Revivalist Redneck Rampage

(UPDATE: I just fixed a typo in this one that drastically altered the meaning of a sentence. Normally I don't point out my frequent corrections, but this was a doozy that completely reversed what I meant to say. I'll point it out when it shows up, several paragraphs from now. Look for another stretch of italics.)


There are several reasons why I chose the church I attend, and that decision is reaffirmed on a regular basis.

At first, of course, I started attending this particular church for what's probably the most common reason: I had a friend who went there. (There's a lesson there for us Evangelicals.) That friend was the one who originally made me realize the difference between nominal Christianity and genuine faith. It was only natural that he steered me toward his own church, and that I made it my own.

My continued attendance there has not been due to habit or blind adherence, however. After starting to attend there and realizing that genuine faith must be fed and continue to grow, I went away to university. Over the next few years I got a degree in religious studies (with an emphasis on Biblical studies), attended several different churches from a few different denominations for anything from a single visit to extended periods, and took a correspondence course from the Knights of Columbus in Roman Catholic theology that purported to be the equivalent of the first year of seminary theological training undertaken by Catholic priests.

So, it's fair to say that I'm equipped to critically evaluate that first church. I'm not a motherless duckling who imprinted on the first football that was dragged by.

When I came back from university, I took a long hard look at the church I had previously attended. There was a new pastor, and some changes in the membership from when I was last there. For one thing, the friend who originally invited me had long since moved away.

After much prayer and consideration, I stayed. I evaluate a church on one basis only: whether the word of God is proclaimed and taught there. I don't care what kind of facilities, programs or music they have. I don't particularly care whether the preacher is dynamic. Those things are all fine, but ultimately I don't care about anything except whether the doctrine that is proclaimed from the pulpit and (probably more importantly) in the Sunday School classes, home Bible studies, and inevitable committee meetings is true to Scripture.

My church fits that bill. Unity in essentials but liberty in nonessentials is a great philosophy for a congregation. The first essential is an answer to the question of whether the Bible is to be taken seriously as God's word. Most modern churches answer no, implicitly or explicitly. My church has answered yes. Our next essential follows, and is very simple: having answered yes to the first question, what we consider "essential" is to be determined solely by Scripture.

I don't expect my church (meaning here the people who comprise the congregation, including the pastors and deacons, who are not "above" the rest of us) to be perfect. I'm certainly not. However if doctrine were ever preached or taught there that was contrary to Scripture, and after discussion it was defended and adopted as an "official teaching", I would be gone in a heartbeat. I don't think that will ever happen, because I expect that the vast majority of our members and adherents feel exactly the same way.

All this is preamble to another reason that I love my church. Yesterday we held an official, church-organized-and-endorsed men's event: a trap shoot and barbeque.

Seriously, how can you get more redneck, in the best possible sense of the term, than a bunch of conservative Christians (that's "Bible-thumpers" for those of you in blue states or red provinces) going out in the woods to fire shotguns and eat red meat? Note that this was unapologetically a men's event; the ladies weren't invited along. Not that we would have turned any away if they'd decided to show up, but we're politically incorrect enough to expect that none of them would be particularly interested. (My egregious typo was in the previous sentence. The first word was accidentally rendered "Note", as opposed to "Not". That obviously completely changed the meaning from what I intended.) Similarly, when a "crafts night" or somesuch is held at the church, it's promoted to the ladies. Speaking as a male, I've never been offended by my exclusion.

About 16 of us came out (including a few visitors who accepted invitations). A good time was had by all. To my surprise, I actually managed to hit several targets. I think I fired 25 rounds all told, and probably hit on about half a dozen of them. Considering that until today I hadn't actually fired a gun in the last three decades or so, and that I'd never fired a shotgun, I don't think that's too bad.

I hope we have another of these sometime; at the very least, it should become an annual event. Since we're probably the only congregation north of Mississippi or so to do this sort of thing, it would be a shame to let the opportunity slip away.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of me taking down a clay pigeon. This is a screen capture from my digital camcorder, and after the capture and resizing for upload it may be hard to tell, but trust me: in the original full-size jpeg, you can clearly see small chunks of the shattered target in the sky. Too bad you can't see smoke coming from the barrel, which is the only thing that I think could make this picture any cooler.