The Reverend Jerry (Feb 18, 2011)
My next door neighbor at the state park in central Louisiana had a fire burning and was visiting with another RV’r, their southern accents prominent and friendly, so I stepped over and introduced myself and commented about the weather. One was doing most of the talking.
“I’m Reverend Jerry and this here is Bill,” said the talkative man pointing to his friend, a slim weather beaten older man sitting back in a camp chair sipping a Pepsi. “Supposed to be back in the 60s and 70s all next week. We have been here a few weeks. Last Friday it rained than dropped down in the 20s and iced up the trees pretty thick. These branches, (he pointed to pine branches piled here and there) came down with the ice. Been a cool stay, but we are headed out Friday,” he continued.
After exchanging the usual weather comparisons of Cushing and Louisiana, I asked him about being a minister.
“I’m a revivalist, a preacher who goes on the road holding revival meetings across the country. Since December, my wife and two sons, and I, have been pretty much just out on Saturdays and Sundays, but we start full time this coming weekend. We are booked full for months in advance across the south doing revival meetings.”
The Reverend Jerry was short, well rounded, a vigorous looking man with graying hair, mid 50ish, a very open and friendly man with a well modulated voice and a familiar southern accent. “You sound just like President Clinton,” I told him.
“Funny you would say that. I grew up in Hope Arkansas, same place as President Clinton—but he left before I was there, although I have met him. Other than his personal failing with that woman, I think he was a pretty good president, for helping people. We revival preachers are used to sinners; we all sin; sinners are the people want to reach. You know, if we were powerful or rich, we might get temptations we couldn’t handle either. You remember Matthew says in chapter 9, verse 13 ‘For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.’”
He had a large older motorized RV with a 5-year old Chevy minvan setup to tow behind. “I’ve been here for a few weeks. This park has the lake area closed; they charge half price, only $8 per night. The bathrooms are brand new with 6 separate rooms, shower, toilet and lots of room and privacy, pretty nice for a state park—a good place for home base for awhile” he added.
“My great grandpa and family got converted about 1900 at a big revival tent meeting. Do you do that kind of services?” I asked, wondering what a revivalist’s life was like and wanting to draw him out, without getting a sermon.
“Yes, once in a while during the summer we might go to a church where they have a tent rented and set up, but mostly we are invited to churches to hold a day to a week’s worth of services, preaching the gospel of salvation. We provide the music, the preaching and the church makes an effort to get people to come. We have a few baseball stadiums lined up, some hotel meeting rooms, big and small. We are scheduled out full time way into the summer, with more calls coming all the time. Right now is our break time”
“I preach about getting to heaven and staying out of hell and don’t get mired in the controversies that split churches. I stay out of any politics. I think Christians spend too much time worrying things that really don’t matter and not enough time loving their neighbors. I try to get people saved and delivered to a local church for safekeeping. If you think of the Billy Graham crusades, and you shrink it down a whole lot, you got my kind of work. We’ve been on the road 25 years now. Don’t know how much longer God wants me at it.”
“I play the piano, now it is an electronic one, and sing along with my wife and two sons. My boys (25 and 28) both have Downs Syndrome and have always lived with us. They sing with us and are part of the service.”
“We go in where we are invited. We get a share of the collection with a guarantee of enough to cover our costs. By living in an RV and trying to be careful with our money, we get by. In my business, you have to trust in God that He will look out for you. If He doesn’t, then we would know it is time to quit!”
“When we had our first boy 28 years ago, the doctor thought we should sign away our rights and let him be brought up in an institution so he wouldn’t wreck our lives. He and the nurse insisted that was the best thing to do. They pushed me hard. I got angry and slapped him and told him to wrap up the baby and we left and went home right away. He has been a blessing to us,” he said. (I didn’t get this statement exactly as he said it, but as he told it you could tell it was a regular part of a sermon, said with a controlled, practiced, emphasized voice that gave you a feeling he would be a dynamic speaker).
“When my wife got pregnant the second time, the doctor did an amniocentesis that said this boy would be normal. When he was born, the doctor told me he was normal. I took a first look at him, in my arms before the cord was cut, told the doctor ‘this boy has Downs too.’ They did the test and sure enough, he had it too.”
“The boys do fine with us. They spend a lot of time watching their favorite DVDs and that is fine. They pretty much can take care of themselves and help out some. They are adults in size, but really just children. They need us to guide them. We believe that everything that happens is part of God’s plan for us, so we just enjoy them and do the best we can for them.”
The next day, we talked some more. “Did you hear me yell an hour ago? No? Well, I was so excited I let out a holler. We got a deal to buy a bigger RV. The new one will have four bump-outs (versus one on the old one), separate bedrooms, and lots more space. It has a 500 Cummings diesel and 8 back wheels, two sets of duals. It will make things much more comfortable with extra room and more private space for each of us. We don’t have another home, just live in the RV year around. You know, those big rigs can cost up around $500-750 thousand. Got a good deal and it’s in good shape. It will make a difference for the boys to have more private room.”
“I already have a post office box in Montana, the state we claim for residency, and am going to license it there. Montana doesn’t have state income taxes and has some other advantages for transients like us. You gotta watch your money when you don’t have much of it!”
“Sometimes we would like to have a home and roots; but with this kind of life, we travel all across the country and having the RV works fine for now. We stay in state parks sometimes and other times in church parking lots or other places where we can get water and electricity. Someday we will settle down, but for now our calling is as traveling revivalists.”
I wanted to talk more to him, but they left sooner than expected to hold several days of services a few hundred miles away. Some folks have much more interesting lives than those of us who go to the office or milk the cows every day. However, my other neighbor, Bill, who had been quiet the while the Reverend Jerry talked sat down with me another afternoon and reminisced a little. I guessed him to be a spry mid 80s. He was a Louisianan, raised, and worked all his life in a nearby small town.
“Back in the 30s to 50s, I remember some summers when a few local churches, usually the fundamentalist ones like mine, Freewill Baptist, would get together and invite a revivalist in for meetings. The most interesting were the tent meetings. I’m old enough to remember a few of them. Ain’t the same nowadays as in the old days!”
“They’d setup a big tent that would hold a hundred or more people somewhere near a church or park, mostly on a bayou. Wooden planks for pews and a stage with a pulpit. Always in the dog days of August; hot, humid and buggy. The tent gave shade and rain protection. The walls were open to let air through and to give mosquitoes a clear shot at sinners, but could be dropped if it cooled down or stormed. When the Baptists ran the show, it was always by a lake or river for dunk’n baptisms on the last meeting.”
“The goal was to get different folks to come and get saved and join the church, but most of ‘em were regular church folks out for rejuvenation; you remember when you took your old black and white TV into the repair shop where they gave it a jolt of electricity to bring back the fading picture another year?”
“Each evening people gathered, the farmers coming in about 7 pm, others earlier. There was good music; a local choir and the family of the revivalist. He had to sing; his wife had to sing and any children had to join them. The elders supervised moving the piano and pump organ from the church to the tent for the week. The local choir and the congregation sang the old favorites; “The Old Rugged Cross,” “Til We Meet,” “Bringing in the Sheaves,” “Onward Christian Soldiers.”
“A good preacher got your emotions worked up; first he got you scared of eternal hellfire, burning and pain, and then described how wonderful heaven would be. You know, I remember the descriptions of hell, but I couldn’t ever picture heaven very good. I sort of figured it must be a place where our best times on earth would be happening all the time—even better, and we wouldn’t feel guilty about having a good time!”
“You know, I hear the Muslims promise seven virgins for those martyred for their faith. That is pretty concrete what heaven is like for them. Me, I got me one virgin and trained her and lived with her for 57 years now. Seems to me havin to do it 7 times ain’t no great reward,” he added with a grin.
“We already-saved folks tried not to feel prideful when we saw our more sinful neighbors show up for the meetings. There was food, lots of music and singing, and if the preacher was good, a real lively sermon each night for the week. If you was smart, you sat in the third row from the back on the inside aisle so the mosquitoes got fed on the edge people. Made it easy to have a coughing spell and duck out with the men going to the bushes for a nature call, cigarette and maybe a nip of moon.”
“You ducked back in, hoping your seat was available for the alter call. The preacher would have wound up and would be winding down, begging you to come forward and get saved. The choir sang something like “just as I am without one plea…” Elders went round the sinners and whispered encouragement to go forward and get saved. Usually, a few regulars started it off, those who felt like it didn’t stick last time, or had gotten so emotionally worked up they had to go to the front whatever the reason. Then a few drunks, already loaded, crying their way forward when the preacher said ‘Remember you saintly old mother and praying at her knee; she wants you to come forward.. do it for her.’ You might get a few regular people come too—that’s the kind that you wanted most. They all went to the front and knelt and repeated a prayer.”
“I wonder if the Reverend Jerry does that kind of revival meeting?” I asked after he finished. “ Did you get saved at a revival meeting?”
“I got saved when I was so little that I crawled to the altar in church. I got saved and toilet trained all at the same time!” laughed Bill. “I liked the tent meetings; they did rejuvenated me each summer. They were great entertainment; a week-long summer picnic where we took a break from farm work; had fresh made ice cream and pie every night and watched folks come together, and if we were lucky, listened to great preacher who could run your emotions up and down like a squirrel climbing a ‘simmon tree. I'm gonna find out where Reverend Jerry is headed next.”