(This is sort of a preface to the next few blog entries. To some of my friends who were raised in Baptist churches, it might seem like I’m over simplifying some things, but believe me, to a lot of my internet friends, these are foreign concepts. To those of you who are not familiar with I’m talking about, there are some good stories that came from this. Bear with me….)

Back in the mid 1980’s, my Dad was the pastor of Faith Baptist Church in Quincy, Kentucky. Dad came up with a great idea. No, this isn’t the usual Grigsby sarcasm…. it was a really good idea.

The plan was to put a Gospel tract (a small pamphlet with a short message and information about the church) in every home in Lewis County, Kentucky. This would be accomplished the old fashioned way, going door to door and handing the tracts to every resident. Now, this was no small task. Lewis County covers a lot of territory.

So we could better grasp the concept of what we were doing, Dad bought a large road map of Lewis County and put it on the wall where everybody at church could see it. When we passed out tracts on a road, we would color it on the map with a yellow highlighter pen.

There were certain ways we did things. We would usually go out in teams of two. We would knock on a door. If nobody answered after three knocks, we would leave the tract in the door. If somebody did answer, we would introduce ourselves, tell the folks which church we were from, give them a tract, invite them to our services, thank them for their time and move on. If we knew that nobody lived in a house, we would skip it.

All of that will come into play later on.

At one time or another, several people pitched in on this endeavor. I know that some of the ladies of the church participated, but who they were slip my mind. I can tell you that there were four men, well, two men and two boys, who were out there at least once a week, knocking on doors and spreading the Good Word.

I was out there unless I was sick. Mike and Tim didn’t go sometimes because of homework. Dad knew that I didn’t do homework, so I had no excuse. Back then, I was skinny (believe it or not), wore huge geek glasses, had a mop of greasy hair, was pimple faced, wore second hand clothes, was clumsy, and had an uncanny knack of always saying or doing the wrong thing. Some people would say that most of that description still applies, but that is irrelevant.

Then there was Kenny Oglesbee. Kenny, like myself has grown up and become a strong example of masculine manhood. Back then, he was sort of like a redhead, teenage version of Don Knotts. He was also girl crazy. I was, too, but I kept it a secret.

Those were the boys. The men were Pastor Clarence Grigsby, my dad, and big Deacon Tim Underwood, Kenny’s brother in law. Dad was, actually still is, an old time, rough voiced, Independent Baptist preacher. Deacon Tim Underwood was a big guy, looked more like a NFL player or pro wrestler than a deacon.

You would think that after reading this, that one of the men would team up with one of the boys to knock on doors. It hardly ever happened that way. Dad and Tim would work together, Kenny and I would usually work together. You would think that Dad would want to have his son by his side or have me with a man of Tim’s stature, so that he would know that his number one son was protected. But, no, it was usually Kenny and me.

I was out there partly because I loved Jesus and partly because Dad made me. Dad, of course, is one of the most dedicated ministers that you will ever know. When it came to knocking doors and passing out tracts, I would say Tim and Kenny went beyond dedicated. They seemed sort of fanatical. They really, really wanted to see that map covered in yellow highlighter.

I guess that I should point out that Kenny Oglesbee is now Ken (he moved to Ohio where it is a mortal sin to be called Kenny) and Deacon Tim Underwood is now Pastor Tim Underwood. I saw them just last weekend and they seem to be doing well. Two of my favorite people in the world.

Well, that’s sort of the introduction. I promised my readers a “spooky blog” and it will be my next entry. Yes, it happened when we were passing out Gospel tracts……