A huge part of my childhood was the annual Barbecue Festival. It was one claim to fame that my small town had. We didn’t have much. We had the bluegrass museum, a big river hotel named the Executive Inn, high levels of illiteracy, and the International Bar-B-Q Festival. It was one of my favorite times of the year. There would always be inflatables, always live music, and, of course, always good ole’ barbecue. For our little town there was an influx of vendors and, surprisingly, tourists seeking great food and fun times (however, they were probably folks from neighboring counties). I remember as a kid wandering from stall to stall, looking through the wears of these traveling artisans, my eye ever drawn to the toy swords. I remember watching the Goldie’s Opry perform every year on Friday night. There was always seventeen different food vendors lined up beside each other, all essentially selling the same thing, each offering novelty cups to grab your business. Every Saturday our church hosted the free inflatables, contrasting with the carnival at the other end of the road. And of course there was the Ohio River, giving the perfect back drop to the whole festival. It was a magical time.
As I grew older, the magic started to fade. The curious vendors transformed into con-artist, trying to turn a quick buck on cheap goods from China. The food vendors’ novelty cups became not worth buying. Goldie’s Opry stopped performing. The Church inflatable park became a volunteer position instead of a new place to play. I began to watch parking lots for money to help pay for summer camp. There was still live music though and if I found some friends, it became more enjoyable. And maybe it was the fact that I was bigger, but the festival seemed to be on the decline as I grew older. Not as many vendors were there. The Executive Inn was torn down. The riverfront property was undergoing huge revitalization construction. It always seemed to rain. However, it remained a huge part of my childhood, so I always made it a point to go and, at very least, get a barbecue sandwich.
Once I left for college and my parents moved to Minnesota, I wasn’t sure if I’d every go back to the Barbecue Festival. I only went to school and hour away, but I didn’t want to go to it by myself. My freshman year, though, I convinced my girlfriend at the time to go with me. I believe I sold it as a “cultural experience.” So we drove the hour to the festival, heading right into a thunderhead. When we arrived, it was pouring. Most of the events were canceled, many of the vendors had called it a day, and the barbecue cook-off had been postponed due to inclement weather. I felt horrible I had dragged my girlfriend all the way here to only find out the rain had shut down the festival. We went and found a barbecue stand that was open and after then finding a place that would sell us a funnel cake, we called it a wash. Of course, when we got back to the car, the skies were finally opening up to reveal a beautiful golden sunset. My girlfriend snapped a couple photos and we headed back to college.
The next year, I needed it to be different. I had switched to a new friend group and a hand full of them were willing to oblige me (after incessant sales pitches and some nagging). I believe it was two car loads of us who caravanned up to the festival from our college. This year, thank goodness, it wasn’t raining although I do remember it being a little damp as though it had rained earlier that day. We walked around to several different stalls, ate a barbecue sandwich and then started meandering around the newly finished river walk.
Some things to note about this friend group of mine. We were all raised in the church, most (if not all) of us coming from conservative southern baptist churches. We had all expressed our distaste for that belief system in some form. Most of us still felt evangelicalism was right for us. However, my sophomore year, I had began to heavily question the merits of evangelization after being coaxed by the campus ministry I was apart of, to do it to people.
The first time I shared my faith in college was with one of my best friend from my freshman year. We sat in Subway as I laid out the tenants of my faith. I'm pretty sure I used the question that the ministry had told me to use: “If you were to die right now, do you think you would spend eternity in heaven or hell?” followed by, “Why should God let you into heaven?” Hook, line, and sinker, right? Wrong. I remember in my mind thinking “Perfect. I know exactly what to say to each of his responses to these questions. And then he will accept Christ and I will be the one who brought him there.” It didn’t work that way at all. Instead I pissed a good friend off. He didn’t talk to me for a week. I figured I must have said the wrong thing or something. The more I did it and watched it done, the more I realized that it was stupid. It was uncomfortable, it had a low success rate, and even when the person said the prayer, who’s to say that they even really understood what was "happening." Did they know what they were agreeing to? I thought about it and realized, when I “became a Christian,” I had no idea what I was agreeing to either.
Needless to say, my sophomore year leading up to this Barbecue Fest, I had decided I was not a fan of evangelism or conservative Christianity for that matter. I thought Calvinism was wrong, the idea of a one true Christ was a farce, and that hell might not even be real. But here we are at the Barbecue fest. My friends and I. Another thing you should know about my friends, most of them were hippies. Really, we were just eclectic looking, but by looking at us, one could probably guess we listened to Mumford and Sons and bathed once a week. It didn’t help either that half of us had taken off our shoes and were walking around barefoot. The girls were wearing maxi skirts and Punjabi pants and us guys were wearing skinny jeans and band t-shirts (and I’m sure a flannel had made it into the mix as well). We made seats on a stone wall and sat around and talked to each other. My friend Bobby and I smoked clove cigarettes together while we talked. That’s when I noticed two men approaching. One man looked to be in his late fifties while the other man, much younger, appeared to be in his late twenties. They made a b-line for us, the wild looking group. Their eyes glinted with determination, as though they wanted to sell us something. They started with a greeting, asking us if we had a few moments to talk. I cringed. I knew exactly where this was going because I had done it before. The back pocket bibles came out and I tried to keep a smile on my face.
The older man stood behind the younger guy as he began to speak to me and the three other friends closest to me. I tried to stop him by saying, “We are already Christians,” but that wasn’t good enough for him. That took me by surprise. He continued to run through his belief system. I again tried to explain that we were all involved with campus ministries and that I was a religious studies major so we knew the whole 'schpill' he was giving us. He persisted nonetheless. I assumed he must’ve had to finish or something but I was sick of being ignored. It would have been totally acceptable by me for him to open up a conversation with me about belief systems. However, I realized that instead of talking to me he was only talking at me. This didn’t sit well with me. I rolled my eyes and turned to a friend who was not apart of this man’s target audience.
I was disgusted. I was disgusted by this guys actions towards a “fellow believer.” I was frustrated that he had picked us out, assuming that, based on how we looked, we were the ones who needed saving. Maybe it’s frustration that he saw us as messed up, like we were these sinners who probably did drugs and needed Jesus in our lives. But I was most disgusted that this man had been me. I had been this guy the past two years. I had thought I was better than others because I had this secret knowledge that others weren’t privied to. In turn, I was responsible for sharing that knowledge with all people in order to save them. I was disgusted with myself, because deep down I knew I thought I could be peoples savior. When these two men tried to evangelize to us, I saw my own flaws in their approach. The motivation I had seen before in myself and those who were mentoring me. I guess I had been told so long I needed to be like Jesus that now I wanted to be the divine aspects of Jesus. I wanted to be God. I wanted to be in control. In this interaction, I saw myself. I was reminded of the process of prayer before going to evangelize. I was reminded of the times I had preached at people. I was reminded of the judgements I had passed upon people. I was reminded of the rigidity of my delivery. I was reminded of the rejection followed by the reassurance that the next evangelical would do the trick. “You were tasked with planting the seed,” I imagine is what the older man said to the younger as they walked away.
Little did this man know he had indeed helped a plant to come one step closer to flowering within me. This however had been a plant that pushed me away from Evangelical Christianity and rather toward a belief in a God who was loving and accepting of all people no matter what. This God was so great that he didn’t need his followers help to save people because he knew such a concept would harbor within each person a need to become saviors themselves. If only those men knew what they really did, they would probably regret coming up to us at the Barbecue Festival. But I am so thankful for the experience. It showed me what it was like to be on the receiving end of evangelism and how problematic it is.
So after the men walked away, I scoffed to my friends. Surprisingly, I was met with friends who thought that it was the coolest thing ever. I was shocked. “Did you guys not go through the same experience I just did?” I asked. They all responded with praise for the men. I asked them why they thought that these men had targeted us. Some said because we were younger, another said because we were a group of people. None of them saw it as I did, that these men saw us as flawed individuals. Perhaps I took greater offense because this was my home town, where I had grown up going to church every weekend. Nonetheless, we continued with our night at the barbecue festival.
That was my last time going to the festival and I don’t foresee myself returning anytime soon. I am truly thankful for the experience though. It showed me that I didn’t ever want to evangelize to people like that again. I figured that if I were to ever tell “the Gospel”, the “good news”, it would be only through my good news, my gospel, my story of encountering the Divine. What’s the point of telling someone that God will save them and change their life while only giving reference to the Bible? If you really want to show the power of God share your experiences and then let the person decide if they have had similar experiences. Be ok with them having other beliefs about the divine. I’ll leave with this, if God is truly infinite, then wouldn’t it make sense for there to be more than one perception of the Divine?
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