Charles Qualls said his goal was to be at times pastoral and always authentic when he launched his popular Bubba-Doo’s column series for Baptist News Global in 2021.
And he also wanted to use humor in the series set in a fictional rural diner — Bubba Doo’s — where folksy characters often wrestle with weighty political, social and theological issues over hot meals and coffee.
“We can’t make a laughing matter out of everything, but a platform like Bubba-Doo’s lets me work humor in with topics and themes we are otherwise having serious conversations about,” said Qualls, senior pastor of Franklin Baptist Church in Franklin, Va.
Qualls has now compiled 21 of his BNG Bubba-Doo’s columns, including two previously unpublished stories, into Time Well Spent at Bubba-Doo’s: Stories from a Southern Country Store, his 10th book with publisher Smyth & Helwys.
The columns and book, which is available for pre-order, “give me a unique platform to entertain people and make them and myself think,” he explained. “A lot of times, I was working these things out as I was writing. And not every story is driving a hard point. Some of them were just for entertainment.”
Although fictional, the store and many of the familiar characters that populate the Bubba-Doo’s universe are sometimes inspired by real places and people, he said. “Some of the characters, storylines and details about the store are drawn from growing up working in my dad’s country store in Georgia. I was working a register and pumping gas by the sixth grade.”
Although fictional, the store and many of the familiar characters are sometimes inspired by real places and people.
Other ideas come from encounters at a country restaurant Qualls frequents near Franklin, and from numerous rural establishments he has dined and socialized in over the years. The name Bubba Doo’s is taken from a store by that name in central Georgia, he said.
“These places are often in the middle of nowhere and therefore become a community crossroads where people can go to be together and to talk about all the real things people talk about,” he said.
Bubba-Doo’s regulars like Mickey, Marleen, Stephanie, Stumpy and Ralph are likewise based on real people. And another, the quiet shop owner Winston, is based on Qualls’ father.
“It’s natural for me to write about these people and places, which is good because when it comes to writing, I always heard to just write what you know. So, I am writing about what I know,” the pastor said.
Qualls uses the store, its patrons and staff to discuss human conflict and healing. “A lot of the stories are influenced by events or themes that need to be talked about, so I just set them in the store. It allows me to lift an issue out of the real world and place it in a fictional world where they may be easier to digest.”
An example of that, Qualls said, can be found in “Concern for Our Nation at Bubba-Doo’s,” an early column in the series that deals with the term “evangelical” and how evangelicals are increasingly distinct from Mainline Protestants.
Charles Qualls
“That’s a real issue. Our people are constantly grappling with how they are different from the groovy church across town and trying to navigate this notion that if they are evangelicals, what are we? Because we seem pretty different from them,” he said. “So, the story I wrote was my real-life attempt to explain that as best I can.”
Qualls, as the pastor-narrator, opens by explaining the concept of purple churches to Bubba-Doo’s patrons sitting as his table. Those congregations, he says, have members who belong to both political parties.
“‘If I were working with our nation like I’d work with a typical couple who’ve been married several years,’ I began, ‘one thing I might point out is that we’ve become competitors. Maybe for some stretches of our national history we were lovers. But right now, we’re in competition with each other.’”
Qualls’ character goes on to address the constitutional separation of church and state and how disagreements about the concept include beliefs that God created the U.S. as a Christian nation. Members of purple churches, like other Americans, must decide whether to remain married or to break up, he says.
“Bubba-Doo’s extends Qualls’ ministry by enabling him to jump on sticky issues as they arise.”
“We didn’t solve any problems that day at Bubba-Doo’s,” he writes. “But we sure did manage to have a conversation about why having these kinds of conversations can be so rough. Now that I think about it, maybe we did at least learn something.”
Qualls said his Bubba-Doo’s writing is altogether different from his preaching style. “I go where the lectionary takes me. You are not going to find me re-writing a sermon on a Saturday night because something happened. My sermons attempt to show people what the text means to their lives.”
But Bubba-Doo’s extends Qualls’ ministry by enabling him to jump on sticky issues as they arise, such as his August 2023 column on country singer Jason Aldean’s controversial song “Try That In A Small Town.”
In the story, which is not included in the book, tensions flare as numerous characters take on issues of patriarchy, diversity and social and racial injustice. While agreement is not achieved, peace is.
“Something tells me this won’t be the last time the area will have to rally and appeal to its better angels to get through a moment of difference. I just hope we’ll have the bravery and willingness we had this time to preserve a way of life we cherish, even in our relative diversity,” he writes.
Endorsers of the book praise Qualls’ balance of topics throughout the Bubba-Doo’s series.
“Having grown up in a small rural town in the South, Bubba-Doo’s feels surprisingly familiar to me. But these nuanced stories are about more than just nostalgia; they offer a thoughtful and relevant word for our conflicted times through the wise, grace-filled, pastoral voice of the narrator,” said Jennifer Baxley of First Baptist Church in Athens, Ga.
BNG Executive Editor Mark Wingfield said the series has generated faithful readers who consider Bubba Doo’s characters as family. “This place is as real to us as the timeless life lessons taught there.”
Qualls said he has simply tried to deal with life as he and his neighbors encounter it. “Bubba-Doo’s has been a place to live the range of human experiences, from why we experience humor to why we experience sadness and grief. I’m working with the full range of human experience and Bubba-Doo’s is the vehicle through which I get to process these things.”
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Sample the BNG Bubba-Doo’s series here