First off I would like to warn everyone that the site may be a little unpredictable over the weekend. I am hoping to upgrade to a whole new design. This design is such a radical departure from the current one that it will take a massive amount of work to make the change. So bear with me through the inevitable missing graphics, broken links and so on. I trust it will all be back to normal by Sunday.
Have you seen this Pumpkin-based computer? I suppose this is what happens when college students are not given enough homework.
I read this morning about a particularly humiliating time Ingrid Schlueter experienced in a church not too long ago. “Last Thanksgiving, my husband and I visited a church we had never attended before for a Thanksgiving worship service the night before Thanksgiving Day. After singing the traditional hymns of thanks and hearing some Scripture, the young pastor ascended the pulpit and looked out with eyes glaring with intensity at the congregation. Knowing this was a conservative church with many of the faculty from a nearby conservative college, I looked forward to being challenged from God’s Word. The title of his sermon was, “Taste and See that the Lord is Good”. His opening words were: “I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam-I-am. Would you eat them in a box? Would you eat them with a fox?… “
The pastor went on make a point “that unlike green eggs and ham, the Lord doesn’t turn off anyone’s appetite.” You can read more here.
Yikes. Now that got me thinking about the most humiliating moments I’ve experienced in church. After a bit of thought I dredged up one particularly painful memory. It was the year we lived in Scotland and my parents decided that we would go to church on Christmas morning. We were unable to go to our usual church since it was far across town and we did not have a car (and busses were not running) so we went to a local Presbyterian church. Now when I think about Presbyterianism I think of somber, dignified services following the regulative principle. But in this case the pastor eschewed all of that and led us in a rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday,” directed, of course, to Jesus. It was bitterly painful. I am quite sure that no one in the Challies family could bring themselves to participate.
And so I wonder, what are your most painfully humiliating church memories?
