disrespect for the Mog and his pontificating. Also, I used the euphemism “providentially hindered” every time someone asked me where I had been for some service or another. Just lay that phrase out there and refuse to explain further until they became uncomfortable, I mean how could they ask any more questions? I even used it after I left the church with one moron who kept harrassing me about why we left. He just couldn’t believe that someone could actually believe that God led them away from his church! It was like I was speaking in tongues or something and he just stared at me with a blank expression.

      I felt it was a healthier approach than hacking the church’s electronic sign with the phrase “mene mene tekel upharsin”

        1. “These are not the Backsliders you are looking for.”
          “These aren’t the apostates we’re lookin’ for.”
          “We’ll pray for you brother.”
          “We’ll pray for you brother.”
          Move along
          “Lookit the time! We got to go. Several more visitor cards to visit before we make out quota. Bye!”

      2. I was providentially hindered from coming to church Wednesday night. Providence arranged for my favorite TV show to be scheduled at the same time as church.

      1. I bet they would have loved to include giving in the list. They did prohibit shorts, but this was thirty years ago. The league didn’t last, and my church began playing in a league with Methodists, Presbyterians and even Charismatics (but still no Catholics…we had standards).

  23. People who love their church show up Sunday morning.
    People who love their pastor show up Sunday night.
    But people who love the LORD show up on Wednesday!

    1. I heard Leonard Ravenhill say a version of that many years ago. I think he said prayer meetings show how much you love the Lord.

  24. “…And also your house might burn.”

    Seriously, this one makes the Top Ten. Bazinga of the Day to you, Brother Darrell. 🙂

    1. Hey, I haven’t been to a Wednesday night service in six years, and my house did burn. But in its place I built a larger, nicer new house. I wonder what the message is there?

  25. I bet the one who came up with the no work on sabbath rule was not a dairy farmer.Them cows (goats or whatever) need milked no matter what day of the week it is, and they get mighty testy if you’re ‘providentially hindered’ by more than a few minutes. 😈

  26. Mandatory mid week service attendance–all I can think of is replacing the commandments of God with the commandments of men. The argument that we have so much free time (not true for most families where both parents work–somebody has to pay the christian school bill) and should be at church any time the church doors opens, leads to cultish behaviour. If being at church for two hours each week is good then spending every waking hour in the church is super double plus good!!!

  27. I think I read that Sunday evening church started due to the novelty of the lightbulb. Churches would advertise to the community that they had a lightbulb to light the building and people would come to see it work it’s magic.

    3. In the IFB world it’s usually M-O-g
      Because while he may be a Man and claim to be of God… it is usually the Man who is the god.

      Thus: M-O-g Man Of god.
      There is an assumed and implied indefinate article before “god.” Man Of (a) god.

        1. That’s why I prefer moG. It’s worth proclaiming the CEO’s littleness in the face of his self-proclaimed bigness.

  30. I’ve been visiting SFL for about a year or so, and I rather enjoy a lot of the posts, but this one had me ROLLING! Great stuff!

  31. I was at a fundy church for four years. One Sunday the pastor asked to see me in his office after the service. With much “righteous indignation” he told me that in four years he had never seen me walk the aisle or attend a soul winning meeting. I told him he had never given me a reason to walk the aisle because his sermons were like diet water…no substance whatsoever. And as far as the soul winning went, I told him I didn’t want anyone else to attend that church, so why would I invite people to it?

    If you’re wondering why I attended for four years when I disliked it so much, my employment was tied to my attendance there. It took me four years to get a degree and move out of the realm of “Christian education”.

    2. lol Cudos to you for having the intestinal fortitude to say that to his face. In a world where he’s used to bullying everyone, I bet that was a real gut punch.

  32. I hated going to church on Wednesday nights growing up. It was one of the things that may me rebel and leave the church for a decade.

  34. As an 11 year old kid I remember getting my little league schedule and dreading the fact that there would be multiple Wednesday night games. You see, I either couldn’t play at all (7:30 game) or had to leave early (6:00 game) on Wednesday night so I could be at church for mid-week prayer and preaching. “Hey coach, I know it’s the 3rd inning, but I have to leave with my mom to get to church. Sorry.”

  35. I know this is off topic, but are there any takers to do a field report from the national Sword of The Lord conference in NC next week? Looks to be some good stuff like workshops on the evils of CCM, and legal workshops (aka how not to get sued when a pedophile gets in your youth ministry)

    1. Who needs a measly mid week service when you can go to a week long conference on soul winning and evangelism?

      1. If anyone is in the area and wants to go with me as their wingman, I might be persuaded to return for another round.

        2. Withholding your tithe again, or has your wife been wearing pants? What sin doth hinder thou, that thus mayst forsaketh thy assembling of thyself together?

        5. I Came Out–Worse than pants. Right now my wife is wearing shorts and working at a secular job. For MONEY!

          And last night we met together at Angelo’s Mediteranean[sic] in “the historic district” of downtown Griffin after she got off work. The mid-week service was not designed to mesh with our schedules.

        6. My hindrance also has something to do with the 5 1/2 hour drive to get to the conference. If it was close enough, I’d write a report or two.

        7. That’s ok… if you don’t have enough gid about you to be in your place at this conference then you need to check up and git right with gid! Hey-Men? 😉

        8. I actually think I am going to go a couple of days, since I’m going to be in the area…don’t know which sessions, though. I think it might be entertaining….especially the instruction on bus ministries and CCM 🙄

          And what is a school of prophets?

        9. A school of prophets is like a shrewdness of apes, an obstinancy of buffalo or a nuisance of cats. It’s a group you don’t want to be around.

        10. It’s a reference to Elisha during Ahab’s reign when the “sons of the prophets” gathered together to hide from their oppressors. See also: stories about ax heads and sermons entitled “death in the pot”.
          Referring to your gathering of pastors or preacher boys as a “school of the prophets” is also a way to sound really cool and spiritual.

        11. Hey, I like cats.

          Anyhow, a group of cats is called a pride. At least it is if they are lions.

  36. I read somewhere that an evangelist (I think it was David Cloud) was talking to a couple, whose son had gone astray. The evangelist was of the opinion that the couple must have been unfaithful to the Lord in some manner. The couple thought for a while about it, and finally remembered one time, when they were on vacation that they didn’t go to church on a Wednesday night. So, see what missing one Wednesday night will do to your family?!

    1. I know a religious worker in Fundystan who thinks if you teach your minor children to do laundry well in advance of their leaving home that they will go bad. One of her children, last I knew, had quit going to church and had TATTOOS. This was a child who never had to do laundry while living at home as a minor but was scrubbing toilets at the age of eight. Moral of the story? Don’t have your kids do housework. They will get tattoos and quit church.

      1. “Moral of the story? Don’t have your kids do housework. They will get tattoos and quit church.”

        So, THAT is what happened to me! I didn’t do housework, so I ended up getting tattoos – a lot of them – and quit church. It’s obvious now that you mention it… However I quit church for a while in my late twenties and early thirties, but I was in my forties when I got my first tattoo, long after I had come back to church. Go figure. 🙄

        1. 😳 Sorry I read that wrong It was the poor kid who DID housework who went bad. It must be the hot weather affecting my reading skills ….. my rebellion must have been due to the fact that I nver went to church on a Wednesday, or maybe it’s because I’ve never been a Fundamentalist, therefore probably never “Saved” at all…..exetera excetera ad nauseum. 🙄

        3. LOL! Obviously it’s because you never did housework that you got inked and quit church. See, you can use it any way you like.

    1. I never heard those words uttered in my fundy church. Perhaps it was fear of giving God credit for keeping so many people FROM our church.
      Well written explanation of Providencially Hindered by the way.

      1. I always thought it meant your car broke down or your three kids under four all had the stomach flu/chicken pox/H1N1, etc.

        1. That is one good thing about having many children. You can lie your pants off about Wednesday afternoon illnesses. But you must prepare… maybe post something on Tuesday that little Jimmy is sick, please pray.

        2. So true.

          Of course, now that I’m out of Fundystan I can simply decide I’m not going to church and not make up excuses.

  38. “unimportant secular job” hits home. It is exactly the vibe I got from the pastor and the membership when I began Nursing School to get an unimportant job to provide for my “keeper at home” wife and six children. Try to find a hospital that will hire someone who is looking for a job to accommodate their church schedule. The secular world could never even imagine submitting to this lunacy!

  39. Here in Colorado I’m surprised how many very non-fundy churches do a midweek service. It hasn’t worked for our church, so we finally did away with it , even though we have a 5:30 prayer time for those want to come. But other large, very non-baptist church’s do a midweek service with success. It is very very rare to find a church that does a Sunday evening service (unless its a repeat of the morning service).

    1. Wow. Here’s part of a post from that page: “When I was growing up, Sunday evenings used to be Wonderful World of Disney time at Granny’s. Which was great – but were we really spending time building relationships, or just ‘together’ while watching the TV? We could have been just as ‘together’ at an evening service, if we’d had one to go to.” Well, if you can be just as “together” at church as you can at home watching TV, I vote for staying home. No dressing up, no traffic, no wear and tear on the vehicle, no gas expenses.

      It was sad to read some of those replies. I can’t blame them though, because I used to be just like them.

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