A Bad Experience at North End Baptist Church

Our church, North End Baptist, was pastored by J. T. DeLoach. He was a real hellfire and brimstone preacher. He was convinced that the Catholics were bound for hell for praying to idols, that the Methodists and Presbyterians were bound for hell for drinking and he was not too sure about other Baptists

He extended the invitation after every sermon until someone walked to the front. I believe the deacons decided to give him three verses of Just As I Am before one of them would go forward and rededicate their life to Christ and release the congregation.

Periodically J T would organize a revival week with a guest evangelist. When I was about 16 he brought in Michael Gilchrist to focus on youth purity.

At this time Baptists were adamantly against dancing - ballroom dancing, jitterbug, foxtrot, waltz and so on. Gilchrist’s preaching and teaching centered on the evils of dancing and how we should purify ourselves from being seduced by dancing.

This started on Sunday and continued every week night for the whole week. We had a reprieve on Saturday. When we entered the sanctuary on Sunday, the youth were seated in the front of the center section and our parents and other adults were on the sides and the rear. Little did I know what was about to happen.

Gilchrist ran through his sermon (a tremendous amount of recap of the entire weeks diatribes against dancing ) and then he asked all of the youth to stand. He asked for ‘every head bowed and every eye closed’ which just had us all peeking surreptitiously around.

‘All you who have come to understand the sinfulness of dancing and commit to stop forever, please sit down.’ All but about 10 of us sat down.

I liked dancing and was not convinced it was sinful.

He poured on the fire and brimstone and gave us another chance to sit down. At this point there were three or four of us left standing.

My peeking around revealed my Dad with ‘the look’ on his face.

Gilchrist really turned up the heat and following the next entreaty, I was the last one standing. I knew that the Bible was clear about lying, but I could not see a Biblical position against dancing. I knew that if I sat down (the easy way out) I would be lying - in God’s house. I stood my ground.

He was about to go after me one on one when, J T, bless his heart intervened and ended the service.

This event still hurts and I know it was part of my strong bias against organized religion that dominated my 20s and 30s. In fact, I am convinced that religion does more to hurt and embarrass Christ than almost anything else.

I never got a reading on how Mom and Dad felt about my performance in church that Sunday, but clearly they were not opposed to dancing.