1990
My Memories of and Musings on HAC / FBCH
- Thread starter Baptist City Holdout
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I'm so sorry you lost your brother.
I hope you don't mind me hijacking your thread, but I just thought of something about my HAC experience. It's been almost fifty years ago so the details are sketchy.
The Fall of 1976 was my first semester and the last year that Jim Vineyard would serve on staff at the church and college. I remember after working bus routes all day long on Saturday and being exhausted he would have a meeting for all of the male students called "The Sons of the Prophets." It was held in the old chapel.
This was an event where he would give anybody who wanted to speak three minutes. I mean, what kind of sermon can be preached by teenage boys in three minutes? It was mostly guys who were screaming and yelling at other teenage guys because they were too lazy to be right with God. After each one Vineyard would get up and be abusive, as only he could, to whoever just "preached." I think he might have even just randomly pointed and some random poor guy in the chapel and tell him to get up and "preach" three minutes. I put quotation marks around PREACH because it really wasn't preaching. To this day, I'm not sure what I would call it except, perhaps, comic relief. Only it wasn't funny at the time. I never was called on and never spoke, but even then I thought it was ridiculous and frankly, I didn't think as highly of Bro. Hyles for the way he let Vineyard operate. I think he brought in the numbers and Bro. Hyles turned his head to a lot of stuff. I saw him do other things that would get him arrested today.
Strange times.
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Not minding at all. Glad Vineyard was gone by time I got there.
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"I saw him do other things that would get him arrested today."....didn't he keep a paddle on the platform with him during Jr Church named, "Big Red"? I know there was another paddle at the old bus office across the street from the auditorium. I know that corporal punishment was more acceptable, but his antics and numerous paddles were a bit much. I remember our group used the van for the deaf during Vacation Bible School and there was even a paddle under the passenger seat of the van. After Bible School, we'd go running through the parking lot chasing kids with that paddle. Of course, I may have gotten paddled when I got home from Bible School for that one.
I do remember the paddle, but I distinctly remember him using it on male college students, especially smaller ones. He and his minions would get a big laugh out of it and would threaten all types of unmanly actions if the guys breathed a word. That didn't sit well with me and I have not forgotten it fifty years later.
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For memories and musings on Jim Vineyard, see this thread [I typed "threat" by mistake - perhaps more appropriate 
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Do you mean to tell us that young, but grown college-aged men were being spanked by faculty at HAC?? And these guys were PAYING tuition to attend this school?? I don’t care if it was fifty years ago, it was the 1970s, not the 1870s for crying out loud! OMG. I think I discovered a college worse than what I thought Bob Jones University would be.
It was done in an impromptu, juvenile and prank style fashion, but yeah, I saw it. And I say again, I wondered how Jack Hyles let it go on. But Vineyard was on his way out when I witnessed it.
He was a bully. Hard stop.For memories and musings on Jim Vineyard, see this thread [I typed "threat" by mistake - perhaps more appropriate
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Seriously? What adult-age manlets allow themselves to be humiliated by grown men spanking them?
Here's another example of corporal punishment in the same time frame.....this passage is taken from Elmer Towns' 1972 book, "The World's Largest Sunday School" writing about Gail McKinney's second hour Junior Department, which would now be considered "B" Sunday School....
"During the past spring a little boy had been stood against the wall for three Sundays in a row for disrupting assembly and talking back to "Miss McKinney." When stood against the wall, he refused to stay there and walked around."Mr. LaFayette, would you come out here and bring your belt?" Gail never spanks without two witnesses. She says, "Two times after the spirit breaks." She explains that they spank until a child cries, then twice more so the child won't put on a fake cry."
I wonder if Gail McKinney Merhalski's views have changed in the last 53 years?
My guess is that it was familiar to some of them. By that, I mean some of them grew up in an abusive home. I can't imagine any person leaving home for a Bible college could have anticipated such an environment.
Any way you look at it, it is sick.
There's another thread somewhere that speaks to the church in Oklahoma, where Vineyard was the pastor. Crazy stuff that is quite similar.
It is hard to imagine why Vince went to teach at the church/school in Oklahoma. I realize he said God blessed him, etc.
I gotta wonder. Couldn't God have blessed him in a different church or school?
There should be a sequel to "Tales from the Temple".
In all fairness, what I saw was not “bend over and take your licks.” He would set up scenarios where the guy would be unsuspecting and then swat him on the ass when he wasn't expecting it. Then he and his buddies would get a big laugh out of it. It was truly juvenile.
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So, not unlike a fraternity initiation at a secular university or the shellback initiations of old in the USN.
Yes. I think that is a fair analogy of those times. I cannot speak for the female students, but for the males it was very much like a paramilitary organization. You were ordered what to do and expected to do it, with no push back. Vineyard carried this out further than anyone.
Frankly, I think this -- the founding of the college -- was the beginning of the end of any lasting legitimacy of First Baptist Church. I'm not sure how the thinking evolved, but I think when Jack Hyles realized that he could recruit soldiers to come to his church and order them to work beyond what any reasonable person could do and then watch the numbers come pouring in, it was intoxicating to him. What other church, anywhere, had that? Then the numbers-based success permeated everything at the place. He preached that the bigger the numbers, the more favored by God you were. So, of course, he had to be favored more so than anyone in the world. And at times, the students wore that as a badge of honor when comparing their college life to others, for example at Tennessee Temple or Maranatha, etc.
It seems to me that FBC was already a successful church when he began to think about a college. The college changed everything and I believe in many ways, those changes weren't positive for anyone.
It was insane.
Jim Vineyard was a super successful (big numbers) bus guy when Hyles brought him in. He had put up big numbers for Jerry Falwell. He did the same at FBC. He was not an academic in any respect, but that didn't stop him from trying to replicate the FBC/HAC model in Oklahoma. He saw what would happen if you had a cadre of impressionable, submissive "college students" that were really just foot soldiers for free labor to boost the attendance numbers. He was a a bully and a buffoon.
I actually think Combs had some skills as a Bible teacher, although he ripped off Warren Wiersbe in some of his class outlines. He was already there when I first attended in 1976 and I don't know a lot about how he came to HAC. I think he may have attended Moody some and connected himself to Hammond that way, but I'm not sure. He wasn't the worst teacher. He was simply a terrible person that kept it hidden for many years.
It is articles just like that that make me wonder what I was thinking fifty years ago. I guess the answer is that I wasn't thinking much at all. And that shames me.