Funniest Things You Have Seen in Church

As a lifelong church goer and current pastor, I have seen a lot of funny things at church, especially during worship. Here is a brief list of some of my highlights, some involving me, and thankfully many not involving me. In no particular order….

1) Buried in the Flowers…..

It was Advent and the children’s handbell choir was on the stage to perform. Or, more accurately they were on the steps of the stage to perform. There was this one girl who wa just going to town ringing her bell. Everytime she had to ring, she rang with all her might. The kid next to her kept looking at her very, very, strangely. Unfortunately, for him, he took his eyes off of her and the next time she rang, she rang a little too hard, lost her balance, stumbled and knocked the kid next to her 5 feet to the side so that he landed in the middle of all the poinsettias that were on the steps. The kid just disappeared from site completely, but the girl kept on ringing that bell. I was speechless watching this.

2) High Heels are Evil….

So we are celebrating communion and everyone is standing for the Great Thanksgiving. I am assisting at the Table and I am standing to the left of the Celebrant. All of the sudden, as I am looking out into the congregation, a 7th grade girl totally disappears from sight. All I can see are her hands on the pew in front of her and her feet kicking and scrambling as they stick out from underneath the pew in front of her. Seems that she was rocking back and forth on her heals and just completely lost her footing. She absolutely disappeared from sight and struggled for several seconds to pull herself off of the floor. Her family lost it and actually had to leave church to try and regain its composure. Mean while I am up front, trying to pray the Lord’s Prayer and barely able to breath. The whole time the Celebrant is looking at me trying to figure out what is wrong. I hope God was laughing too.

3) Don’t play with fire…

So this one involves me. At the worship service I lead, Evolution, we like candles. A lot of candles. And around the baptismal font in the back of our church there was a ring of tealights in votive holders. All night long we had been praying about the fire of God because I preached about Elijiah on top of Mt. Moriah calling down the fire of God on his watery sacrifice. That night was a special night. We were baptizing a new believer in the service. So, after the sermon we gathered at the back and went throught the baptismal liturgy. As part of the liturgy I prayed over the water and as I did so I stuck my hand in the water. Just then a blue flame began to lick up the sleeve of my sweater. So as I prayed I tried to pat it out. My first thought was, it is the fire of God descending on this watery sacrifice, that being said, I still tried to put the fire of God out. But the thing was I couldn’t. The flame kept jumping up my sleave and onto my shoulder. It constantly moved from one place to the next. By this time I began to stumble over my words a bit and the husband of the woman being baptized looked up and saw the flame also. He then began to try and pat it out. Now the other pastor standing there saw the flame and his eyes got very big. Suddenly, just as it had started, the fire went out, the woman was baptized and we were left to freak out a little bit. The thing was most of the congregation didn’t see anything because we were praying and like good Christians they had their eyes closed. So no one really knows what happened that night. The sweater was undamaged and never even smelled like fire. Was it the fire of God? Maybe, but most likely it was just some fuzz or something. Bizarre! I must be the only pastor to have set himself on fire at a baptism.

4) Why are we so corny?

I used to attend and work at a church that had a regular outreach to Bikers. It was a great outreach event with hundreds of bikers each year. One year, the first song in worship was Born to Be Wild by Steppenwolf. I was impressed and somewhat suprised our church was kicking off worship with this hard rocking tune, obviously they wanted the bikers to feel welcomed. But, then I heard the lyrics. Instead of the words” born to be wild” in the chorus, the artist was singing “born again child”. I almost laughed outloud. It was the cheesiest attempt at being cool I had ever heard. If we wanted to rock, lets just rock our own music, we don’t need to destroy a classic rock song. Just write a great rock song that honors God and doesn’t destroy an awesome classic. Everyone involved in this production were great people, but I wanted to cringe/weep/laugh till I wet myself when I say that one.

5) The Lobster Rocks…..

During college we had mandatory chapel 3 times a week. The tradition at the school each year was that people would pull pranks during chapel. I am not advocating this as a normal worship practice, but it usually brought a laugh to the student body. One day just as the president of the school was standing up to speak you heard this whirling sound begin. Then, out of the pipe organ on the back of the stage came a voosh, voosh, voosh, and tennis balls began to fly over the presidents head and into the crowd. Bedlam ensued for the next couple of minutes as people grabbed the tennis balls and started throwing them all over the place. The president wasn’t amused, but I thought placing a lobster machine in the pipe organ to launch tennis balls was genius.

Those are some of my highlights, what are yours?