Autumns consisting of emptier pews than usual are to be expected in a region where people consider football second only to God.

Church of the Holy Trinity Rector the Rev. Beth Palmer said she noticed every fall the church seemed to go into a little funk, so she organized a football tailgate the last Sunday before college football season.

“How do we take something that feels like a negative and make it into a positive?” she said. “It’s not that these people are abandoning us, but we’re sending them  out into the mission fields of Oxford and Starkville and Baton Rouge and Hattiesburg.”

Palmer said she had the idea and sent it out to half a dozen real fanatics who immediately jumped on board and started planning.

“The teams set up a tailgate experience here in our fellowship hall,” she said. “We basically had Ole Miss, State, Southern Miss and LSU.”

Tents were elaborately decorated and included food, music and cowbells, Palmer said.

“We had one guy, Bill Martin, who is retired from ERDC, who came with his Tennessee Volunteers orange football jersey,” she said. “He got a prize for being the lone ranger on that one.”

At the later worship service, everyone renewed baptismal promises and Palmer offered a prayer of commissioning to send off the football fanatics.

“Everyone who attended got a bumper sticker,” she said. “I told them as you go out into the mission field you have to have your bumper sticker that says ‘Follow me to  Church of the Holy Trinity.’”