The churches I’ve attended and/or joined.
AUGUST 27, 2007 (MONDAY) – I’ve been writing lately about the jobs I had when I was growing up and later on when I was trying to get through college and seminary. Today I think I’ll start writing about the churches I’ve attended and/or joined.
The first church I ever joined was the Liberty Road Baptist Church in Houston’s near northside. I attended with my friend, Troy Conner and his family, who lived a block from our house. I was saved at that church during a revival meeting when I was eleven years old. At the time my twin sisters, Melva and Elva, and I were living with our mother’s parents. Our parents had divorced each other and were trying to find their way in life. I think my father was living with his parents, still working at his job as a machinist, threading drilling pipes for the oil fields. My mother was living in rooming houses, trying to get by on a waitress’ pay. The owner of the café where she worked was a lady who liked her a lot, and when the lady became terminally ill, she gradually turned over the business to my mother (at least that’s the way I think it happened). In the meantime, we three kids lived with our grandparents, who loved us very much and provided a home for us. Looking back, I have no idea as to why the girls did not attend church with me when I went, but they were still only about 8 years old, so I assume that had something to do with it. It’s not easy sometimes to put together memories after 65 years have elapsed. Anyway, I recall being baptized after the revival meeting, and attending church with those dear friends, but I don’t remember it as a regular part of my life. I guess it was “hit and miss” attendance.
Well, anyway, Daddy got married to Dorothy, and one day they came to get us, moving us to a house they were buying in the Denver Harbor addition in east Houston, north of the Ship Channel. Dorothy was quite young, but she had known hard work all her life and she went to work making her home as nice as could be. She had not been married very long before my Aunt Mary and Uncle Hobson invited her to church with them at the Denver Assembly of God, not far from our house. It was an extended Gospel meeting, and as she attended night after night, Dorothy’s heart was touched and she was saved. She was immediately transformed into a new person in Christ, and has loved the Lord deeply to this present day. She became an active worker in the church, working mainly with youth for many years. Although Daddy had been raised in a preacher’s home, he would not go to church, but Dorothy became very, very active, interested and involved, so we kids went to Sunday School and church services with her. That church became the second church I had attended with any regularity. (Efforts were made to get me to join that church, but I thought of myself as a Baptist, even though I had not attended my church in a while.) I always sat with my cousin and he taught me how to sing the bass part of the hymns. His father, my Uncle Hobson, led the singing, and other members of the family played the piano and other instruments. His mother, Aunt Mary, was Daddy’s sister. She and Daddy’s other two sisters, Eva and Helen, and their mother, were four of the sweetest ladies who have ever lived on this earth. I went to church there for about a year, I suppose, until my mother married Joe, and I went to live with them. There was no church attendance there, so for the next three years or so, I never went to church.
Joe and Mother enlarged their involvement in the restaurant business, and in time had three thriving restaurants, where my sisters and I would sometimes work. As I got older, I worked in the restaurants more and more. I went with Joe to the various markets and enjoyed being with him, learning how the business worked. I was living in a completely different situation, separated from friends and family who made church a part of their lives.
After about three years, in May, 1948, there was that surprise phone call from Richard Hunt, the new pastor of the Liberty Road Baptist Church where I had been baptized years before, inviting me back to church. I promised him I would come, and six weeks later I made good on that promise, and started preaching right away, preaching my first sermon on Labor Day Weekend. I’ve been in church ever since. More about that church and the other churches in which I’ve worshiped and served, tomorrow.