Sunday, July 06, 2008

Pastor cracks joke at church

Our pastor is away on vacation. We had a substitute pastor today who used to preach at our church for a while as interim, many years ago. Everybody knows him and loves him a lot.

Some background: When it became obvious the Lord was leading me to move to Georgia, AND to go to church, I had a preconceived notion in my mind. I thought all southern Baptist churches were like this:

People joyfully standing in the aisles and swaying and singing and lots of audible "Amens!"

Not so, grasshoppa. There are black churches and white churches. The statement from Dr. Martin Luther King that 11am Sunday is the most segregated hour in America is still true. At least where I live.

Moreover I was surprised to learn that the congregants in a typical white southern Baptist church are, er...shall we say, retrained? Services never include upraised hands or spontaneous Amens or people leaping up with the joy of the Lord in them. We worship quietly in public. That's OK, it's just how it is.

At church this morning the substitute pastor opened with a joke: Someone in a Baptist service died, but the mortician had to wait until the end of the service to see who.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love that joke. I have a friend who is born again and she is very devout. She wanted me to tell her how I found the Lord. I demurred. I appreciate her friendship but wasn't going to testify about my past sins. They are hard enough for me to keep to myself much less to share.

Chuck

Elizabeth Prata said...

I know, it's hard, isn't it? The first time I was asked to share my testimony it was for a regional revival and I spoke before 700 people in a gym! The goal, though, was less about my sins than about Jesus' forgiveness of them and redemption of this flawed person. How Jesus can make us new again.

It's harder for us to forgive ourselves than for Jesus to forgive, who died for them, huh?

Anonymous said...

Very true.

Chuck