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.