How do so many men sit and listen to some man yell at them in front of their spouses and children? It wouldn’t happen in any other situation, what man would tolerate another man doing something like this, voluntarily?
Pastor Dawson was now in the last part of his message. His formula for Living the Christian Life was almost complete and clear enough for everyone to walk out with a feeling of guilt and motivation, driving each of them to the nearest steak house buffet for lunch and gossip.
The formula was very simple:
• Read Scripture- God-breathed, holy inspired word.
• Then Pray- Prepare hearts for guilt, ‘God, make their hearts open to see you, SPEAK to them!’ That along with long pauses and occasionally dramatic crescendo’s and diminuendo’s.
• Add Funny Anecdote- These are imperative, it makes you think it might be a fun message, but it’s a trick to make you listen and get NAILED by the WORD of God, breathed from his lipsAH!
• His Explanation of the Passage- Err on the side of caution rather than accuracy, that’s God-Breathed I’m sure.
• Scolding, Evoking Guilt- Pointing and yelling, lots of pointing and yelling.
• Illustration to Cause more Guilt and making sure the message really sticks to your conscience- You can’t play around with God’s breath.
• Altar Call- otherwise known as the get saved and confess or be on the outs of everyone else in house, also there is Hell you have to spend eternity in.
Once we were at the fits of screaming, scolding, you knew the end was near. The listing of sins was effective, surely there was one sin you could feel guilty about, the mention of your dirty little sin caused you to pay more attention. Pastor Richard Dawson’s voice became more powerful, adding a boisterous and loud staccato pattern that could make someone feel it’s ok to stand and confess your sin to hundreds of well-dressed Christians whose judgement and opinions you usually fear. This convincing voice resembled Jack Blades from Damn Yankees, or Ted Neely in Jesus Christ Superstar. It also served in waking all of those who stopped listening long before and began considering lunch plans.
Once the uncomfortable tingle of guilt made you fear God, or the Pastor (either way, the message was effective) – the lights will dim, the music will play softly.
‘RAISE YOUR HAND, with every eye closed and every head bowed admit you’re wrong (while no one is looking) and that you need Jesus (or me, either way)’ The Pastor’s eyes are closed in a wincing manner, like he is waiting for a booster shot, his arm’s are bent at the elbow and his fingers are wagging like spirit fingers on a cheer leader except at waste level.
‘Every eye is closed, folks, this is between you and the Lord just raise up that hand.’
He really sells this. Apparently Jesus needs to see hands raised. What’s worse is he sells you on showing Jesus your hands, but his next pitch is convincing you to walk down the aisle and show everyone that Jesus saw your hand.
It’s going to be an extra difficult sell this Sabbath, the sermon was on sexual sins. Apparently, Noah or someone spilled their seed on the ground and that was bad. Basically, this was the closest bible story for him to drag out everyone’s sexual sins. This caused Pastor Dawson to take long times loudly saying words like, FORNICATION! HOMO-EEEEE-ROTICA! MASTER……BATION! It would be funny if there weren’t so many people groaning in approval to his words. Oddly we are discouraged by the pastor from going to rated R films, but you can always come to church to hear a man scream and grind words into a microphone like- INTERNET POWWRN, MEN HAVING SEX WITH MMMAYN (men), A….BOM….INATION! and all of those in the sanctuary just grunt and nod.
I’ve always wondered what visitors who come in to our service late think when a 60 year-old stocky gray haired man leaning on the pulpit in exhaustion and wiping his mouth with a white handkerchief shouting with slow intentional pauses and enunciations ‘SEX WITH HOMOSEXUALS’, especially as the congregation reacted with agreement and praise. Sadly, some of them probably thought they were in the right place for once, and were then called abominations and no longer felt welcome.
Sunday night services are usually a wash in terms of attendance, but tonight’s service my father would play a short free concert. My father is a real hero around here.
Born Buster Chozenski. Once saved, by Jesus, he changed his name to B. Chozen, my father the walking Christian bumper sticker that contradicts itself. Dad is currently one of the highest selling contemporary Christian recording artist’s since there ever was such an atrocity as contemporary Christian music. He is as well known as Michel W. Smith, Geoff Moore and the Distance, Steven Curtis Chapman, and of course Ray Boltz. In fact, Ray credits my father with the concept for his song ‘Thank You for Giving to the Lord.’
When I was young, I never understood what it meant to be contemporary music. Why wasn’t there contemporary country or contemporary rap? My father’s long-time manager, Andrea, explained to me that it had more to do with the music being hip and cool, and not hymns. It was way for these musicians to convince people this music was not your typical church music, these songs sounded just like your favorite pop radio station but with more positive lyrics and words like holy, Jesus, give me more of your spirit.
‘Christians can rock, too! Jesus loves that conga beat!’ Andrea would say while doing a little air guitar in her over-sized yellow blazer with shoulder pads made for a linebacker.
Pastor Dawson was knee deep in the dry ice that started to flow from the smoke machines already set for my father’s concert. The stage was a tacky display of flash. A giant banner with B. Chozen’s face on it, pastel colors framing it. Pastor Dawson loved the extra effects, daring to veer out onto the catwalk shaped like a cross to hit his message home and bring the sinners to justice.
The 7,000 seat sanctuary was filled with fans. Many of which were wearing shirts from Dad’s past concert tours. The Tomorrow Tour came from his hit album of the same name. The album exposed him to the world and the tour proved very successful. His first hit was a little song called “Tomorrow”. It was a song about the after-life, which was the big selling point. We have Canon in D for Weddings, but there needed to be a simple and tasteful song for funerals, I have yet to attend one without this song being played. ‘Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow, you’ll be there, Tomorrow, it’s the very next day!!’ You may notice the song seems remarkably like a little orphan Annie number, with a few changes in the notes. Funny thing is, not a lot of other people picked up on this. My father has a habit of getting a chorus stuck in his head, turning it into a song, and calling it his. This is a very pleasant surprise to Christians who have sworn off secular music. The song seems remarkably catchy and familiar, being a ‘Christian Song’ they feel it is immoral not to support it. Unknowingly, my father rips off the catchier secular tunes and makes them ‘sacred’. How does he hear it? Mostly from T.V. commercials, my room, and his unsaved hairdresser who he has been ‘witnessing’ to from her chair for the last 10 years. My father is not purposely dishonest, he has every good intention in the world. My father is also very incapable of seeing the flaw in his own ways, and not because he doesn’t want to, he really just has no clue. To his credit the verses are completely different, they aren’t as catchy. Here are a few other examples. He wrote a very popular song about the devil’s influence called ‘He speaks in Lies’ which sounds remarkably like Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’. The truly disturbing song about Noah floating by in the Ark while the locals drown called ‘Hi there Dove’. It’s a slower, less soulful version of ‘Bye bye Love’ by Ray Charles. ‘Hi there Dove, Hi there happiness, Good bye loneliness, everyone else has died.’ I don’t see how this song was such a hit, nor do I understand why my father would write a song about something so unsettling.
There is a strange mentality in the church to overlook the awful and just chalk it up to God’s word and will.
A very large woman next to me is getting very emotional. It would be a real shame is if she was struggling with some of these sexual sins. Though she is shaking in a shirt from Dad’s sad attempt at a hip-hop album, ‘Raise the Truth’. I was in junior high when this came out. The song came with motions, too. Both palms facing upwards and lifted to resemble raising something. It soon became the answer to problems for most Christians in our church, if ever you had a problem with something you just need to ‘raise the truth’ and the hand motion would follow. They would always do it with a ‘oh well’ kind of smirk. This is sometimes still taught from this very pulpit. In the secular world ‘Raising the Roof’ had been around for at least a year and was starting to lose its flavor. So, those outside of the church just mocked them mercilessly. This caused even more ‘raising the truth’ motions as people felt persecuted, you’d think they would have seen it in a sporting event but it was done very differently by a huge number of mostly white middle-class protestants that take lessons from men in their late 50’s with feathered hair. I blame it on Andrea, my father’s manager, who was always a couple steps behind what was popular in culture. Dad took her advice on everything, which caused him to have a mullet when the side spike came in, and a side spike when the fade gained popularity. If a man like this sells 14 million cd’s and some 7 million Dvd’s of various concerts, how many churches and people is he also leading to a fashion disaster? I assure you, plenty. My father is now sporting a gold hoop earring in his left ear. She informed us that in his right ear it would imply he was gay.
Pastor Dawson just tapped his tongue with that minty breath stuff, its altar call time. Once the pastor offers the invitation, the song begins, and staff members come forward, manipulative genius. While you consider going forward it seems many others are moving and have made the bold move for them. They are counselors, planning to meet you at the front and guide you to a decision. Imagine the surprise when the person they are following, seemingly a fellow new convert, turns to them and asks, and why have you come forward today? How do they sleep at night? My father is playing the altar call song. This is a great song. This time he took a lot of familiar words but to a tune that sounds more like an old time hymn.
Come As You Are, child. Come As You Are. As he wants you to be near. As his friend. Don’t take your time, hurry. Leave your memories. The choice is yours, come now don’t be late. And then chorus ‘Here I come, Jesus. Here I come, Jesus. Hello, hello, hello, Hello!’ I enjoy watching people my age in the crowd look up listening to these lyrics and wonder where they heard them before, or why they seemed so familiar. Some of them tend to get it during the chorus. The big lady wants to get through to go forward. She is ready to confess all of her dirty secrets. I don’t think she is small enough to scoot on by. This is terrible. Pews are so inconvenient for larger people. She probably shouldn’t have sat in the middle. The church probably shouldn’t buy pews that are 25 yards long. Now I have to scoot the whole family out, which will bring a lot of attention on her. ’Nic, we have to move out and let her through.’ I am trying to be really quiet to bring as little attention to the large female fornicator being called to Christ through Nirvana and Pastor Axl Rose. ’What, just let her scoot be you. What’s the big deal? Just scoot. ‘My brother chose to make this difficult. He was difficult, and right now I hated him. And the continuous use of the word scoot didn’t offer me any more direction than I had before I asked him to move. I didn’t want to bring attention to the fact she was too big to merely scoot by. Just move, Nic, she really wants to go forward. And I am suddenly shoved into the pew by Nic. The belly, boobs, perspiration, and tears of this guilty woman pressed against me. I couldn’t help but wince and hoped she couldn’t see, which she certainly could not with her large boob covering my face like an oversize pillow. Her mammoth leg fat had pierced mine and began to fold over my knee. There was some scooting and grunting, and once she passed I saw my brother, his wife Mercy, and my nephew Christian in the aisle. They moved so that she could scoot, while I was smothered by every part of her. I hated my brother, right then. My nephew found it really funny, while my brother gave me a really disappointed eye for making a fuss. I hate my brother. Big lady made it forward. I said a prayer for the woman who was about to hear the unfortunate confession, and for the big lady. This was my first prayer of the day. It was sincere.
After the new sheep were shipped off to be tagged and dunked in the baptismal placed high above the stage, the show was about to begin. Pastor Dawson introduced my father, the crowd went wild. Good evening CHURCH! My father emphasized the last word when he wanted to get the crowd worked up, and it worked every time. Man he could work a crowd. Y’all ready to get busy for JESUS!? and the crowd roared. Strange choice of words after that sermon. Let me introduce you to some people before we begin tonight’s CELEBRATION! That was our cue. This is where the family does a light jog to the stage, and our father introduces us, his family. His “Chozen Ones”, and laughter ensues.
