First Church Attendence that I can Remember

As best I can recall, this is when I had my first church attendance and religious experience, when I had just turned five years of age, living on Walkers Ferry Road, just to the left, as seen from the road, and adjacent to Grandpa Beach’s farm, we had just moved out there from Worthington Avenue, Charlotte, NC.

There was a church that could be seen a little off to the left from papa’s front porch on the other side of the gravel road, not more than seven hundred feet away, known as Berryhill Baptist Church, a small wooden framed building, approximately 30’x60’, painted white with a bell tower and steeple, with two large front doors and a few large windows.

At this particular time it was a fairly warm Sunday and Mother decided I needed to go to church and attend the evening service, for none of the family had gone to church that day, so she made me clean up and head on down the road to the church, by myself, Grandpa was on his front porch, I remember waving to him as I went by, that was within eye sight of the house, not more than a 1,000 feet, we could even hear the church bell ringing.

As I got to the church I noticed the doors and windows were wide open and the old ladies were taking full advantage of the hand held church fans supplied by some funeral home. I took a backseat by the two front doors, backseat in relation to the podium, and soon we started the singing as the piano was playing. After some singing the Preacher started the sermon for a while, and then we went back to singing for a while, and then the sermon continued. The Preacher’s voice became higher pitched and louder and louder, the louder he got the more afraid I became and finally ran out to the road and hid in the ditch. I knew I could not go home just yet, because the service was not finished.

No one in the church ever missed me and they could not see me hiding in the ditch, because it was starting to get dark outside, but I could see and hear them quite clearly through the open doorway. A little bit later it was all over and I made my way home. I never told anybody the whole story of this incident and always figured that God and I could work things out for ourselves.

This picture was taken in 2003 from the exact spot, where I had hidden in the ditch.