At the height of the charismatic movement our church (the church my dad pastor-ed) was moving right along. We were seeing people saved and lives changed. I was only ten or eleven so my memory is vague. My dad was so excited to have his best friend from seminary come and preach a time of revival at our church. His best friend was a protégé as an evangelist and a mere follower in his faith. Little did we know that the time our church had as a whole was short and the clock was ticking.
Excitement was in the air and the smell of Clorox filled our church. You see, when you serve at a Hispanic Baptist church, clean time means Clorox time. The people of our church, all with busy hands and altered minds, had been in deep thought and prayer for this weekend of revival. The banner outside our church read, “Revival Services. Friday through Sunday. 6 P.M. Juan de la Garza preaching.”, or something like that. Just look at any revival banner at any Baptist church and it usually reads that way. Fliers were sent and the people of our church were living, breathing billboards for this one weekend. The night had finally arrived and people filled the building being welcomed and ushered in not knowing that they would be a part of something life changing, at least for me. The pews were full and the nursery bursting at the seams. This was an exciting time at our church and with numbers comes revival, or so we thought. You could hear all of the wood pews creak and crack as every body in the house sat down simultaneously and all of our heads shifted from the piano to the pulpit in unison. “I’m honored for all of you to meet my best friend, Juan de la Garza.” My dad’s excitement read by the tears in his eyes and the joy on his face. The pulpit was cleared and a few seconds of silence reassured us that we were doing the right thing.
Seconds turned to minutes and minutes into hours. The words “Holy Spirit” were translated as “genie in a bottle” that night and this salesman had come to sell his product. (I’m just now realizing how hard this is to write without getting emotional.) Pressured conviction lay heavy in the room and tears were now flowing steadily. It was a weird phenomenon that night, one I could never describe as people dropped like flies to the floor. One after the other someone would fall, lay on the floor, vulnerable and full of emotion after sense entered their mind. It was hard for my mind to conceive what was happening. The conversation of “the charismatic movement” dominated the prior weeks at our house and now it was happening before our eyes.
The night continued on and the floor of the church mirrored the last day of the civil war. My dad had put me in charge of the projector, the old school kind, so I was hard at work as we sang song after song. Finally, the smoke arose, figuratively speaking and the salesman exited the room. Division set in and my family was left to pick up the pieces. News of this happening spread like wildfire around the local Baptist community and my dad’s job hung in the balance. The night everything went down, (excuse my slang) I remember riding home with my mom. Her jaw clinched tight and her silence communicated that my sister and I were only to speak when spoken to. The light of the golden arches filled the car and my mom ordered our supper quickly and in just one breath. The ten mile ride home seemed like an eternity as I watched the stripes on the road fly by and become one. Confusion and questions collided in my head as my mom and dad talked very loudly in the living room. For some reason that night my mom asked my sister and I to sleep in their room. I stared at the light that seeped under the door and watched their shadows pace through the living room. I listened to the soft rhythmic inhale and exhale of my sister echo next to me. “I’ll take the kids if I have to because I can’t stand for this.” My mom said firmly. “Mosito, (my dads pet name for my mom) you know I love you. I don’t know what to do. The church will fall apart. “ My dad responded. My Mom ended the conversation by saying, “it’s me or this church, Ricardo, choose one. “
