I remember it clearly.

It was the summer of 1951 and I was eleven years old.  Our family had moved back to rural Alabama from the coal fields of West Virginia.  For the four years up north our family had attended the little Methodist church that sat at the foot of the mountain by the railroad tracks.  I loved that little church and actually joined it when I was eight.  I recall that too.

For our four years in Affinity, WV, this was the only revival that the little church had.  I loved it. For reasons known only to the Father, I was enthralled by church and preachers and church services.  I loved Jesus, I felt, although I’m not sure how much I knew about him.

That night at the Methodist church, when the pastor gave the invitation for people to come to Jesus, I looked at my Mom as if to say, “Can I go?”  She nodded and I went.  I did not know what to do when I got to the preacher, and clearly neither did he.

“Kneel down here,” he said.  So I did.  My mind was blank, nothing going on. I’m just waiting for what comes next.

After a bit they stood up those who had responded and introduced us to the church.  I have no memory of what they said, but I recall vividly what happened the next Sunday.  We went to the altar where they put a few drops of water on our heads and gave us grape juice and crackers.  What they did not give us was an explanation as to what this was about. I was clueless and assume the other children were too.

Toward the end of that service, a little girl sitting with her preschooler brother spoke out loudly in church. “Jerry didn’t get his grape juice!”

So someone took him some.

Our family laughed about that for years.

I was now a member of the Affinity Methodist Church.

Now, fast forward to the summer of 1951.  Our church in Alabama–the family church for generations–was having a two-week long revival.  A Reverend Benton was the preacher.  A good crowd attended and a lot of people responded to his invitation to come to Jesus.

This particular night I’m sitting by myself, even though our family is in the building.  When the preacher ended his sermon and extended the invitation, everyone sang the most plaintive song ever written, “O Why Not Tonight?”  (“Tomorrow’s sun may never rise, to bless thy long deluded sight. This is the time, O then be wise. Be saved, O tonight.”)

I waited and stalled and the pressure kept building, until finally the dam burst and I gave in. I would come to Jesus.

I stepped into the aisle.

The practice was when you went to the altar others would accompany you to kneel and pray with you. That’s what happened.  By the time I arrived at the altar, there must have been six or eight people accompanying me.  The only one I recall is my Dad’s younger sister Lena Mae Noles.  We called her “Mae.”

I’m sobbing and saying “O God” over and over.  I can hear Mae saying in my ear, “Pray, Joe Neil, pray!”  But all I could do was to utter, “O God.”  Mae said quiietly, “You never were a bad boy, Joe.  You just weren’t saved.”  I recall thinking she was wrong, that even though I was only eleven, I knew I was a sinner.

After a bit, I stood up.  I remember nothing about what happened next except that I am feeling great.  The burden was lifted. My spirit soared.

I floated out of church that night.  Everything was different.  Looking around at the church people, now I found I loved them all.

I was not baptized when others were. For unknown reasons no one mentioned it to me. My older sister Patricia was baptized.

We went to church fairly regularly during my teen years.  But it was not until I was 19 and a transfer student to Birmingham-Southern College that I managed to get serious about my Christian faith.

That’s when I joined West End Baptist Church.

I was living for a brief time with my sister Patricia and her husband James Phelps.  They had a one-year-old baby, and had been transferred from Montgomery to Birmingham.  Trish asked if I would move from Berry College in Rome, GA, to ‘Southern.  They would provide room and board if I could stay with them while James traveled on his job.

At West End, I fell in with the greatest group of Christian young people I had ever known.  After we three had joined the church, Secretary Marguerite Dempsey called me .  “Joe, you will be baptized Sunday night.”  I will?  She didn’t ask, she told.  So, I was baptized that Sunday night.

For the three years I was in that church, a hundred things happened in my life, all of them good and forward-looking.  I was baptized, I had a loving church fellowship, I was later called into the ministry, I was married, and I was ordained.  All in that church.

I’ll write about my call into the ministry next.

I’ve heard preachers say, “I’ve sometimes doubted my salvation. But I’ve never doubted my call into the ministry.”  I suspect that’s because we were saved as children and called as adults.

Stay tuned.