Nazarene Baptism: A liberal preacher, a swimming pool baptism, and a lot of sausage sightings

At the beginning of my senior year in high school, our long-time Nazarene preacher had to resign after his son got a girl pregnant.  Our new preacher,  Rev. Spearman from Northwest Nazarene College in Idaho, was tall, blond, stupid...and liberal: on the cutting edge of evangelical theology.

Most Nazarenes had no idea that LGBT people existed -- they weren't even mentioned until the last edition of the Manual -- but  Brother Spearman gleefully referenced homa-sekshuls in nearly every sermon, blaming nearly every catastrophe or social problem on them, or on Christians for not hating them enough.

Most Nazarenes preachers screamed about our need to go down to the altar to get saved (forgiven of our sins) and sanctified (being cleansed of the ability to sin), but Brother Spearman added a third step, technically in the theology but rarely mentioned: consecration, dedicating your life to God.

Thus he cannily increased the number of times you had to go to the altar.  I was sure he did it to push up the altar-call numbers, which would lead to a renewed contract.

More after the break

Showering with Portuguese boys at a church conference in Switzerland

 

When I was sixteen years old, I was selected to join 500 Nazarene teenagers from around the world in Fiesch, Switzerland for our World Youth Conference

It was like Nazarene summer camp, with daily sermons, Bible studies, jump quizzes, and seminars on soul-winning, except we had afternoons and one full day off for field trips and sightseeing  We could go out on our own, but:
1. Don't talk to the locals.
2. Don't set foot in any Catholic church.
3. Be back by 7:00.

But every good Nazarene knows how to bend the rules.

"I'm sure the rules don't apply if we're going to save souls," my friend Annette, a delegate from Idaho, exclaimed.  "We're in a country full of Catholic and Reformed Church sinners.  Wouldn't it be great if we could plant the seeds of a mighty revival and win Switzerland for the Lord?"

Overbrimming with the "Faith in God can move a mighty mountain" and "If you ask anything in My Name, that will I do" mantras,  we decided to go soulwinning in the Belly of the Beast, the most evil, depraved site imaginable, a Catholic church!

But not in Fiesch -- we figured that would be well-traveled territory.  On our free day, we packed several copies of the Gute Nachricht Bibel, a English-German phrase book, some snacks, and a change of clothes, and took the train 2 hours south to Zermatt a famous tourist town at the base of the Matterhorn. Our guidebook led us to the St. Mauritius Church, which dates from 1285.  We marched inside to bring the Gospel to the idolators.

It was a Thursday morning at 10:00 am.  It was empty.

Disappointed, we stood around outside, waiting for a Catholic to come by so we could start a soul-winning conversation.

Soon two cute black-haired teenagers came by, wearing backpacks.  One was tall and slim, the other more compact and muscular, but they looked so alike that they must have been brothers.

Well, cute boys are as good as Catholics.  Annette, who had taken first year German, started the ball rolling: "Entschuldigen, aber sie hören,die gut Nachricht dein Jesus Christ?"  (A bad attempt to say "Have you heard the Good News of Jesus Christ?".)

They stopped, grinning, and consulted in a language I didn't understand.  "Keine Deutsch," the taller one said.

"English?" I asked.  "Francais?"

"Oh, Americanos!" the short, compact one exclaimed.  "Michael Jackson. Beat it...beat it...beat it..."  He gyrated his hips

They were 17-year old Joao (the tall one) and 15-year old Lucio (the compact, muscular one).  But we didn't get much more from their effusive conversation in their unknown language. Later I discovered that it was Portuguese -- I was taking advanced Spanish, but I didn't understand more than a word here and there.

We ended up strolling down Schluhmattstrasse with them, Annette and Joao in the front, me and a grinning Lucio  in the rear.

Lucio kept grinning at me and talking nonstop in incomprehensible Portuguese, interspliced with fragmentary English: ("You Chicago?  Al Capone big gun, yes?").

It was great fun getting so much attention from a cute guy with a compact, muscular frame.  I wouldn't figure "it" out for another year, but still, I kept wondering what he looked like naked.  Was he cut or uncut?  Was he hung?

Somehow we ended up waiting 20 minutes to get on a gondola weaving its way up the mountainside.

A gondola is a small car suspended by a cable as it sways 1000 feet above the ground.

I was terrified!  I clung to Lucio, who wrapped a muscular arm around me and grinned.  I felt his hard chest beneath my hand, smelled his cologne, and couldn't help fondling a bit.  He hugged me tighter.  "No afraid, yes?  I....I...uh...save."

But we had only reached Furi, the first cable car station.  There were three more to reach the top!  No way!  Instead we stopped at a restaurant for fried eggs, sausage, a kind of hard cheese, and hot chocolate, and conversation about "Rambo!  He very muscle, yes?  You like?"

Annette tried to explain that as Christians, we didn't go to movies, but they didn't understand.

Then there was nothing to do but ski down, walk down, or take the gondola.  In the flat Midwest, we don't learn to ski, and there was no way I was getting on that gondola again!

More Nazarene Youth Conference after the break

I pray through to vic-trah, with Phil's hand on my....

 

When I was growing up in the Nazarene Church,  most church services ended with an altar call: an invitation (or exhortation) to come down to the front of the sanctuary, kneel at the long, low wooden rail, and Pray Through to Victory (all preachers had a Southern accent, so they said "Vic-trah"). 

 It was similar to Catholic confession, with no priest: you asked God to forgive all the sins you could think of, and if He decided to, you became a Christian or got saved (from an eternity in hell).

Praying through to Vic-trah  wasn't easy -- God wasn't really keen on forgiveness, so you had to work, sobbing and begging and moaning, for at least ten minutes, until He consented.  And afterwards, the most trivial of sins -- an angry word, a lustful thought, a glance at the Sunday newspaper -- would negate your salvation, so you'd have to start all over again.  It was not unusual to go down several times a year, and some especially sensitive types went down at almost every service.

Usually just adults went down -- kids were excused, and teens had regular invitations to "bow your head right here and ask God to forgive you" in Sunday School (just before the morning service) and NYPS (just before the evening service), so we were usually saved by the time the altar call came around.

But in ninth grade, the first year that I was officially a teenager, I discovered a benefit to going down to the altar (other than the not going to hell thing).

Praying Through to Vic-trah was such hard work that you needed someone by your side, entreating God on your behalf.  So whenever you went to the altar, Christians (people who were saved) rushed down to help.  Only the same sex.  Two, three, or even more, depending on your popularity. 

They pressed against you, hugging and holding, arms around waists and shoulders, even pressed on your butt as if trying to push you into heaven (don’t worry, only other teens did the butt pushing, I guess because we also pushed butts at jump quiz practice). And when you successfully Prayed Through, you became a single mass, bear-hugging and back-slapping and pressing together.  During those moments, I felt a lifetime's worth of hard muscle, and sometimes even private parts pressed surreptitiously against me.

Going down to the altar allowed me to get hugged, held, and caressed by the preacher, the preacher's son, my Sunday school teacher  and lots of other cute boys and men.

And the next service, if I was still saved, I had carte blanche to go down and touch, hold, hug, and fondle any guy I liked.

But never the guy I wanted most: Phil, a 12th grader, president of the Nazarene Young People's Society, and Captain of the Jump Quiz Team, tall and broad-shouldered, with black wavy hair and round professors' glasses. And planning to become a preacher!  I would not figure "it" out for three years, but I already knew that I had a special interest in preachers, preachers' kids, seminarians, even the Catholic priests and rabbis on tv.

Phil was not only hunky, he was the coolest guy I had ever met: he and his parents lived in an apartment (how cool was that?), he worked at the Country Style ice cream shop, and could get us free milkshakes; he had actually read The Hobbit instead of dismissing it as Satanic; and he wasn't afraid to make friends with Catholics -- "if you don't talk to them, how will you ever win them for Christ?"

More Phil fondling after the break

While I visit our Bible College, the preacher pops a boner

 

Kankakee, Illinois

When I was growing up in the Nazarene Church, we spent a lot of time at Olivet, our college on the prairie of eastern Illinois.  The church wanted to make sure that we went there after high school instead of some secular university where we would be taught liberalism, atheism, and evil-lution.

So there were ball games and special concerts  for high school students, plus an annual Olivet Weekend, with a party, a nature hike, a church service, classroom visits, a lot of "come to Olivet" sales pitches, and a night in a college dorm.

It was actually sleeping bags on the floor of the lounge in the freshman men's dorm, but still, I was surrounded by cute college men!

When I was in ninth grade, our host was David, a senior religion major (and baseball player) who told us how he was hoping to be called to a church near his home town, and his girlfriend Ruth, who mostly bragged about how she had scored the "handsomest guy on campus."

Only about half of the boys on campus wanted to become preachers, but almost all of the girls wanted to become preacher's wives, leading to some hefty competition.

On the Saturday night of our visit, David took us to a basketball game, and then to the Student Union for hamburgers.

The Red Room, Olivet's student restaurant, was packed with other kids and their escorts, so he took us to a nearby lounge: six couches and about a dozen chairs, most full, but one empty right next to the monitor's desk.  It looked into a little alcove with a yellow couch, where two college couples were kissing.

"Hey, what's that -- a kissing booth?" I asked.

"Kissing corner!"  David said with a grin.  "The only couch the monitor can't see.  Boy, I've had some good times there!"

He told us that at Olivet, boy-girl relations were strictly regulated.  You couldn't set foot in each other's dorm rooms, and in common areas, kissing was  forbidden.  They had monitors watching all the lounges, but that couch was hidden from the monitor's view, and so very popular.

"You have to take a number to get it," David said.  "But once you're there, you can do what you want.  Anyway, I'm going to park you guys here, so we don't lose our place.  Back in a while with our burgers.

We sat down facing the kissing couples.  Kissing girls -- gross!  But I was interested in one of the guys -- cute, dark haired, broad shoulders, handsome preacher's face.  He leaned toward his girlfriend, put his arm around her, and they started kissing.

He had a sizeable bulge in his pants.

And he began to rise.

And rise.

And rise.

More rising after the break

"This is the End": Celebrities are Left Behind, face cannibals, demons, gay sex, and Danny McBride

 I saw This is the End (2013) when it first appeared, and didn't really like it because (spoiler alert) it's about the Rapture.  When I was a kid, I was terrified of the Evangelical end-of-the-world event (not actually mentioned in the Bible) when everyone who is saved gets zapped up to heaven, and the unsaved are stuck on Earth. The preacher told horrifying stories of unsaved men waking up in the middle of the night to find their family gone, and gradually realizing that they are lost -- their sins can no longer be forgiven, so no matter how much they beg and cry, it's the Lake of Fire for all eternity.

But it stars some of my favorite actors, including two that I have a crush on, David Krumholtz (left) and Jay Baruchel (below), so I'll give it another shot.

Scene 1: LAX.  Seth Rogan picks up his buddy Jay Baruchel (bare butt, below), for the "best weekend ever" at his place, with his favorite things: Starburst, marijuana, and airheads. "I know you don't like LA, so I thought I'd lube it up a bit to ease the transition." "Much needed foreplay."  Discussing non-sexual things in sexual terms, har har.  Then: "I'm a well-known homosexual advocate."  I don't know what he means.  

Seth wants to go to James Franco's housewarming party, but Jay wants it to be just the two of them all weekend.  Awww... But they go.

Scene 2: At the house, Seth points out that Channing Tatum  lives nearby: "This is the sexiest street in America."  Jay chastises him for talking about Channing Tatum too much, but he counters: "I think he's attractive."  Ok, these guys are pretend-gay.

Franco: "This house is like a piece of me. You two stepped inside me." Seth: "You let us come inside you."  I'd better stop writing down all the gay-sex jokes, or I'll run out of space by Scene 3.

We meet various celebrities from the same general crew, having boring conversations. Jonah Hill appears to have an unrequited crush on Jay. Michael Cera (left) tries to kiss a guy. Later, Jay stumbles on him in the bathroom, getting blown and rimmed at the same time (by ladies). Craig sings for "all the ladies" to "take your panties off." 

Scene 3: Jay and Seth head to a convenience store for cigarettes.  Seth: "Is Michael Cera's butthole as cute as I pictured it?"  He's into guys' butts, har har.  Suddenly there's an explosion, and some of the customers rise through the ceiling in shafts of blue light!  

Outside, people are rising in shafts of blue light everywhere, driver-less cars are crashing, power lines are down...and back at Franco's house, everything is normal (only the good people went to heaven, so no celebrities, of course).  No one believes them.

Jonah says that Jay is "a sweetheart," implying that he's attracted to him, and everyone looks at him in disgust.  Wait -- you were all expressing homoerotic interest just a few seconds ago.

Scene 4: There's an earthquake, so everyone rushes outside -- and the whole city is in flames!   Then a giant sinkhole open, and almost everyone falls in.  Only Jay and Craig try to save their friends.  They survive, along with Franco, Jonah, and Seth. Before the tv dies, they get a few news reports -- martial law declared, Air Force One is down (The preacher told us that there had to be an unsaved pilot on every flight, in case of Rapture).

They start boarding up the house, inventorying supplies, and ineptly repairing the damage. Gay joke: Craig tries to move a giant ceramic dick: "That dick's coming now.  I got that big dick."

More after the break

I learn about gay sex in the church parking lot

 

When I was a kid, our Nazarene church had only one preacher, whose main job was screaming and banging the pulpit for an hour three times a week (researching and writing sermons is more time-consuming than you may think).  

But when I was in ninth grade, we got a Youth Minister, in charge of kid and teen activities like Junior Joys, Nazarene Young People's Society, the Afterglow (a party after the Sunday evening service), and Canvassing (going door to door to witness).

The Preacher might be elderly, but the Youth Minister had to be young, cool, and attractive enough to keep kids interested.  Ours was Brother Bob, fresh out of Olivet, in his early 20s, tall, with enormously broad shoulders, a barrel chest, and gigantic hands.

Unfortunately, I never saw him shirtless -- he always wore a suit and tie, the Nazarene equivalent of a clerical collar.  But when I went down to the altar to get saved or sanctified, he came down and wrapped his huge hard arm around me, and I could feel his hard barrel chest against my back.

You could hardly miss the gigantic Mortadella+ swinging around in his pants every time he moved. Particularly in NYPS, when we were kneeling to pray, and he walked from person to person to see if we needed help: his crotch was exactly at eye level.  And at least once, when he hugged me after altar call, I felt it press against me like a salami stuffed in his pants.

One Sunday night at the beginning of tenth grade, I walked out into the parking lot during altar call to escape from the frenetic shouting, and saw Terry and Dave, twelfth grade best buddies, talking in the shadowy area by the church bus.

Dave was a member of church royalty, with perfectly cut black hair, perfect teeth, and an athletic physique.  
Terry was slim, with dirty-blond hair almost too shaggy to meet Nazarene standards, an aspiring Gospel singer from an unsaved family.  He backslid every few weeks and had to go down to the altar again.

I didn't usually associate with twelfth graders -- the three year age gap seemed unbreachable.  But I had to say "hello," or they might think I was spying on them.

"Ten inches, easy!" Dave was saying.  "Brother Bob's is bigger than Brother Dino's by a long shot.  No way it's happening!"

"I'm telling you, she's got nothing to worry about," Terry countered.

They were discussing a man's dick!  "Have you guys really seen Brother Bob down there?" I asked.

"I have!" Dave said. "Just before NYPS tonight -- he was at the urinal next to me in the bathroom. Man, that guy's a giant!  Bigger than Brother Dino!  Sister Cindy could never take all that -- it would break her in half."

Like all preachers, Brother Bob was married -- to Sister Cindy, very short, slim,  petite. His hand could almost fit around her waist.  They were like Fred and Wilma Flintstone.

"Oh, and you think going down on it will work better?" Terry asked.  "The mouth is smaller than the [vagina], wise guy!"

Go down on it? 

"I'm hung like a horse," Dave said. "Girls are always saying 'oh, it's too big, it hurts'!  But they go down on it with no problem at all."

"Let's let the kid decide."  Terry turned to me and put his hand on my shoulder.  "Say you were a lady, and your guy had extra-extra-extra large equipment."

I imagined Brother Bob, naked, his muscles damp with sweat, his enormous uncut Mortadella aroused and waiting.

More after the break

The boy on the Prospect List

 

When I was growing up in Rock Island,  anyone who set foot inside the Nazarene Church for any reason, but didn't "get saved" and become a member, was placed on the Prospect List.

Even if they just came for Vacation Bible School, or to cheer for a friend at a Jump Quiz Tournament.

They stayed on that list forever, unless they asked to be removed or the Church Board decided to purge the list of names from many years ago.

(All models are over 18)

Every August, about a month before the fall revival, our Sunday school teacher gave each of us the contact information for 10 age- and -gender appropriate Prospects.  We were supposed to make it our business to "win them for the Lord," or at least invite them to church.

During the next month, we received 1 point for each Prospect that we prayed for, 2 points for each letter or post card, 5 points for each telephone call, and 10 points for each in-person visit, plus an extra 10 point if they actually came to church.

You might think that the Prospects would be buried in letters or harassed by constantly-ringing telephones, but in fact most people settled for prayer. It's a daunting prospect to cold-call someone you don't know, who has been to your church just once.

During the fall revival, the kid, teenager, and adult with the most points received awards, usually Bibles, while the whole congregation clapped and yelled "Amen!"

During the summer after 5th grade, the first year I was eligible, I wimped out with "prayer only."

In 6th grade,  I sent a few post cards.

In 7th grade, I tried phone calls, only to get two "wrong numbers" (which didn't count) and one "You made a mistake -- I never went to that church."

During the summer after 8th grade, I decided to go all the way with a personal visit.

I was fascinated by a name that appeared on the Prospect List every year: Francis DePew, who came to Vacation Bible School one summer, but never appeared again. He was in the same grade as me, and he lived on the Hill, but he didn't go to Washington Junior High.

That meant he went to Jordan Catholic School!

The Preacher told us all about Catholics!  When they weren't worshipping idols and being brainwashed by evil priests, they were laughing in the face of God, drinking, smoking, dancing, playing cards, going to movies.  But their favorite form of sin was the sex orgy, men cavorting with other men's wives, teenagers having sex without being married, all manner of abominations, as in the days before the Flood!

All manner of abominations?  I had to meet this Francis DePew!  Maybe I could get him to the altar, where he would cry and apologize to God, and I could wrap my arm around his waist and hug him.

Besides, Catholics were as difficult to win for Christ as Muslims!  He would be good practice for when Dan and I became missionaries to Saudi Arabia.

During the August before 9th grade, Dan and I rode our bikes past Francis DePew's house nearly every day.

He lived a few blocks from the church, nearly across the street from the Saukie Golf Course that the Preacher was always complaining about.

A nice house, big but nothing special.  I got  a little frisson of dread imagining the Satanic orgies going on inside every night.

Then one Saturday afternoon, we hit the jackpot: a cute, muscular teenage boy, washing a car, with his shirt off!

We stopped. "Hey, cool car," I said.

"Thanks.  It's my brother's. He pays me a dollar to wash it, and when I get my driver's license, I can have it."


"Are you Francis DePew?"

"Frank."  He eyed me suspiciously.  "Do you go to Jordan?"

"No way!"  I exclaimed, offended.  "We go to Washington. I..um...I'm on the wrestling team, and I thought I recognized you from a tournament."

"No, we we don't have wrestling.  I was on the football team last year, though."

"Oh, that's it! From a football game...I thought you had the build for wrestling."  Dan nudged me, signifiying that I had said too much.  Or maybe he wanted to be included in the conversation.  Why should I hog the cute guy?  "Um...I'm Boomer, and this is Dan."

"Hi."  Frank shook hands with us both.  "Do you play football?"


How was I going to get the conversation away from sports and onto church?  "Um...no, I'm too busy with Jump Quiz."

"What's that?"

"It's a great sport," Dan offered.  "You have to use your brain and your muscles.  Especially your legs.  We could teach you..."

And then invite him to come to a tournament, and get him saved!  I thought excitedly.  But the Jump Quiz was about the Bible.  The Preacher said that Catholics couldn't read or even touch Bibles -- the holiness zapped them like an electric shock.

"Do you...do you know anything about the Bible?" I asked tentatively.

"Oh, I know a little bit."

A few days later, Frank invited us to his house -- my first time ever in a Catholic house. It wasn't scary at all, except for the "evil" crucifix in the living room.

We set up folding chairs on the patio, and took turns reading the questions and competing one-on-one, with breaks to throw a frisbee to his dog. Frank knew about as much about the Bible as I did, and his muscular legs made him a jump quiz natural.

After an hour, we declared the game a tie, and Frank's mother invited us into the kitchen for sodas and ice cream sandwiches.

"That was fun," Frank said.  "And it really gives your legs a workout.  We should use it for football training."


"It's a big deal at my church.  We have the local eliminations in October, and then the district, and you can go all the way to the Internationals, and get a college scholarship. You should...."  But Frank was being so nice that I felt guilty about the mercenary goal of winning him for Christ.  "You should start a team at your church."

So I didn't win the Prospect. Instead, he won me.

I met a nice guy, and I realized that Catholics weren't as scary and evil as the Preacher kept saying.   In fact, the first person I spent the night with, two years later, was a Maronite Catholic boy from Lebanon.

The Nazarene Teen Idol

When I was growing up in the Nazarene Church, twice a year, in the fall and the spring, we had a "revival": a full week of screeching, foot-stomping, Bible-thumping sermons by an evangelist who made his living going from revival to revival, getting people saved and sanctified.

You were encouraged to bring your friends who went to other churches, and thus might not be amenable to visiting on a Sunday morning.  But on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday night, they were free, right?

We did get a few converts during every revival, but not nearly enough for the evangelist, who stomped and shouted with more and more urgency as the week wore on and nearly everyone who needed to get saved was already saved and only a few people went down. Or no one.

The only bright spot of the whole ordeal was the gospel group that accompanied the evangelist. During the fall revival in my junior year in high school, the evangelist was the young, muscular but bellowing Brother Jonathan, and the musical group was the Smith Family (not to be confused with the punk rock group the Smiths, which I have several times).

They sang fast, upbeat songs which I assumed they wrote -- there were records for sale in the lobby.  Church oldsters used to old Salvation Army-style ballads like "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" were scandalized by their country-inflected lyrics, not to mention their guitars, drums, and tambourines.  One of their songs goes through my head intermittently to this day:

I've got confidence, God is going to see me through
Whatever the case may be, I know He's gonna fix it for me.

(I just discovered that "I've Got Confidence" was not a Smith Family original: it was composed by Andre Crouch and popularized by Elvis Presley.)

I haven't been able to find any photos -- too much interference from other Smiths on the internet -- but they looked something like this: middle-aged husband and young-adult daughter as the lead singers (baritone and soprano), teenage son on the guitar, preteen son on the drums, and wife on the tambourine, piano, or organ.

 Scott, the teenage son, was a year younger than me, tall and buffed with big hands, a round face, short blond hair, and dreamy blue eyes.  The Nazarene equivalent of a teen idol, our own Shaun Cassidy!  I was desperate to become his friend, or at least feel a warm strong handshake, but I didn't have a chance.  He was mobbed.

Girls were swooning, batting their eyes at him, writing him love notes under the guise of prayer requests.  Old people (anyone over 30) were pushing to tell him what a "fine Christian boy" he was and getting him to autograph any piece of paper they could find, even the "notes" page of their study Bibles.  Boys were rushing to kneel at the altar in the hopes that Scott would come down from the podium and put his arm around them as they moaned and cried and "prayed through to victory."

Unfortunately, I couldn't join them at the altar, because I had made a major tactical error.  You could go down only to get saved (forgiven of the sins you had committed), sanctified (made holy, so you would be incapable of future sins), or to help someone else pray through.   And, not knowing that Scott would be there, I got sanctified just a few weeks ago!

Going down again so soon would be admitting that I had never been sanctified at all -- that I had been deceived by Satan into rising from the altar without praying through. Or that I was lying to get the praise and prestige.  A major faux pas. a major humiliation!

Every night I sat in my pew during Brother Jonathan's altar call, counting the teenage boys who went down, calculating whether the chance of Scott choosing me to pray with was worth a public humiliation. Every night I decided against it.

More after the break

On my knees in a cute boy's bedroom

 

This is an autobiographical story about growing up in an Evangelical church:

Every year the family spends a week camping somewhere in the northwoods, fishing, swimming, hiking -- and, on Sunday, finding the nearest Nazarene Church.

This summer, when I am 14 years old, it is in Brainerd, Minnesota, an hour's drive from our campsite

"An hour there and an hour back!" I protest.  "It will be 3:00 by the time we get home-- the whole afternoon wasted."

"Church is never a waste of time," Mom points out.  "Besides, there might be some cute girls there."

I sigh.  Ever since I started junior high, my parents and brother have been pointing out girls, asking if there are any cute girls in my class, high-fiving each other whenenever I casually mention a girl.  So have my friends.  Even the preacher, as he stands at the church door to shake everyone's hand as they leave, gives me a wink and says "A lot of cute girls here today!"

"And what about the soulwinners?: I continue. "We'll be mobbed!"

"Oh, stop complaining.  We'll just call ahead and tell them we're coming."

The most prestigious thing a Nazarene can do is soulwinning, talking sinners (which basically means all non-Nazarenes) into accepting Jesus as their Personal Savior, thereby winning their souls for our team.

We take classes in soulwinning, hear sermons about it, read stories about it, evaluate scenarios.  Our Sunday School teacher often asks "How many souls did you win this week?"

Usually none at all.  It's not easy.  When you were 14 years old, would you have been able to walk up to this guy and say "Hi, do you have a moment to hear the Good News of Jesus Christ?"

If you aren't "spiritually mature" enough for soulwinning, you can witness instead: tell the sinner that you are ecstatically happy every moment of every day because you're saved, or just demonstrate with a broad smile.  The sinner, immersed in the unrelenting agony of the unsaved life, will eventually want to know more.

Soulwinning is so prized that casual visitors to a Nazarene church can easily be mobbed by people grinning at them and trying to start soulwinning conversations.  Unless they come with a member, signifying that they are "taken," or call ahead.

When we walk through the foyer of the Brainerd Church of the Nazarene, looking for all the world like a family of sinners who stumbled in by accident, we are nearly mobbed, but the Sunday School superintendent, the one we called earlier, comes to the rescue.

"We have Nazarenes from Illinois visiting us today," he announces, and the wannabe soulwinners back off.

But in my Sunday School class, they haven't gotten the word.

Ten or so high schoolers are sitting on folding chairs or chatting before the class begins, and every one of them looks up and flashes me a toothy witnessing grin.  Two girls and a boy approach, intent on starting soulwinning conversations.

"I'm from....." I begin.  Then a tall, black haired boy with a strong physique, obviously church royalty, leaves his cluster of admirers and exerts control.  The others back off.

"Welcome!  I'm Roald," he say, offering a warm, tight handshake and a more subtle witnessing smile.  He's done this before!  "Is this your first time?"



This could work to my advantage!

"My parents made me come," I say, which is true.

"Well, sit down over here by me.  I'll tell you how everything works.  If you have any questions, just ask."

So I sit thigh to thigh with a cute boy, who helps me hold the hymnal and shows me how to find Bible verses.

The lesson is about how God has a husband or wife planned out for us, so we should keep ourselves pure and not kiss before marriage.  Standard Sunday school stuff, but I'm already annoyed by Mom's "there may be cute girls there" crack, so I must look rather grumpy.

Roald thinks I'm "under conviction" and puts his arm around me.

Then we have to hold hands for the closing prayer.

This could definitely work to my advantage! 

More after the break