Ol' Preacher Dan -- The Story Behind the Song

So, I was watching television the other day when I came across a documentary movie. And seeing that I am a documentary movie kind of guy, I put the movie on. The name of the documentary movie was Friends of Jesus and it was a movie about the evangelical movement in the U.S.

It was a pretty good documentary movie so I watched it all the way through.

But while I was watching Friends of Jesus it occurred to me that I had seen this somewhere before, not the documentary movie Friends of Jesus itself, but rather another movie that played along the same lines as Friends of Jesus.

And while I watched Friends of Jesus the feeling that I had seen this somewhere before kept getting stronger.

When the movie ended, I stared for a long time at the blank television where Friends of Jesus was playing.

Then it finally came to me.

The documentary movie, Friends of Jesus had exactly the same premise as another movie I had seen some time ago. It seems that Friends of Jesus was very much similar to an old movie called Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Now although these two movies are very similar in many respects, I must point out that there are a few major differences between the friends of Jesus and the body snatchers.

First off, the body snatchers were from another world somewhere out in space, maybe even another galaxy, whereas the friends of Jesus were from Kansas.

Secondly, while the body snatchers made their appearance in organic pods that looked somewhat like giant pea-pods, the friends of Jesus appeared in Pontiac or Chrysler products or the like.

The third, and to me the most important difference between the friends of Jesus and the body snatchers, is that, when leaving the theatre after watching the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I felt fairly safe in the knowledge that the body snatchers were not out there waiting for me. After all, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers was a fiction movie. And as Friends of Jesus was a documentary movie, I was not as sure that the friends of Jesus were not out there waiting in their Pontiac cars.

This made the documentary movie Friends of Jesus much more frightening to me than fiction movie The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

I felt that I must do something. But what?

So I was sitting at my desk in my office at the college, pondering what I might do about the friends of Jesus that were out there somewhere frightening me,when I looked up and saw the bumper sticker up on my wall.

Yes, I have a bumper sticker on my wall. That’s a different story though.

What was important about the bumper sticker on my wall was what it said. It was a quote from Mahatma Gandhi, which said “What you do may seem insignificant, but it is most important that you do it.”

Now I think the Mahatma was a pretty bright fellow, so I decided to take his advice on this matter and do the most insignificant thing I knew how to do. So I wrote a song about the friends of Jesus.

My previous post has a link to the song. It’s called Ol’ Preacher Dan.