Once, years ago, I attended a Southern Baptist preaching festival at a First Baptist Church in a midsized, mid-state Kentucky town. I was invited by a Southern Baptist preacher friend.

Listening to the sermons, I realized the preachers tried to outdo each other with outrageous, personal experiences and name dropping (When Billy Graham and I prayed down the cannibals in the rainforest and they dropped their spears and we all had tears….), thus attempting to lift themselves to preeminence within the group, I later learned but with a divine purpose in mind.

I noticed that the attendees loved it and roared their approval. The bigger the whopper, the bigger the cheer.

Having been raised in the somber, sober environs of the Dutch Reformed Church, I was outraged by the bald-faced lies, especially being shouted out from the hallowed elevation of “The Pulpit.”

Undies scrunching by the second, I told my friend that the preachers were lying through their teeth. He turned to me and said, in his best southern drawl, “Embellishin’. It’s a fine art and time-honored tradition, which must be cultivated and honed over the years.

“You simply have to attend one of our annual denominational schools of evangelism to learn how to do it right. There you are blessed with the best.

“We all know what’s goin’ on. It’s just for fun. It’s our way of sayin’ don’t take me too seriously; just make sure you take Jesus seriously.

“And we do get serious when the lights go down and preacher calls all to bow their heads and close their eyes, lift their hands while no one is watching, (although you know there are always a few who sneak a peek) if they want to accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior and be assured of going to heaven this day instead of hell if they happened to leave this place and were struck down by a car at the intersection of Main Street and First Avenue, right out the front door of the church right after the service on their way home to a wonderful fried chicken dinner.

“It surely could happen the preacher would say. Then the preacher would ask those who had come under conviction to walk that sawdust trail to the kneeling bench as the soloist sings, Just As I Am verse by verse for however long it takes for those souls to be saved.

“If it took just one of those Embellishments to get that kid saved, that little lie is a twinkle in Jesus’ eye and that’s one more Lamb of God that the Devil missed.”

Honestly, I had no idea what to say, but it was kinda’ impressive, I thought in my best, newly acquired southern drawl.