Last week at church there was
almost not a service, or at least that is the way it looked. The service
usually starts with a hymn. Instead, a gentleman (who we would find out later
would be leading the whole service) stood up at the front and proceeded to tell
us in the most lugubrious voice that the guest
pastor who was supposed to be there in place of the current pastor who was on a
month long vacation was ill and could not make the service. They had just found
out that morning so they would be piecing together the service on such short
notice. And pieced it would be.
We never did get to the opening
hymn – which may have been a good thing because later on we would sing an awful
version of “Amazing Grace”. After the little speech we somehow got through the liturgy
until the sermon. The same gentleman, a paid administrator at the church,
decided he would be the one doing the sermon. I guess there was no one else
available - or more likely - no one else was asked to help lead Sunday worship
or the sermon. I’m not quite sure how there could not have been someone with
more experience leading. Was there not a second in charge, or third in charge?
Was there not a deacon or extraordinary leading in the church on this Sunday?
Apparantly not.
Now I’m not saying church has
to be done a certain way. On the contrary. It was actually really neat to see
the congregation go through the service without its usual leader and to worship
corporately anyway. There wasn’t someone “qualified” to bless the communion,
but we did it anyway. It was out of the box – and it showed that doing church
can be done in many different ways.
This all leads to the important
part of the day: there really should have been a leader giving the sermon that
day. Why? The reading for the day was the feeding of the 5,000. Standing at the
front of the church he said he didn’t believe the feeding of the 5,000 happened
but that its a good life lesson. It is an insult to the real miracles that
happened 2,000 years ago and to the Savior and Lordship of Jesus as God, and to
the general Christian belief in God. Later he claimed he believed in Santa
Claus – pronounced “Santy” Claus. (In all fairness he meant the general idea of
Santa Claus as a way of giving around the holidays.)
In the end what was a good
service was indeed church gone wrong. I hope no one went away with anything
from that un-thoughtful sermon.
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In related news. We first went
to this church at the beginning of March. There were lots of kids and it was
Lent. It truly was in better times. Now I’ve noticed throughout the entire
summer that all the kids (including their parents) are no longer attending
during the summer. They’ve taken church off for the summer. For me this is a
complete knock at God and the Christian community.
In more related news. The other church
we were interested in finally got a new pastor which means we can try that
church again. Which we will be doing as soon as possible since the other church
seems to be taking a holiday from God.
