A Young Peoples Memory

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What is Young Peoples?

In my Baptist tradition, Young Peoples was a Sunday night youth gathering after church at the home of a church family. There were refreshments, singing, and a short bible message on a topic of interest to teens.

At the time of this particular memory, Bethel Baptist Church was at 737 E 26th Street in Erie, PA. It was a large church with a large missionary program. It was common for visiting pastors and missionaries to speak at various events throughout the week, such as Sunday services, Sunday school, Bethel Christian School, and Young Peoples.

A couple years before...
It so happens, a year or two earlier, a certain pastor (I don't remember his name) visited Bethel Christian School while I was there. I believe it was 7th grade, during Mrs Andrus's bible class. (Mrs Andrus is the wife of then-pastor Kenneth L Andrus. A sweet woman.)

This visiting pastor said he had children our age, young and rebellious. "Oh, I know you well. Slouching in your chairs, looking up from under your bangs, you're thinking 'Yer not gonna tell me nuthin' new, preacher,' that's what you're thinking."

I was slouching and looking up at him through my bangs, and that's what I was thinking. He drawled like a good Northern preacher does doing his best Southern fried let's-get-something-straight-between-us voice.

A couple years later...
That pastor is visiting again. This time he's visiting Young People's, and we're at the home of a church family, and I'm a little less rebellious, and a little wiser.

He told the same story, almost word for word. He was popular with the kids, and there was a press of teens around him afterward. I finally found a break in the crowd while he was enjoying punch and cookies. I told him I really liked his story about rebellious teens, and that I'd heard him give that talk before when I was in 7th grade at Bethel Christian School.

He was speechless, almost crestfallen, like a magician being told "I know how you did it."

When I was a child, I enjoyed the company of older men more than kids my age, and I wanted to discuss adult things with him, but he never said a word, and after a few awkward moments, I walked away.

That is the end of my only Young People's memory.

I didn't go very often.

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I don't remember whose home it was, but some of the kids that may have been going at that time were Shelly and Tammy Andrus (the pastor's daughters), Larry and Randy Beaton, Jerry Costello, Scott and Saundra Henry, Dave DeWitt, Randy Carlson, and Brad Merchant. There were many others, but since I went so seldom, I couldn't' tell you who they were.

c0

[2012-08-27]

 

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And the sign said long haired freaky people need not apply.

The best song from the hippie Jesus freak generation. (We're still here, by the way.)

Signs - the Five Man Electrical Band

Thank you, Lord, for thinkin' 'bout me. I'm alive and doin' fine.

c0