Trespasses & debts & dunks & sprinkles

I grew up in Auxvasse, Mo., a town so small there were only five churches – one Presbyterian, one Methodist and one Christian (which is what the central Missouri branch of the Disciples of Christ called its congregations back then; my father always referred to its members as “Campbellites” which Wikipedia says is a “mildly pejorative term for followers of certain religious groups that have roots in the Restoration Movement whose most prominent nineteenth century leaders were Thomas and Alexander Campbell.” I can't imagine that dad, who never said anything bad about anyone, was aware he was using a pejorative term.) In addition, there were two Baptist churches, one for whites, one for African-Americans.

My family belonged to the church with the smallest congregation, the Methodists. On any given Sunday there were, tops, 40 people in attendance, half of them as old as Methuselah. For decades, the church’s treasurer, Pearl Houchins, who always wore a raspberry beret of which I am reminded whenever the Prince song by the same name comes over the radio, stood up at the end of services and recited the same report, which varied only by the numbers of attendees and the amounts collected.

“The Auxvasse Methodist Sunday School met Sunday (month, date, year) with a total attendance of X including X members and X visitors, and a collection of $XX.XX.”

While God surely appreciated Mrs. Houchins for her many years of service to the church, what undoubtedly earned her admission through the Pearly Gates were her secret recipes for the ethereal burnt sugar candy and buttery peanut brittle she distributed to the Methodist children every Christmas. She must have taken them with her because there’s nobody down here who knows how to replicate them and believe me, I’ve searched high and low.

When Methodists recited the Lord’s Prayer, we, unlike worshippers at the other churches in town, asked God to “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The other churches said it differently. They asked God to “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

Even as a boy I found that weird because “trespasses” aren’t the same as “debts.” The former implies you have done something out of line. The latter means you owe someone for something.

The other churches baptized differently, too. Baptists and, if I recall correctly (I may be wrong here), the Presbyterians and Christians, fully immersed their members in galvanized tubs. The Methodist minister, on the other hand, sprinkled a few drops of water on the heads of the newly-saved, a ritual that was certainly less messy since the congregant was able to return to his or her seat rather than have to run into the back room to change out of wet clothes.

My grandmother was a Baptist and I occasionally accompanied her to revival meetings at her church. I much preferred the Baptist hymns to the Methodist ones. Baptist songs about fountains filled with blood drawn from Emanuel’s veins and Jesus being nailed to a tree were much more graphic and therefore interesting to my enquiring young mind than the tasteful hymns we Methodists sang like “Others” and “In the Garden.”

As one of the few kids in the Methodist Church, I took classes with Ross Howard, Kathy LaFon, Carla Foster and Dale Ray Rudd that were to culminate with our baptism. But when B-day arrived I backed out. At 11, I wasn’t ready to stand up and declare my sins because, as far as I could tell, I didn’t have any worth declaring – certainly not enough to swear I was ready to completely turn my life over to God because, even then, I was a bit of a control freak and had big plans to get out of Dodge. I was given the Bible I was to have received as a new member anyway since the minister had already inscribed it with my name.

Fifty-three years later I still haven’t gotten around to being baptized. That, I suppose, means I will spend eternity in hell while my fellow Methodists who went through with their sprinklings will spend theirs in heaven, gobbling up Mrs. Houchins’ candies without gaining an ounce or raising their bad cholesterol levels.

A decade or so ago I was visiting my mother the weekend the Auxvasse Methodist Church closed its doors for good, by which time it was down to a handful of members. Mom, my sister and I attended the final service. A pastor sent from the Missouri Methodist Conference in Fayette stood up and uttered a prayer deconsecrating a modest redbrick building that, for nearly 100 years, had witnessed happy events (including my sister’s wedding), sad events (including my father’s funeral) and baptisms (of just about every youngster who ever colored Joseph’s coat of many colors in Evelyn LaFon’s pre-school Sunday School class but yours truly).

The United Methodist Church sold the building to a congregation of Holy Rollers who, I am told, agreed to allow the stained glass windows honoring the church’s longtime members, including Mrs. Houchins, to remain in place. I hope those windows are still there because, even though I’m a fail when it comes to religion, all those people who made up that little church -- Sunday School Superintendent E.T. Pasley, who took me under his wing and gave me a job at his gas station after my father's death and his wife Neva who, for years, did my mother's hair; my seventh-grade teacher and church pianist Pauline Meador whose annual rambling rendition of the "Holy City" precluded the Easter sermon; her daughter Marge Lubbers, the only woman who could harmonize, and Marge's husband Dick, who always had a smile on his face; Jac LaFon who caught the catfish for the church's annual fish fry and his wife, Evelyn, one of the kindest, sweetest women I will ever know; Jess Burton, who boomed out the bass "below the line" chorus of "O How Sweet" whenever the congregation sang the hymn "Precious Name," whose wife was famous for her hickory nut pie; Mrs. Houchins' daughter Reba Middleton, who always wore an apron everywhere, even to church; Justine Foster who, every year, hitched a trailer full of stray dogs behind her Cadillac and took them to winter in Padre Island from whom, I swear, I got my love of dogs because it sure didn't come from my family; Nina Foster, who stitched the quilt my wife and I have slept under for 40 years; and Doc and Mildred Domann, my parents' best friends, among others -- will forever remain in my heart.

All this trespassing/debting/dunking/sprinkling and other small town church memories came back to me in a rush today when I encountered the above sign on a vacant lot during my daily 10-mile bike ride. Adjacent to the “No Trespassing” sign was a “For Sale” sign. The eight-acre lot, abutting the local high school and a block from the new world headquarters of the Hertz Corporation, would be ideal for high-end condos or attached villas. The developer who buys it will make a fortune.

I don’t know whether the members of Christ Community Ministries church, which owns the lot, say "trespasses" or "debts," or whether they dunk or sprinkle.

Whatever, I trust they will forgive me for trespassing a few feet over their property line to snap a picture for this blog, and am in their debt for erecting a sign that, for an hour or so this beautiful Spring afternoon, transported this 64-year-old back to a simpler, kinder, time when I believed that everything would turn out okay.

As, by and large, it has.