Wandering_Cookie Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 I remember growing up seeing a few strange, less than pretty, single holiness youth group leaders wearing wedding rings. When asked, they would proudly proclaim they were married to jeezus. I recall a few men with these, too. I always wondered how that worked. Was there jealousy between other brides/grooms of gawd? I recall going to a friends church in high school on valentines day, we were forced (yes, forced, they'd wake us up and make us run outside) to stay up all night, singing worship songs in a darkened room, taking time out only to make valentine's cards for god. what an all powerful entity wanted with my.fo glitter and glue, I have no idea. After the insanity (12 hours of this) we were shown two forms. One was a contract to not date until god shows us our 'one true love'. We were told this way we could be sure to be free from heartbreak. The second was a vow to only give our heart to gawd. We were told to pick one. I remember mispelling my name on purpose on an attempt to free the 'contract', and repented later for not trusting the youth leader's wisdom xD. It's a guilty pleasure of mine... Share your crazy youth group stories! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wandering_Cookie Posted January 23, 2011 Author Share Posted January 23, 2011 Sorry about weird typos...on my phone! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
decafaholic Posted January 24, 2011 Share Posted January 24, 2011 OMG that Valentine's lock-in from hell sounds like a frat hazing ritual! I was AoG so the weirdness was never ending. I remember one night at youth group we were in groups joining hands praying and our YP told us to shout "Freedom!" at the top of our lungs to claim our freedom from sin/bondage or whatever. He also told us to take a Bible on our dates and place it between ourselves and our date. Our YP rarely brought out the weirdness though. It was mostly youth camp... Youth Camp was the weirdest. Where do I begin? We were told over and over that dating was a waste of time and we should wait until God leads us to the person we're meant to marry. There was this complicated thing where we divided up by geographical area in relation to the room area and prayed for our specific areas of the state. We were asked to commit to not dating during high school, which, being the church-pleaser I was, I did. We were instructed to lift our hands and say "Jesus, I love you" until we sounded like we meant it. There was the fad of girls saying they were dating Jesus. Funny how the guys never had that fad... Come to think of it, I wonder how the guys reacted to all the "falling in love with jesus" songs and talks and books. Girls loved that shit, but I think it would make a guy uncomfortable to sing about falling in love with a 33-yr old man wearing a dress (er...robe) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Droptail Posted January 24, 2011 Share Posted January 24, 2011 There was the fad of girls saying they were dating Jesus. Funny how the guys never had that fad... Come to think of it, I wonder how the guys reacted to all the "falling in love with jesus" songs and talks and books. Girls loved that shit, but I think it would make a guy uncomfortable to sing about falling in love with a 33-yr old man wearing a dress (er...robe) You know, I never really looked at it in that light...I always treated it when I was singing those types of songs as metaphorical for my devotion to jesus. I didn't really visualize it... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StickWitch Posted January 24, 2011 Share Posted January 24, 2011 I always wondered about that, too. Because the relationship between females and males was supposed to be like the relationship between human beings and god. This made it uber easy for girls to 'love god,' or see him in an analogous light to a 'husband,' whereas for guys.... they're supposed to love their 'husband'? What? Weird. That seemed to clash a little, for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OpheliaGinger Posted January 24, 2011 Share Posted January 24, 2011 Girls loved that shit, but I think it would make a guy uncomfortable to sing about falling in love with a 33-yr old man wearing a dress (er...robe) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flockoff Posted January 24, 2011 Share Posted January 24, 2011 I remember getting really frustrated with my friend when I felt lonely for never having a girlfriend and he just chuckled and told me to "go out with god" and "let god be your girlfriend." We sang songs like My First Love in chapel at school and I just took as one of the sillier songs that didn't make that much sense or apply to me as well. If only I'd taken that train of thought a little further. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wandering_Cookie Posted January 24, 2011 Author Share Posted January 24, 2011 Gah, especially when female leaders would go on and on about 'his beautiful, handsome, most perfect face'. Reminds me of a weird movie clip I saw where a nun kept having.sexual fantasies of christ while praying...o.O Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shirono Posted January 24, 2011 Share Posted January 24, 2011 Having trouble remembering some of them, but I'll try my best. I remember one year at church camp we were encouraged to not use the word awesome, because were we "really in awe over a slice of pizza or a movie?" We were encouraged to openly mock those who used to word in reference to ANYTHING other than God or Jesus. I was told by my youth pastor that I needed to forgive my "sisters in christ", but he never did shit about the fact that they openly mocked me for being a book-worm, wearing glasses, or my lack of fashion sense. When I got into an argument about gay marriage (I was for it at that point) I was taken aside by the youth pastor and his wife and asked if I had "ever had a homosexual experience?" in a very worried tone (because, clearly, one can not support gay marriage unless they are gay as well...or from their tone of voice, had been molested by a person of the same sex). I proceeded to hold hands with my best (female) friend at church for several months, just to screw with them. At church camp (really, the craziest shit occurs at these things) I was forced to climb a 20 foot wall on an obstacle course and when I was crying and unable to do it (no upper body strength to speak of) I was told that I didn't trust God enough and that was why I couldn't do it. People at camp thought I was not a "true believer" because I wasn't moved to wailing and sobbing over the trite words of the speaker. I never felt comfortable waving my hands in the air either... My last few years in church I took great pride in screwing with people in youth group. Asking uncomfortable questions, wearing short skirts and cussing. My rebellious phase was quick and possibly mentally scarring for all of the youth group Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PinkSugar Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 Yeah, I did the messing with people at youth group. I like Jewish men and once asked the girl next to me if she thought that Jesus was a hottie when he was alive. I think she told me that that was blasphemy. Anyone else ever notice that guys in youth groups got away with a lot of "unchristian" stuff (Video game nights, they would make gay and fart jokes all the time, etc) but if a girl did anything unladylike she was shunned by other girls? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrotherJosh Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 Anyone else ever notice that guys in youth groups got away with a lot of "unchristian" stuff (Video game nights, they would make gay and fart jokes all the time, etc) but if a girl did anything unladylike she was shunned by other girls? Oh all the time! My youth group buddies and I would play Grand Theft Auto, light off firecrackers in mailboxes, swear, watch any movies we wanted etc... youth group for me wasn't really all that challenging in the typical fundie way (thankfully, some of your stories are truly horrific!) Usually, it was an opportunity to sneak off with one of the rebellious Christian girls! Towards the end though I began screwing with the the youth pastor by asking him crazy questions about how exactly angels impregnated women to form the Nephilim etc... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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