Sombrero Galaxy: NASA/JPL-Caltech and The Hubble Heritage Team
Thank you for your many kind thoughts and prayers during this time. My mother is not doing well. She is in rehab, but other medical issues keep popping up. Her roommate got COVID. We needed to mask and gown, which confused her. I believe we are heading towards hospice care for her, and I may do it at home.
Update:
Here is the link to a Go Find Me started by Sallie’s family.
Granny can’t be buried in her church cemetery. It appears she ‘missed” some payments.
A reader sent me the following story. As you may well imagine, it struck a chord with me. This situation is making the news. By the time I finished reading the story, I, too, was fuming and called the church, but more on that shortly. Here is what the reader said:
Please check this story and see if it warrants exposure on your blog. Once I read this article, I was fuming.
The Christian Post wrote Thousands protest church’s decision to block granny from cemetery.
The family of the late grandmother, 82-year-old Alice Mae Garrison, who died on Aug. 30 in her lifelong Roanoke community, said she spent most of her life as a member of First Baptist Church Hollins, which is led by the Rev. Harvey Saunders.
I searched for the church in the SBC Directory, but it did not appear.
“Affectionately known as ‘Sallie,’ she accepted Christ at a young age when she joined First Baptist Church Hollins (FBCH) and quickly gravitated towards music. Throughout her music ministry, Sallie utilized her strong and powerful alto voice as she served on the FBCH Junior Choir, L. Lejoure Mass Choir, Senior Choir, and the melodic group known as the Vocaliers. She later organized the Garrison Family Choir and served some time as Youth Choir Director,” the late grandmother’s obituary explained.
The Roanoke Times weighed in at CASEY: Hollins-area church won’t permit grandmother’s burial in cemetery.
During more recent years, the longtime Baptist experienced a number of health challenges. Garrison was a large woman, and she was in and out of the hospital and rehab. On occasions she ventured out, it was with the help of another person — and a wheelchair or a walker, said her daughter and co-caregiver, Kathy Garrison.
Transactional churches: It’s all about the Benjamins.
Let’s see what the vaunted “Pastor” allegedly told the family when they said she only wanted to be buried in her dear church’s cemetery.
Kathy and her brother, Gregory Garrison, said the church’s pastor, the Rev. Harvey Saunders, told them their mother wasn’t a member of the church at the end of her life. The church had removed her from its membership rolls, apparently because Garrison had ceased tithing.
For the past six or seven years, Garrison hasn’t been attending services because of her infirmities. She still sent checks to the church — not every month, but sporadically. Kathy Garrison emailed me 22 images of checks her mother sent First Baptist Church of Hollins between 2016 and 2023. All were cashed.
Nineteen were for $70. One was for $10 and another was for $25. In all, they total $1,765. The most recent, for $400, was dated Jan. 3, 2023.
Even the NAACP got involved, but ‘Pastor” Saunders wouldn’t budge. He knows “It’s all about the Benjamins,” and he won’t change his transactional theology.
Brenda Hale, the longtime leader of Roanoke’s chapter of the NAACP, told me she tried to intercede with Rev. Saunders, but she was unable to change his mind about Garrison’s burial.
“She was baptized there. She was a vibrant member for years. She started a choir there. She was someone to be respected,” Hale told me. “People of integrity attended that church.
The transactional church pastor played the “You don’t know everything” card.
How many of you have been in that situation? I sure have. According to the Roanoke reporter:
Hale told me she heard a slightly different reason from Saunders as to why Garrison could not be buried in the cemetery, but it was vague. She said he told her, “You don’t know everything” surrounding the circumstances of Garrison’s church life.
It seems Sallie spoke her mind throughout her church life, and it appears the pastor didn’t take kindly to anyone asking questions. She sounds a lot like many of us.
Kathy and Gregory Garrison said they believed their mother, who was no kind of shrinking violet, had rubbed some church leaders the wrong way over the years because she was outspoken.
This statement from the daughter broke my heart.
It is crucial to highlight that our beloved mother’s absence from regular church attendance was not by choice but due to her failing health. She longed to attend services regularly, but physical limitations prevented it,” Alycia Garrison wrote.
…“And she lived on Social Security. With her meager income, she would send whatever money she could. The family has receipts to show she continued her membership. She was never even informed that [the church] had removed her as a member,” Hale said.
Gregory Garrison told the publication that his mother’s parents, four of her sisters, and three brothers who died earlier before here are all buried in First Baptist Church of Hollins cemetery with other extended family.
I left a message on the church’s machine because, apparently, Pastor Saunders is either ducking calls or is deep in prayer and can’t hear the phone.
I said I would raise the money and pay him his transaction fee of around $5000. I assured the voice machine that money would come as long as he acknowledged my call. Nasa, nothing, etc.
Please sign the change.org petition.
Justice for Our Beloved Mother: Grant Her Rightful Burial in Her Community
I tried to contribute some money, but the darn button wasn’t working or I am too stupid. I will keep trying.
Final thoughts
- Dear Sallie is a lot like me. Like her, I share my mind, but unlike her, I can’t sing.
- The pastor should be fired. Find a pastor who doesn’t believe in transactional Christianity.
- I continue to wait for a return phone call.
- Why does my stomach clench when I hear the word “Baptist?”
- This is too close to home for me. I bet my mother would have contributed to the church in honor of Sallie.
- I wish I could have heard Sallie sing.
- If any family member sees this, please let us know if she can be buried or if we can contribute.
- I can’t believe I had to write this post.
- The church’s Facebook is locked down, so I couldn’t leave a comment.
- Sign the petition. The small-minded pastor needs “encouragement” to act like a Christian.
“It seems Sallie spoke her mind throughout her church life, and it appears the pastor didn’t take kindly to anyone asking questions. She sounds a lot like many of us.”
Sallie would have made a great Wartburger! We are right to stand with those who are standing for her. To paraphrase a quote, wrong overcomes right when good people do nothing. There is nothing right about “Pastor’s” decision on this, no matter how he spins the offering plate.
“Why does my stomach clench when I hear the word “Baptist?””
Like the SBC mess we often blog about, it’s not a “Baptist” problem, it’s this particular bad-boy Baptist. I dare say that you can find such characters in every religious tribe … Baptists don’t have a corner on the market.
Dee, praying for your mother and for you … for wisdom in the days ahead.
Max,
Thank you. It’s been tough.
When I got an email about this story, I knew dee would want to cover it. It’s just so… Baptist. I’m really glad it got the coverage it did, because it really shows how little loyalty churches and pastors have to members, even though they expect lifelong devoted loyalty from members.
I have been thinking about you and your mom, dee. Hugs.
BTW, there’s GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/grant-our-matriarch-burial-in-her-community
Praying for strength and peace for you and your mom, Dee.
So in my neck of the woods, most churches do not have a cemetery, and most cemeteries are not associated with a church.
I totally get wanting to be buried close to family.
But can someone explain, what on earth is the point of denying someone burial in a particular cemetery? It’s not like they’re going to continue to tithe after they’re dead. And it just alienates their family (so no hope of ever getting their tithe dollars, either). (Is it safe to assume Grandma Sallie’s children and grandchildren don’t attend the church?)
Like I’ve said more than a few times, this kind of ‘religion’ will strip you (generic you) of your humanity.
Here’s what Jesus had to say about these kinds of guys:
27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. 28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
Matthew 23:27-28
Harvey Saunders seems to have been pastor of the church since 2007.
It also seems that many in her family including parents, 7 siblings are buried in the graveyard.
Sarah (aka Wild Honey),
Neither Saunders nor the church has responded, so I have no idea.
I have a friend who was a volunteer carer for her church cemetary. The (twentysomething) pastor and a deacon sold the rest of the cemetary to the chicken farm next door, with some pressure to the local zoning committee who has made a number of questionable choices that end up in the local paper, and the person plopped chicken houses right next to her family plot. It stinks. The members tried to stop it, but the new pastor and deacon are fans the idea that the members shouldn’t have any authority over church decisions anymore, despite that being a longstanding principle of their church.
The church stinks now. As I understand it, the pastor gave himself a raise with the money with the support of the deacon. I’m not sure what the deacon got out of it, but I’m betting there’s something. The members despise the stink in the church. Last I heard, what few members were left were leaving and the pastor was insisting they had to come back and keep tithing.
I showed my friend some of the posts on this site about New Calvinst “authority” and church takeovers and she said it sounded a lot like him. She wanted to stay in that church, where she had devoted her entire life, but I tried to point out that it’s not the same church anymore and doesn’t have loyalty to her or the other members. She understandably retired during the pandemic, so I hadn’t heard from her since, but I suspect the same shenanigans are going on.
This all to say, I bet there’s a financial reason. When I worked for a municipality, I saw a lot of people trying to work backdoor deals. Most of them were caught and managed, but some of them weren’t when they should have been (one situation made me finally quit).
“You cannot serve both God and money.” Matt. 6.24
We cannot serve God and mammon (Aramaic for money or possessions).
Jesus exposes mammon, revealing its demonic power to hold us in slavery. Money is supposed to be a tool we use for good.
This got me interested in the issue of church cemetaries, so I did some mild searching. Found a few recent articles. The Washington Post one was deeply disturbing to me. All seemed to indicate a modern lack of respect for graves or the living family members who maintain those graves, which is troubling.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/06/29/black-cemetery-sale-moses-macedonia/
https://www.courthousenews.com/the-church-closed-what-happens-to-its-graveyard/
https://www.phillyburbs.com/story/news/2020/06/23/family-bristol-church-cemetery-moved-graves-without-notice-permission/112782694/
I read about this shortly after it 1st happened. There aren’t any printable words that describe how low this pastor is on the totem of humanity, and the non-printable ones I can think of don’t seem to suffice either.
Folks back in the day wouldn’t have tolerated nonsense like this. That “pastor” would have been given a good ‘ol fashioned tar, feathering, and be run out of town.
Thx for this post and your work, Dee.
God bless you and your family. Praying.
TWW is a lampstand in God’s kingdom.
OTOH, running the church on money is never the church.
From Pentecost to present day, church is neither by might nor by money but by God’s Spirit, Jesus made very clear.
Never pay for church, the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Not at Pentecost, not now. HS gifts are not salaried careers, according to the NT.
The guy demanding payment is not a pastor and obviously not gifted by the Holy Spirit with pastoring. Pity his soul in Eternity, as the thirsty rich man begged Lazarus for a sip of water. That chasm could not be crossed. Too late.
Maybe the pastor is not rich. But requiring payment for God’s gifts via His Holy Spirit is even more corrupt than the rich man refusing to help Lazarus on Earth. The selfish rich end up in the other place for Eternity.
Choices on Earth bring Eternal consequences, Jesus promised. Hebrews 11. Relief for the faithful. No relief for the unfaithful.
Back in the day, there were other corruptions: priests and pastors violating youth and children, for example.
It seems, each day has its own cons and faithful.
All the way back to Jesus’s day. The religious elite, for example.
Maybe dee or others would have more insight into this, but I think incorporating churches legally as nonprofits has created a lot of loopholes that remove member autonomy. Members don’t have that kind of control anymore.
Personally, I think people should just leave, as their presence and pocketbooks are necessary for those churches to continue, but it’s hard to let go of institutions that you’ve supported your whole life.
Sounds to me like this preacher does not understand the widow’s mite.
It is … I was there. But it became a matter of participating in SBC’s NeoCal rebellion or following Jesus out of it (after being an SBC for 70 years). As a non-Calvinist, SBC membership now means New Calvinist endorsement by continuing to deposit tithes in the offering plate … the NeoCals are clearly in control of all SBC entities and spending millions to advance the NeoCal kingdom.
I realize my decision was different than that faced by the members of Ms. Sallie’s church … but the “Pastor” is clearly not in God’s will.
“These people (the church leaders) are a stench in my nostrils, an acrid smell that never goes away” (Isaiah 65:5)
Continuing to fume.
Pastor is sending a message to the living, not the dead: “Remember Ms. Sallie … if you want to keep your spot in the cemetery, pay up!”
I have linked to this at the top of the post. Thank you!!!
Make an Example of one and a hundred will pay up and then some.
All about the Benjamins, baby.
Agreed. In the vastness of God’s Universe, there are some debts that are not to be reckoned.
The ‘greed’ of some overwhelms their vision and kills something in their souls of humane compassion. They are victims of their own schemes which consume too much of their humanity in a world where Christ rules from the Cross . . . He was not ‘enough’ for them. The getting of ‘more’ $$$ left little room for Christ Crucified in their lives.
Then what keeps these people enslaved to these kinds of “pastors”?
Any ideas?
Muff Potter,
Convincing the pew peons that their “specific church” is the “correct way”….
I know I saw it growing up…. And what made me somewhat cynical was as I went to a variety of schools, and experienced a variety of churches, and “para church” groups I began to see that at the core, they can no all have the “correct doctrine”…. For example, I would like to see “papa chuck” of Calvary Chapel locked in a room with one of these rapid Neo Cal’s….
I suggest this is way as you go more down the “cult” rabbit hole, the more the cult trys to isolate you from reality…. Keep you from “opening your eyes and ears”
“I’m not leaving ‘MY’ church no matter what” … “all my family & friends go there” … “I’ve given too many greenbacks to this place over the years to leave it behind” … “the chicken dinners are great!” … “the bad-boy pastor will eventually move on” … “I’m afraid that I’ll be kicked out of the cemetery if I leave” … etc. etc.
ishy,
Thanks, ishy, I read the articles. That’s disturbing.
Folks back in the day “would have and did” tolerated nonsense like this. Broken humanity has been with us since Adam and Eve; Cain and Able. There are bad pastors, there are bad congregants through-out the world. It’s not always easy to tell
And don’t forget; God’s people have always been trying to do away with the true prophets.
Finally what I read on the internet I take with a grain of salt. You never know the full story but God does and He’s always just.
Max,
Tolling for the aching whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones and worse
And for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashin’
Bob Dylan -1964-
The Byrds did an excellent cover of Dylan’s song way back in ’65:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v99HbgVHD5Y
Seen from his point of view, he knows his behaviours have been predicted in Scripture so that is why his line is “not my will o Lord but Thine own predestinatarian one”.
Simple. The people who attend these churches like it.
Christianity is not a democracy. It’s a theocracy with god as king & the priests as his representatives.
They’ll complain but never do anything about it because it’s the way they roll.
God seems cool with it.
dee,
It was honestly kinda dumb on the pastor’s part to agree to the chicken houses. My friend believed, and I think I agree, that the deacon was in his ear telling him how much money the church would get. But if you’ve never driven past chicken houses, it’s a terrible, terrible stink. Maybe the deacon convinced the pastor that with the money, they could move the church to a new location, I dunno, or this kid just didn’t know how badly chicken houses smelled and thought it wouldn’t affect the church itself.
Watchman Nee called it, “Spiritual Reality or Obsession”.
Spiritual reality is acknowledging God.
Obsession is convincing oneself that fakery is true.
Humanists cut God’s divine interactions with man out of the picture. Even Baptists do that. Follow their rules, like Granny tithing, and everything turns out well.
Cultists create false realities with demons and fake miracles at will.
Nee acknowledged both miracles and obsessive fakery.
God is present, IMHO, on His terms, which are love and His moral, just, and yet grace abundant character.
We neither limit nor control God. Beware of churches’ attempts to limit and control God.
There is no middleman.
Throughout church history, the counterfeit has always mingled with the genuine. It’s just too much of a challenge for the average churchgoer to discern the difference. Thus, the enemy of the church – the great deceiver – has an easy path to power and control.
“It seems Sallie spoke her mind throughout her church life, and it appears the pastor didn’t take kindly to anyone asking questions.”
It should be clear to all by now that Ms. Sallie was right to question “Pastor”!
No.
Ms. Sallie was the pastor.
Off topic a wee bit, but when we first decided to move to the Ozarks we joked whenever we saw a place that looked just too good to be true that we “better locate the chicken farm.” One of the first we saw seemed really nice. But we also drove the dead end dirt road it sat on and sure enough at the end, about 1/4 mile from the house, was a small chicken farm. Small, but with obvious signs of expansion underway. As in room for at least 4 more large chicken houses on that nice new pad. We figured between the stink and the truck traffic on that dirt road it was obvious why it was for sale.
We passed on that one.
I sincerely doubt that God is cool with it.
He’s just not pissed off enough yet.
IMHO, much of the American church is reaching the tipping point with God.
Sorta like many churches … always look ’round the bend and over the hill … things are often not what they seem with first impression.
In most Baptist churches, women are doing the work of a pastor without the title. They visit folks in nursing homes, pray for the sick, take food to shut-ins, read the Bible to those who can’t, bind up the brokenhearted, and more. If it weren’t for faithful Baptist women keeping things together, many rural churches would have closed their doors years ago.
So this dear “pastor” was not concerned that a member’s health was frail and they could not attend church anymore, but attendance records were kept my weekly money received. The loop hole to keep a sweet old lady out of a graveyard.
Extending the conversation, not challenging you. While God left humans in charge of day-to-day operations, sermons frequently point to two possible means of correcting injustice:
1. The bad person will be punished after they die, so nobody should try too hard to achieve earthly fairness
—or—
2. God will punish entire nations, sweeping up the innocent many along with the powerful and evil few
Personally, I’d like to see a bit more earthly justice and a little less reliance on popular versions of the vengeful God. The Bible does include rules and laws, fines and other earthly punishments, as well as stories about judges, just and unjust rulers, and so on.
Smiting is overrated.
Too much drama and too little Jesus in most churches these days.
At this point I don’t think “Pastor” will be buried in the church cemetery.
This situation hits much too close to home for me. Not so much about the benjamins, but about church “authority” mattering more than real people. When my mother died, she was nearly 90 years old. She had attended and been a member of a single church for 86 of those years. She taught Sunday school for at least 30 years, had been a deacon, and had served as missions treasurer for over 20 years. When she found herself a widow with four young children, she continued to teach Sunday school and to tithe from her limited survivors benefit income. She attended EVERY Sunday for decades, except for the last two months of her life, when she was discovered to have cancer and elected hospice care. When she died, she was the oldest member and had been a member longer than anyone else in the church’s records.
During those two months of her life, the pastor, facing his own health problems, submitted his resignation. He had been her pastor for nearly a quarter century. He visited her several times at home during her illness, but his last day as pastor was about 10 days before she died.
When we attempted to follow her wishes for her memorial, we hit a wall. She wanted her pastor to lead her memorial service at the church. We were informed that the rules of presbytery did not permit that pastor to return to the church unless he was explicitly invited by the new permanent pastor. But there was no new pastor, nor was there an interim pastor yet designated. The presbytery had scheduled a “pastor of the week” for at least two months. We were told flatly that we could either have the memorial at the church, officiated by the circuit-rider of the week, or take her service elsewhere if we wanted “her” pastor involved. We had no idea when or where her memorial would be held. We couldn’t publish an obituary. After three painful days and miserable interactions with presbytery, a family friend in another church found out that his associate pastor was scheduled to be the pastor of the week the following Sunday. The friend pleaded our case with this person. That associate pastor deemed it within his authority to invite the recently resigned pastor to “participate,” and then graciously invited my siblings and me to sit with him for several hours to shed our tears, share our stories, and learn all he could about the woman whose memorial he was officially responsible for officiating. We didn’t discover until after the memorial service that the church had not even notified its own membership of my mother’s death.Some missed her memorial, while others found out from a church bulletin over a week later.
That church was my mother’s only church home. My siblings and I grew up in that church, and two of us were married there. It’s been 12 years, and it’s still painful to describe what we experienced, and how our mother’s faithful, lifelong service to that church was cast aside for “policy.” She didn’t matter enough.
Cassie in Chapel Hill,
I am so very sorry that happened. It’s lovely that the pastor helped, but plans should have been worked out well and lovingly from the start.
Unfortunately I’ve heard too many stories about churches that forget members who worshiped and served for decades and then had to stop attending due to infirmity.
She matters.
She matters greatly.
She matters to you, to those who knew and loved her, and to God.
That should never have happened. It was wrong.
I am sorry for you and those who loved your mom.
Ok. But the only time there is justice is when people act. Whatever their inspiration.
If there is a god, it acts through people.
“Tell me,” replied Jesus, “why do you break God’s commandment through your tradition? … your tradition empties the commandment of God of all its meaning.” (Matthew 15)
“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He [Jesus] said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. ‘ This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’.” (Matthew 22:36-40)
Love would cast aside “policy” to honor lifelong service in the Body of Christ. Your mother mattered in God’s eyes.
When that happens, I have a feeling that God forgets those churches.
Very much agreed.
And probably the best example of this was William Wilberforce and his fight to abolish the slave trade.
That’s compatible with the words of Teresa of Avila:
“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”
Travesty.
When “church” is no longer church.
Her legacy is written in the Book of Life but denied by gatekeepers of an org gone wrong.
Jesus, our Lord, was executed by religious leaders gone awry. Jesus was then resurrected to sit at the right hand of God.
But she’s ROMISH!
I’m in total agreement.
I never meant to imply that God’s toolbox contains only grapes of wrath.
Still though, history teaches that God’s long suffering only goes so far.
The inertia is huge, and yet sometimes a sand grain can tip the scales.
Dee, Thanks on making your readers aware of this travesty. Your warnings on church membership is quite prophetic; 9/11/23 blog et ot. 🙂 This CEO/CFO/Pastor is a true example of a pharisaical church; greater focus on man-made rules and required tithes rather than grace and freewill offering. And if we don’t know the whole story; what about forgiveness 70×7. What a rotten testimony and stench to the outside world made public on both local and national media and worldwide via the internet.
And whose plan would that be? The enemy of the church rejoices when the precious name of Jesus is trampled in the street by the church. Things like this give the world yet another reason to say “See, there’s nothing to it.”