Sermons

Blasphemy

170 Comments

Jack Trieber, “pastor” of North Valley Baptist Church, practices a little blasphemy in a sermon from September 26, 2007 by substituting “the pastor” for “the Lord” in Psalm 23.

Keep your eyes peeled for MULTIPLE white piano sightings.

If you’ve got the stomach, you can catch the entire sermon including demands that “all money in this church must run through the pulpit.” The comments begin at 1:23:00.

Note: because of the video format I had to settle for screen captures + audio from the sermon instead of streaming video. If someone else would like to try their hand, feel free.

Preachers

Preaching With “Freedom”

96 Comments

The last hymn is sung. The prayer is said. The people mill around in the back of the church chatting and herding their offspring towards the church doors and the promise of Sunday dinner. The pastor stands by the door shaking hands and sweating profusely from the effort he has just expended in the pulpit.

He wipes his brow with a hanky and smiles at one of his adoring flock.

“I felt real freedom to preach today,” he says.

The congregant smiles and nods. This phrase is standard pastor-speak and not to be thought about too deeply. And the line at the local buffet is growing longer so there’s no time to dawdle.

But for those of us who are peeking in this little scene, the question remains: what exactly did the pastor have freedom from while he was pounding on the furniture and yelling himself into apoplexy this morning?

Was it freedom from common decency and common sense?

Freedom from goodness, meekness, and gentleness?

Freedom from “human logic” and the confining bounds of actual meaning of the text before him?

Freedom from critiques and questions from those listening as to how he managed to get an entire sermon point about the evils of imported cars out of Ezekiel?

And most importantly of all, did the truth of his sermon leave his people feeling as free in the pew as he felt in the pulpit or did that “freedom” merely wrap them in tighter chains of bondage?

“I just felt a lot of freedom up there today,” the pastor repeats as the next church member in line smiles and nods and scurries away.

It must be a nice feeling. If only everybody else had felt it too.

Standards

Waiting The Kiss Until The Wedding

224 Comments

A kiss is just a kiss…except when it’s between two unmarried fundy adults and then it’s apparently some form of quasi-fornication. Indeed, it is a badge of pride among some fundamentalists that the first time they locked lips with their loved one was on the day of their nuptials. On the positive side, at least watching the love birds bumping teeth and locking braces does provide some degree of entertainment for the wedding guests.

Fundyland eschews all those movies that tell us that a couple’s first kiss tells them everything they need to know about their future. By the time a fundy gets the scoop on their partner’s smooching prowess and oral hygiene they’re already married to them for forever. We can only hope they chose wisely. And perhaps are carrying a breath mint.

Why this prohibition on a romantic gesture that has been memorialized in songs, written about in poems, and enacted on the stage and screen for generations? One can only assume that it’s due to the fact that no fundy male can be expected to have one shred of self-control. Well, that and the fact that denying even basic human contact creates a hyper-sexualized environment which creates fantastic opportunities for emotional and physical manipulation.

For extra fun on this topic, grab your local fundamentalist — in a chaste, non-sensual way of course — and ask him for an exegesis of II Corinthians 13:12. Then (after you explain what “exegesis” is) watch him sputter.

A silly blog dedicated to Independent Fundamental Baptists, their standards, their beliefs, and their craziness.