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A Walk Down the Sawdust Trail I Definitely Never Saw Coming
My journey with the Pilgrim Church on Earth: Part 3
I ended the last episode of this series recounting my religious sojourn with the statement that at 30 years old I entered a Baptist church for the first time ever, and all because of a girl. That girl — who would become both my wife and my ex-wife, though I knew neither of these things at the time — had invited me to a friend’s wedding, an event that seemed safe enough. I mean, it’s not like the preacher gives a sermon at a wedding, right? I’ll give any Baptists reading this a few moments to stop laughing before I continue.
The pastor did indeed preach a full-blown sermon, and not just about “the two becoming one flesh” or “love never failing.” The guy preached about sin, death, Jesus, and redemption too, which I would normally have thought was weirdly out of place for the setting, except that the entire time I felt like he was talking directly to me. He even did an old-fashioned altar call at the end, which I resisted with little trouble.
I couldn’t get the experience out of my mind, though, and the next Sunday I was back at that same church, mainly to prove that the whole thing at the wedding had been a fluke. I figured he’d preach about tithing, I’d drop a ten into the collection plate, be square with…
