when church is downright awesome

It’s hard church shopping. Especially when you know the perfect church is just 45 miles away. Especially when the variety of churches is so few. This week was no exception. It was the third time visiting this particular church. It will probably be the last – at least for a while.

This Sunday it started with a hymn sing. - a chance for the congregation to choose a few songs and sing them. It was welcoming. After the welcome and announcements the bell choir did a rendition of Mighty to Save, which was excellent. Everything was gravy, until the (interim) pastor spoke.

It started off good enough. Talking about the death of Bin Laden, an interesting story about a crazy group of Millerites. The pastor even mentioned that it was horrible to rejoice in an enemy’s death, even one like Bin Laden. Then it happened.

Let me preference this by stating that I’ve been to a lot of churches before and heard a lot of sermons. I’ve heard a lot of bad sermons, sermons proclaiming the prosperity gospel, even a pastor who demeaned Hispanics and women throughout a service.

Today, the pastor claimed that the verses 9-20 in Mark 16 where Jesus comes back to the disciples after his resurrection didn’t happen. His claim, from his mentor, was that if it couldn’t happen today, it couldn’t happen then. Of course his logic would not only conclude that the verses in Mark were untrue, but in fact much of the Bible.

As a visitor I was ready to bolt. We didn’t though. We stayed. I’m glad we did. Toward the end, during prayer requests, one of the choir members called out the pastor’s sermon. I’d never seen a member call-out a pastor during a service. It was awesome! The courage that this particular member had to call out the pastor on such blasphemy was remarkable. I was proud that the member had done that. I can only hope that the other members felt the same.

The pastor is an interim, and we don’t know how long he has been there. From the response from the choir member, he hasn’t been there long, or this is one of the first times he has said something like this. The church is in the middle of a pastoral search. For now we are going to skip the church – we’ll have to try it out again once they have a new pastor.