The Humor-filled Church
I was talking to my sister on the phone last night and she said that my last few blog posts had been more serious, that I needed some humor. I thought to myself, “I’m a Baptist preacher who doesn’t use AI to produce his sermons, and only types using three fingers. Where’s the humor in that?”
And then I considered some of the things that have happened over the past four-and-a-half decades and a chuckle began in my mid-section and burped out on my face.
Like the Advent Season, when I had asked a seasoned saint to light the advent candle on one of the Sundays…and then gave her an empty box of matches! The bewilderment on her face still makes me grin.
Or the Sunday morning I made a pot of coffee for early-arrivers of our Sunday School hour, but forgot to put the coffee pot under the freshly-streaming brew. Oops!
Or the Sunday I had come up with the ingenious idea of doing two children’s messages during the course of the morning worship service. The second children’s message was like a scene of a cat-herder trying to keep the kittens all together, running this and way and that, crawling behind the communion table, knocking one another over.
Or the baptistry problems the last church I pastored seemed to have constantly. In other words, it leaked! For a Christmas Eve service where we had baptisms take place, we put an inflatable kiddie pool inside the baptistry that was shaped like a whale. People sitting in the first few rows on one side of the sanctuary could see the tale sticking up in the air. We joked about the people being baptized in the belly of a whale just like Jonah.
Or perhaps the dumbest thing I ever did as a pastor, when I was waiting in the church parking lot for parents to come and pick up their kids after a youth event. I decided to practice my softball batting swing by using my golf putter. After several powerful swings, the putter suddenly became lighter. Its head had flown off…and sailed right through one of the stained glass windows of the building. Oops!
Or the Sunday when the baptistry heater was broken (Back to that baptistry thing!) and I literally had to pull a boy into the water to get him wet. Hey! My toes were already blue and they weren’t getting any warmer the longer I stood there waiting for him.
Or the Sunday one of the above-eighty ladies kept having her new watch, a gift from her son, go off and play “Santa Claus is Coming To Town.” It’s hard to talk about a demon-possessed man who was known by the name Legion, when Santa Claus is coming to town.
Or the sermon where I erroneously kept referring to Lady Godiva chocolates, instead of Godiva chocolates. Oops!
Or the church potluck where the spoon for the potato salad was missing from the bowl. A young man, a bit lacking in social etiquette, wanted seconds so he simply dipped his hand into the bowl and took a scoop back to his plate. Nobody else felt the urge to get seconds after that.
Or the church custodian at one of the churches I ministered at who would bring in the church’s outdoor sign each Monday so the office staff could change the sermon title for the next week. He always left the same message for the secretary: “The Broad Is In!” The secretary kept looking for that “Broad” for years and could never find her.
And, finally, a bit of personal embarrassing humor. Our church was hosting the annual meeting for our area American Baptist Churches, an event on a Sunday afternoon and evening that drew about 150 people who had nothing better to do but spend most of their Sunday sitting in meetings and be grouchy. I stood at the front of the sanctuary and gave a welcome to the distinguished crowd of delegates…and then walked down the center aisle after I was done, only to discover that I had been unzipped the whole time. I left myself “wide open” for comments about that one.
So, there, Sis! There’s some humor that still makes me smile and blush at the same time…and check to see that I’m all…together!
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