“It’s HORRIBLE, Monica…just listen.”
I am listening to a voice message, one of my very best friends in Tiny Town, and her voice seems uncharacteristically distraught.
She has sent me a cassette, and we pop it in, a recording from the church in Tiny Town. I recognize a familiar voice. The voice of my fellow ministry leader announces he is leaving his wife and children. There is another woman. He is moving away to be with her. I had worked alongside him and his wife ever since we came to Tiny Town. He has been cheating on his wife the entire time. You can hear the reaction of the crowd and my dear friend is right, this is horrible. Jeez, you think you know a guy…
I do believe there is a reason why cheating is prevalent in the church, but I will get into that later.
The call comes in as we are driving my favorite car clear to North Carolina. Somehow we manage to sardine everything we need for the entire summer into a tiny five-speed two-seat CRX that could give sports cars a run for their money, simply because it was such a damn rollerskate. I still miss her.
It is in Pastor South’s church that we begin to tire of all of the Charismania. The histrionics of signs and wonders are wearing a bit thin, and we are longing for something more… normal, please. We are done with the tongues, with the “God told me this” and “God told me that” and seeing how all of these “God told me”‘s can really mess up people’s lives. There are those who refuse proper medical treatment because God told them they would be healed. There are others in terrible circumstances but refuse to change anything because God told them to stay. There are some who don’t pay bills, or won’t allow their kids to summer camp, or whatever the hell the dumb decision may be, GOD TOLD ME or gave some sort of impression or they had a dream or a feeling or saw a sign with the number 8 in it or whatever. I have observed that the concept that one is receiving instruction directly from God can create a real shitshow, from Manson to Jonestown to Koresh, people who believe God told them something special can be a serious problem. We are both so ready to be done with the Magic Conch approach to religion, and we begin a search for a more normal church setting.
We are offered a job at a Christian camp in North Carolina. I say, why not? I have been declared totally infertile by my OB-GYN, so why not do some cool things you can’t do if you have kids? Sorry, parents.
DH and I are excited to be involved in a ministry with a more balanced view. This Christian camp is nondenominational, so that has to be better, right??
So, we drive. The camp is in the idyllic foothills of the Smoky mountains, so beautiful, so green. There are little waterfalls down the sides of the freeway. Lovely. The only hitch is that our starter on the CRX breaks, and for a month we have to park on a hill and pop the clutch in order to start the car (ask your mechanic). It’s actually kinda fun, until we mistakenly kill the engine at a hotel with a flat parking lot and DH has to push the car around the parking lot until there’s enough momentum to pop the clutch, bystanders rubbernecking at the guy grunting behind a car while his wife is in the driver’s seat. Hey, someone has to pop the clutch. Sorry, DH.
On the camp website were multiple pictures of a large, inviting pool with a lovely concrete deck. The beautiful blue water seemed to call my name. I did find it a bit suspicious there were literally no pictures of the rest of the camp, just the pool. Hmmm… What could possibly go wrong?
Pulling into the camp on a balmy summer day, immediately we sensed something was off. Crackling over gravel, all we were seeing is a few old military-style buildings with an arched metal roof. There were several old cabins that barely qualified as shelter, 2×4’s halfway up, the rest just rough screen stapled to the wood. Everything looked like it was from about 1950. Where were the dormitories? I mean, this place put the rust in rustic. Now I understood why the only picture in the advertising was of the freaking POOL. We discover later that this was an old military training ground from the 50’s. We weren’t surprised.
We wander around for like an hour because we can’t find anyone. When we finally do, she can’t figure out where we are supposed to stay. They never do find a place for us, and we are shuttled back and forth between makeshift accomodations the entire summer. For a full month of this we are exiled into a rotted Airstream camper that had been flooded and stunk of mold, black spots throughout the interior.
But the biggest problem with the camp, is that it is STILL CHARISMATIC!!
We went halfway across the country to escape this, but this place is even more whacko than the church in Tiny Town. Now what??
These pastors are hell-bent (lol) on getting these kids to have some sort of supernatural experience… speaking in tongues, signs, wonders, whatever. The problem is, I have seen kids AND adults really seek hard after these things, and when it doesn’t happen, they think something is wrong with them. If you’re reading this and this happened to you, rest assured you are just fine. It wasn’t you. Trust me.
I recall in one service, I was in the middle of leading worship and, in this room of 150 kids, I can see a commotion all the way at the back of the room. A head of blonde hair, snapping back and forth, arms and legs flailing. I could see she was yelling, but you couldn’t hear it over the music. A girl was having a seizure or something, and several people were surrounding her trying to assuage the commotion. It is the strangest feeling when you are singing in front of a crowd, and they are all involved in the music, and you can see something no one else can see, because I’m the only one facing the opposite direction. I can’t respond or react, I know this would make it worse, and possibly cause group panic. This is the first time I realize that one person’s response to something can affect many others, and likely why “the show must go on” exists. So many times in life, the show must simply…go on.
As it turns out, one of the counselors had a grand mal panic attack, so it just looked like someone was violently dying. (I have had someone die while I was leading worship, but we’re not up to that yet.)
This summer is an endurance test, we don’t agree doctrinally with anything that’s going on. In retrospect, we would have been much better off if we just went with the flow and enjoyed the people around us, but at this point, our belief system had traveled wayyy across the spectrum to the strict Baptist side, NOT a denomination known for its sense of freewheeling fun.
In fact, DH has decided he is being called to be a Pastor. (Highest calling, ammirite?). Which means he has to go back to school AGAIN for his Master’s of Divinity, AKA the M. Div. He has chosen one of THE MOST conservative, Bible thumping seminaries in the world, led by John MacArthur. The Master’s Seminary, clear in Los Angeles, CA.
We…are going to L.A.
Worship Leader Gone Wild 