It was 1985 in Dallas Texas and the day before I had given a speech to the annual meeting of the Women’s Missionary Union of the Southern Baptist Convention. Dr. Russell Bennett was my boss in those days and we became friends playing racket ball together. He was a terrible racket ball player but he was the boss.
I was the 28 year old Professional Christian in charge of the Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel in the inner city of Louisville, Kentucky. Over the past few years the broken down little congregation had taken off. It was this funky mixture of little old ladies, homeless people, kids from the Projects and radical seminarians. We were forever doing crazy things that most churches would never do … like turning Sunday School rooms into apartments and letting homeless people live in them.
We ended up getting a lot of publicity and then the Baptists sent people to do magazine articles and videos of us and such. Then some of the homeless people started getting famous too. Chester, an old homeless guy and babysitter of my children, did this video showing them where he used to live in garbage dump and then sitting on the bed of his Sunday School room turned into an apartment.
Kristen used that tape a few years so that she could record “Dirty Dancing” on top of it. I could have killed her! She could have taped Monty Python over but “Dirty Dancing”? Jesus.
Anyway I got invited to be one of the speakers at the annual convention of Baptists. In those days the fundamentalists had started a hostile takeover of perfectly good religion. But they were fundamentalist so there is no talking to them. Once they make up their minds and convince themselves that God told them to do it, they’re pretty much out of control. Like terrorists.
So Russell called me and asked me what I was wearing to give this speech in Dallas in front of a few thousand people. It was a good question. I was a pioneer in the “Kroger” look…like a bag boy. There were bag ladies in those days so I was a bag boy in solidarity with them…long sleeve button down shirt, sock tie and blue jeans. I was styling.
Jeff Street had a clothes closet that Grace Nickens kept organized and it was full of suits. You’d be surprised how many suits are donated to homeless shelters as though dressing them for success means everything. I told Russell I’d find a suit in the clothes closet.
The next day he kidnapped me and took to a better part of Louisville where there are these people called tailors. Who knew? So while I cussed, kicked and screamed, Russell made me be fitted for a new suit. It was the first time that I’d ever been felt up by a guy.
Russell was an important man so he kept looking at his watch. He had places to be. People to see! So after the measurements were taken and the suit was being made for my speech, he gave me money to pick out the shoes to go with the suit and he left.
I used to the money to buy an ear ring. Damn Baptists telling me what to do!
But it all worked out fine. I showed up in Dallas in a three piece suit with an ear ring. I got shoes from the clothes closet. And I ended up giving a hell of a speech! I mostly talked about Chester and how cool he was, how the fundamentalists were really ruining things and that Jesus would rather everybody hang around Chester that fight about religion.
When you give a speech in front of a few thousand the lights are blinding. I could only make out people in the first couple of rows. And I kept getting standing ovations. And there was this one woman. She was older but a proud Baptist lady. Whenever the applause came she was the only one I could see but I can see her to this day …frosted hair piled on top of her head, beige dress with matching beige purse clapping and smiling. I love that woman because she represented …God’s affirmation of craziness!
The next day was the Southern Baptist Convention and I was on a roll. Charles Stanley was in charge though I can’t recall if was President or conducting his own terrorist activities. So he was saying something that excluded the poor and I felt that I needed to say something.
I stood in line and then had my chance and …while the details are fuzzy now…I may have started giving my speech again. I was good though. I wanted to sit down and notes on myself.
Then somebody standing in line next to me, I think it was Bert Breland who was Pastor of some other church in Louisville, said, “Micheal, he just told you to shut up. You should probably shut up.”
I turned and said into microphone, “Really? He told me to shut up?” It made me feel good!
But you know how Baptists are. Somebody else had grabbed the microphone and was making this suggestion for a by-laws change to the Bible. He wanted it say “Jesus called us to count his sheep …not to feed them.”
He did have a nice suit on though.
So that was that. You can’t make stuff up.
And if you don’t believe me, “Shhhhhuuuuu!”
