Southern Baptists

OK, I don't do well around vegan hipsters!

You should. I've met some pretty cool ones. Yes, there are the annoying ones, but I have yet to encounter any group that doesn't have people who annoy me.

They might get up and walk out when I bite into my cheeseburger?

Forgive my misjudging you...but from being a guy from Willian and Mary, a lawyer in NY and to my surprise now from east Texas going you a Cowboy Church I was more than a little surprised.
I agree with you that churches tend to be country clubs that whose members look and think a lot alike.
A healthy Jesus centered church should be pretty much a full cross section of the
whole community.To exclude anyone is not what Jesus would have us do.

BITE YOUR TONGUE! I went to Washington & Lee in Virginia, not William & Mary in Virginia!

It's funny (to me at least) because I ended up in a relationship for a long while with a girl who went to William & Mary law. Nobody from outside of Virginia could ever keep our schools straight.

Agreed 100%. Straddling the line as I do, given my education and my Mom's reputation in the area, I can see both sides. I think there are people who work in the local banks who are regarded as rich by the worker-types, because they wear pretty clothes and work in air conditioning. I suspect some of the blue collar dudes think people are looking down on them when they're really just insecure in their own skin.

P.S. You and I have talked too frankly over the years for you to ask forgiveness. It is not necessary. There is nothing to forgive.

Not a Baptist, but I just want to say that the place I grew up in Arlington/Dallas had a pretty big Baptist chuuurch near my ghetto ass apartment and neighborhood (see what I did there?) , a BoyzNGirlz clubz nearby (also run down- bless their hearts), and also a liquor store just down the corner and the nice stereotypical shady gas station store next to it, where all the kool kids hung around. (random fact: Hennessy's are like the Budweiser of hard liquor. Its like a daily drink for po' and nothing-to-do folks)

Then as I got older and we got to moving around to different towns and cities , I've noticed this pattern a lot more.....kinda funny to me lol

Washington and Lee...of course. But stil froml there and NYC and now back to east Texas...thats a long long way to a Cowboy Church.

Just curious, NYC Poke, are there a lot of churches up in NYC? I've been to NYC a couple of times visiting my cousin, but I really can't recall seeing a lot of churches in and around the city. Not that hard to imagine cause there really isn't a lot of real estate lol

Agreed.

My Mom is horse-crazy. Always has been, since she was a little girl.

She's made a good life for herself, made a good living. And now she has horses. My Mom is a Force of Nature, you try to resist but you just can't. I didn't grow up riding horses, but damnit, when I'm here, I ride horses with her.

She works a lot of hours still, so any horses she has are likely to be green-broke. Her hours and her predilection for picking up strays. That means I've learned to ride on green-broke horses.

God protects drunks, the ignorant, and little children. I'll leave it to you to decide which way I'm still alive.

When I first got down here from NYC, I was hoping my visit would be short and sweet. I could help my brother fight cancer and help my Mom find a man. She's been lonely since my dad died, and her having a man would take some of her focus off of me.

She had tried the whole e-harmony thing. I think she'd be a catch for her age cohort, but the only responses she got were from near-corpses.

She seemed to be attracted to older cowboy-type dudes, so I recommended the cowboy church thing. Honestly, I was looking for a way to get my Mom distracted. I was hoping to set her up with a cowboy who would ride her off into the sunset.

We went to a few of them that weren't worth much. There was infighting, or it was just guys playing dress-up, and it didn't take me too long to figure out that I, a Greenhorn/Yankee, knew more about horses than they did.

I found my church by accident. It is a really long story involving a dog, of all things. I won't go into it unless you really want to know.

But a guy heard me play guitar and asked me to join the band at the Circle C Cowboy Church in Mount Pleasant. The band is good. The people are friendly. I really respect the preacher. A lot of times when you go to a place like that the preacher just says "Jesus" a lot just to get some "Amens."

This guy, James Baker, seems to know that some of his flock need that, and some of us need something more. He walks that very fine line. I really can't say too much about him. It was probably high school the last time I was impressed by a preacher.

Anyway, I think I've found a prospect for my Mom there. We both feel like we have found a Home there. They're all different from me and I'm all different from them. But we're really all the same.

Your story reminds me that life has a lot of twists and turnes...and we often don't know what is around the next corner. Looking back on my life all that I have accomplished and done is because of Jesus. There were so many times I have failed and so many times I could have taken the wrong road and I did so many times. But then I heard his voice deep down and moved back. I remember the old signs we used to see: "Jesus Saves". I often thought that is crazy it is more complex than that, but no, that sign says it all. Jesus really does save...now in this life and in the life to come.

There is something about each of us that wants to know what life is all about. More specifically we want to know what our life is all about. We search here and there and are told many things by many people. Our search goes on and on we ask that question many times. Some grow weary in that quest and give up to a life of meaningless. Too many say they have that answer and it turns out not to be true. But deep down we suspect that there is a God. So we watch those who say they know God and too often we are very disappointed. Yet in some we see that "spark of life"... that life that Godly people have. We watch and listen and one day God reveals himself. Then as we listen he speaks to us not just one time but over and over in many ways. We are surprised that God would know and care for us. We find ourselves changed and being transformed day by day for the better. We are amazed because it is not us causing the change. We are born again to a whole new life in God.

That was as well put as anything I have ever read on here.

You'd be surprised. There are tons of churches (and synagogues), and they all tend to draw capacity crowds.

I think people everywhere are searching for something which often they have no real clue about, just something to relieve that which ails them mentally or physically.

I heard this last year from a pretty cool person: "I searched for God in the synagogues and in the sanctuaries and I found him in my own heart." Good stuff, been there done that, bought the T shirt.

I have a friend who pastored in upstate New York until a few years ago. He called it a graveyard for pastors. Secularism, humanism, and liberalism are so firmly entrenched that everything is viewed through those lenses, and anyone who is actually devout in their faith is considered a lunatic. People go to church to make themselves feel better, not to worship the creator of the universe. I see this in my wife's family in Albany-Troy.

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I think you're probably painting with a pretty broad brush.

It isn't my painting, it is a friend who was a longtime pastor in upstate NY. What i have seen in my wife's family looks exactly like what he described.

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I have a friend who is probably moving to NYC from Dallas. We attend a very popular non-denom church here and she's "hoping" for something similar up there. Do you know of any such place you could tell me about? She's excited about her move, except for the pre-conceived belief about the lack of churches up there.

Too many people are like little caged animals running in a spinning cylinder...running...running...running...thinking... that there must be something.... up ahead. But all they ever see in more and more of the same old spinning cylinder. People keep saying run..run...run...there is something ahead but they never find "it". They grow weary old and tired having never found "it'.