The lighter moments of church life

[Tyson]

My other thread about people getting injured during holy ghost revival services led me to start this one. Please feel free to share your stories.

 

 

Like I told you guys, I am from the Caribbean, St.Thomas, Virgin Islands to be exact, but grew up in St.Kitts where my dad is from and also neighboring Nevis where my mom is from. As many of you might know, we have a rich and active culture which comes with a lot of emotion in our expressions.

 

Anyway, the church I used to attend as a kid in St. Thomas was once of those "fire baptized" churches were show of emotion during services was a popular thing. In fact, I passed through there when the "claim it believe it" movement was strong and Gog (the Soviet Union) was prophesied to invade Israel. I was part of the local church band and played bass and as you might expect, music played a great part of our church services.

 

Well our headquarters was in lilly white Portland, Oregon and the overseer came for a visit to see how the Caribbean churches were doing. He came along with a young male companion who played the piano.

 

At the Sunday morning service the young companion sat at the piano with a bright smile on his face and the first song suggested by the service leader was "Blessed be the name." The young man sat up and started chipping away at the keys giving the prelude to the song. As he brought the interlude to an end and the church band was cued to come in with their parts, we came in with a wicked reggae/calypso beat booming with a driving bass line and rim shots on the drums. The young man almost fell out of his chair as his piano was drowned out under steady streams of roof lifting sounds. You could tell he had NO idea what the hell hit him. By song three he decided to stop playing and had to force a smile as if he was enjoying it. Upon them leaving a week later, the overseer left word for us to ban the drums from our services.

[Tyson]

During that same week of revival when the church overseer was there, at the sunday night service one of our "I know I can sing" members decided he wanted to sing the "special." Well this man was a rather dramatic fellow so when it came time to sing he had to go through all kinds of antics. He started by first clearing his throat and silently chiming to get his key. When he started singing, we picked up his key and started playing along, but he was not satisfied. He stepped off the stage, walked down to where the band was and asked for the guitar. He took the guitar and started picking notes until he found the note he wanted. If I recall, he decided on E flat. The man walked back up on the stage and after we gave him an interlude for E flat, he busted out on C minor or some other note and he seemed pleased completely deaf to the fact that his voice did not match the notes being played. Can you say "tone deaf?"

[Alice]

For a while in my teens I attended this tiny little Church of England church with my family. When we joined the church we doubled the number in the congregation and seriously lowered the average age as the other five members were all over eighty six years of age.

 

The Bishop was trying to close the church and the remaining members were all distraught - which is why we ended up there. (The Bishop thought they should join the happy clappy congregation down the road ... which at the time was where I really wanted to be)

 

They had no minister so one of the members would read sermons from bygone era's. They did have an organist however - and his name was Mr Heaven. He was straight out of the pages of a Dickens novel and very sweet and very old.

 

The only ever highlight's of these services were the times when Mr Heaven, still seated at the organ, would occasionally fall asleep during the sermon. When this happened he would slowly, slowly, slowly lean over until eventually he would topple forward onto the keyboard. The resulting jarring noise would both interupt the flow of the sermon causing the reader to pause AND wake Mr Heaven up. At which point, hearing nothing from the pulpit Mr Heaven would assume the reading was over and would launch into playing the closing hymn.

 

No one ever advised him otherwise - the best ever sunday was the time he fell asleep just two minutes into a recitation of one of Spurgeon's lengthier preaches.

 

As we were leaving the church at the end of the service - pleasingly early ... I swear he winked at me.

[Tyson]

No problem if it is moved. I'm fairly clueless about the forums anyway.

 

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In a small town north of Orlando, Florida, our Ft. Lauderdale congregation went to visit a sister church there for a weekend "fellowship service." On the saturday all day Bible study, a newly saved young man (brother of one of the founders of the popular singing group, the Commodores) stood up to ask a question. Before a section of scripture was chosen for us to study, we were encouraged to ask any bible related questions. Now keep in mind, this was a rather conservative crowd. The young man took up the offer and asked, "Is it okay for a Christian to have oral sex, like having my wife suck my penis?" You could hear a feather drop. Stunned faces were frozen in time amidst snickers from some of the younger people in the crowd. The Bible study leader then began to fumble for words after about a good three minutes of stunned silence. I don't quite recall the response because I had to step outside to laugh so hard.

[♦ nivek ♦]

Delightful topic Tyson..

 

Moved to ExC Life.

 

n

[Vigile]

Of course i was 6 months pregnant at the time, and my laughter ended, when he cornered me in the lobby after service and started asking me personal questions about my pregnancy and bodily functions. Then I wanted to sucker punch him.

 

 

I'm surprised you didn't go into premature labor laughing. I almost did just now and I'm not pregnant nor am I female.

[Vigile]

The only ever highlight's of these services were the times when Mr Heaven, still seated at the organ, would occasionally fall asleep during the sermon. When this happened he would slowly, slowly, slowly lean over until eventually he would topple forward onto the keyboard. The resulting jarring noise would both interupt the flow of the sermon causing the reader to pause AND wake Mr Heaven up. At which point, hearing nothing from the pulpit Mr Heaven would assume the reading was over and would launch into playing the closing hymn.

 

 

 

Because you are British I tried to create a mental picture of this and it came out as a Rowan Atkins skit. Sorry for the stereotype but I love Bean and had a good laugh here.

[Guest bdp]

I unforunately wasn't there when this happened, I only got to hear about it secondhand, but it's too funny not to post. The church in question had done some cost-saving by having the baptismal pool built under the stage; when someone was to be baptised they would take the cover off the pool and set up temporary 'changing rooms' (basically just curtains) right next to it, right there on the stage. One Sunday a husband and wife came forward to be baptised, the changing rooms were set up and the baptismal uncovered. The husband was dunked first and he went back behind his curtain to change; the wife, in attempting to lower herself into the baptismal pool, lost her balance, reached out for anything to steady herself, grabbed the frame her husband's changing room was set up on, and pulled it down, revealing him in the alltogether in mid-change. The only thing nearby him was a chair which he ducked behind - after a few moments one of the elders turned off the lights, the whole place was dark for about two minutes, and when the lights came back up the guy was still there crouching naked behind his chair. I never did hear how they finally got him out of his preidicament.

 

bdp

[Guest bad_one]

These stories are too funny. Well this is not as good as the naked baptism but here it goes.

I grew up being an associate pastors kid in a pentecostal church. All of the pastors family and the higher ups in the church sat at the front. This particular sunday morning our family sat next to the one of the cergys family ...the one who was a usher /collection plate passer. We were all well behaved during the sermon under threat of "wait till we get home" speeches.

The sermon was very long that day. It was a fiery sermon about jesus dying and graphic descriptions. The boy in the family next to me kept fidgeting. He did this the whole sermon until suddenly he grew still. He let out the loudest fart which seemed to echo off the wooden pew. Everyone stopped including the preacher. I was in tears trying not to laugh. I could see the prescher trying to regain his thoughts to continue his sermon. Then the boy who let one slip broke the silence by saying "excuse me". Poor thing

[Tyson]

So brother Industrious (that WAS his name) got up one sunday morning to preach. He was EXTREMELY boring and had no problems preaching for 2 hours or more. He was also a very nasty man, nasty in that he did not like to share. He was from the British Virgin Islands island of Tortola where they use the letter "w" in place of the letter "v" so the word "victory" becomes "wictory."

 

Now our church was set up with the altar right up against the stage and about 6 feet away was the pew where the musicians sat, me being one of them. I was in and out of sleep while he preaching. Well being that brother Industrious apparently assumed that the louder he preached the more effective he was, he stood up on that stage bellowing. There would usually be NO response from the audience except a faint "amen" here and there. All you might hear were babies crying, a snore or two and flies buzzing around breaking the total silence.

 

Well at one point in his sermon from I John, he leaned over the altar, finger pointed out toward the crowd semi-crouching to hit his crescendo. He bellowed out, "You muss lowww (love) de..." Right then and there out popped his false teeth which went bouncing on top the altar and them rolled across the floor beneath our pew.

[Guest bdp]

I spent two summers traveling as a vocalist witht he Jon Stemkoski Celebrant Singers; the second summer the directors had chosen to make the concerts a little 'heavier' than in the past, lots of 'convicting' songs all leading up to 'Via Dolorosa' - mind you we used the same program even when we sang in schools for pre-teen aged kids, which I thought was really inappropriate. Anyway at the end of 'Via Dolorosa' our synth player was to hit soem keys that would produce a thunderclap sound; the keyboard was touch-sensitive so the harder the keys were struck the louder the thunder. Well this night we were 'on' all night, clearly our strongest night of the tour, spirit's movin' us and we know at prayer time everyone is going to have crumbled, in tears, and we'll have to just go out and pick 'em up one by one. Gets to the end of 'Via Dolorosa' and the synth guy, filled with the Spirit, slams both hands down on the keys as hard as he can - the keyboard is off-center on it's stand and goes flying up in the air and he has to frantically grab at it to keep it from crashing down on the stand. All the singers see this but our group leader doesn't; he goes into the 'conviction' prayer as we all bit our tongues desperately, and when our leader signals us to go into the crowd to pray with these poor shaken sinners we all head for the exits, rush out into the hallways, and burst out laughing uncontrollably. That was too funny...

 

bdp

[Guest vanesa]

Xtians do wierd shit at their churches!

 

I never had any good memories of church. The first time I attended Sunday school I was called names in the class and the teacher was an asshole. That was in 2nd grade.

 

In 9th grade I was forced to attend briefly Sunday school classes at the Lootingran (Lutheran) church. THe kids in my class were assholes here too, and they all smoked shit when we went to the teacher's house after class for some stupid get together.

 

Good thing I never was indoctrinated with Xtian theology. I suppose I never really was a Xtian to begin with. I was baptised Lutheran but was never confirmed by the Xtian church, which my mother still hounds me over if I bring up the subject. I openly told her that I never was a Xtian and that I don't kiss preacher ass very well and she told me "don't tell your grandmother that you don't beleive in the Bible". Whatever. Hear it a million times a day.

[Guest Gypsy]

since i was a kid i wanted to be filled with the spirit and speak in tongues but it never happened. then finally as a grownup, h and i and the kids were attending a charismatic church. it still wasn't happening for me. one of my friends said, 'hey, we got this amazing so and so coming to our church, if anyone can get tongues for you, he can'.

 

so i went to her church and raised my hand when it was time to get the gift. 3 or 4 people came over to pray for me. it still wasn't happening.

so one girl goes, 'so, have you ever thought about what it would be like?'

'sure'

'well what do you imagine?'

this was around the time when we were having the first gulf war conflict, i told her i thought of that word for one of those countries on the map - azerbijan (however you spell it)

she and the other people are all excited, 'that's it! that's it!! go with it?'

'what?'

'azerbijan! go with it!!'

'huh?'

'say it, say it, that's it!'

 

it was pretty funny. so i did my best impression of tongues..... 'azer, azer, azer, bijan, bijan, bijan, azerbi, azerbi, azerbi...'

finally i looked up and they were all nodding and smiling and walking away. i went back to seat trying so hard not to bust out laughing.

never worried about tongues again

 

**

 

had another funny time when a pastor spent the whole sermon getting on married men who still masterbated. that was hysterical. one of my friends brought her visiting relatives that sunday and was mortified.

 

**

 

vanesa, sorry things were so rough.

[been borg again]

Ok, I rememeber in high school, once a month all the baptist church youth groups rented a roller skating ring, and we would bring our own music... Sandi Patty, Micheal W smith, etc.

At the time I was really into Christian Metal Trash bands like Beleiver, tourniquit, Vengence Rising.

 

So I popped in my Vengence Rising tape in the sound system ( to me it was christian music) and after about 2 minutes into the song everyone in the roller rink had stopped and was staring at the sound booth, the parents rushed up to the sound booth VERY PISSED, and ripped the tape out of my hands and broke it I rememeber about 6 or 7 parents were yelling at me at the same time. I tried to defend myself since all of Vengence Rising lyrics were bible verses, but it was no use...... so my pastor made me write a letter of apology to I think it was 6 Baptist churches.

 

that was the last time they let me run the sound booth,

[been borg again]

I used to go to this small private school, about 60 kids total.

I was the runt and all the older guys always bullied me, so I avoided playing football or any sports cuz all the guys thought it would be funny to gangup on me and tackle me or whatever.

So the pastor/ principle called me into his office and told me I was a homosexual because I didnt like playing sports ( I was only in 7th grade!)

I was crying when my mom picked me up from school.

 

Mom freaked out and went ballistic in front of the whole school. Yelling and screaming in a rage at the pastor.

 

I never went back to that school or church.

the next day they put me in another private school and joined a different church.

[been borg again]

a few years after I started deconverting and left the church, my old church and youth group thought it would be a good idea to throw a surprise birthday party for me ( i used to be the youth pastor), in a last ditch effort to make me feel loved and wanted. There was about 30 people there.

I hadnt seen these people in a year at least.

 

The problem was I was celebrateing my birthday- day off from work, thinking I was going to be spending the day by myself in meditative contiplation of the Universe, And I took some LSD a few hours before my surprise birthday party at the chruch ( this was the very beginning of my few years indulging in the wonderful world of Hallucingens)

Luckly It was a small dosage and I was able to keep my head and kept mostly quiet and non talkative. and blamed it on not getting any sleep the night before.

 

Except at the end of the party there was about 6 of them who cornered me and took their turns trying to reconvert me. I rememeber how pissed off they were. One guy grabbed a phone book and tore the pages out slowly and dramatically in my face telling me this is what I was doing to Gods Word. I rememeber refusing to become mad and instead stayed as calm and polite as possible, which pissed them off even more.

In my LSD state, also since I was also going thru a new age hippy Buddhist stage of my life I thought it would be a good idea to sit in the lotus position and speak words of spiritual wisdom to these people, like some egotistical spiritual master, I think I was talking down to them, I can t rememeber

LOL

While they had me surrounded and pissed off.

i cant really rememebr what I said exactly, I rememeber some new age hippy mumbo jumbo about past lives and reincarnation, while I was tasting the colors and watching the walls breathe.

I can understand they perceived SOMETHING was wrong with me.

but they never figure out I was in the middle of a mild LSD trip.

But anyway that was the last straw for them, and hadnt seem most of those people since then. all i rememeber is the horrified looks on their faces, and when I ran into these people again at the Mall or whatever, they turn their back on me and wont even shake my hand.

 

LOL

[Lilith]

Mom freaked out and went ballistic in front of the whole school. Yelling and screaming in a rage at the pastor.

Good for her!!

 

I never went back to that school or church.

the next  day they put me in another private school and joined a different church.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I should hope so. Are you able to look back on this and laugh? That would warp some people for life.

[fallenleaf]

Okay... this was something me and one of my very good friends were planning on doing but chickened out on. Mainly because we didn't want people to get hurt in a panic.

 

It's the last day of 1999 and the church meets that night to pray because they believe horrible times are ahead. At the very least they believe the Y2K bug will cause computers and everything to fail. Which itself would be horrible but it might be the end of the world as well. The fact that I was insisting it was not going to happen didn't mean anything... nor did the fact that I was in school for computer engineering at the time -- and hence would have some clue on what was likely and what wasn't.

 

I was fairly involved and trusted in this church... as was my friend. For this event we were to run the sound board, lights, etc. During the setup we had a wicked idea... one of us would go to the back machine room and throw the power-main a couple seconds after midnight... killing everything but the emergency lights in the church. We had it all planned and were about to do it when we realized how "mean" it would be. These people were already in a state of panic... to feed into that would be dangerous.

 

So we both sat up in the booth and watched as absolutelly nothing happened. But we still think of how funny it would have been to this day.

 

-- -- --

 

I have tons of funny stories from that church... everything from the pastor dropping his unloaded (thank ghod) .45 in the middle of a heated sermon... to a morning when a female member was moved by god to spin around in praise to him... not a problem except she wore a loose skirt and nothing under it. That's probably the only time in the history of the church when I saw an usher rush up to someone and say, "I really don't think God wants you to keep doing that!"

 

[Lilith]

That's probably the only time in the history of the church when I saw an usher rush up to someone and say, "I really don't think God wants you to keep doing that!"

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

[Guest Gypsy]

>>>>it was pretty funny. so i did my best impression of tongues..... 'azer, azer, azer, bijan, bijan, bijan, azerbi, azerbi, azerbi...'

finally i looked up and they were all nodding and smiling and walking away. i went back to seat trying so hard not to bust out laughing.

never worried about tongues again <<<<

 

i just want to apologize in case i offended anyone with this. i don't doubt anyone's experience with tongues being real. i didn't mean to imply that all people were faking it...only that i was.

 

gypsy

[Lanakila]

I wasn't at the church at the time that this happened, but was told it by the family members so I know its true. The Baptist church my ex husband ended up pastoring had a deep baptismal behind the choir loft with a doorway on both sides that led to it. One for the ladies wanting to be baptized and one for the pastor and the men. So this is a wedding on a Saturday and the Groom goes into the little doorway to wait for his brides appearance at the back of the church prior to walking down the isle, and somehow he goes the wrong way or something and falls into the baptistry, tux and all. They were trying to dry him with those hand dryers in the bathroom so that he could stand up at his own wedding.

[nirrti]

I remember one Sunday when I was 13, these elderly deacons were supposed to lead the devotional prayer that day. Little did we know they had just had a heated argument with the pastor (again) and were pretty POed afterwards. Well, they weren't able to set aside their emotions, even for prayer and resented having to do the devotion that day. One of the deacons stood up to start the hymn and in with this angry expression on his face yells, "Father, I stretch my hand to thee!"

 

Then everyone started singing but didn't know which one of the three versions to sing the song. The deacons weren't giving us any musical cues like they were supposed to so hear we had three versons of this song being sung (badly) simultaniously by everyone. It was so horrible it sort of came out like this.......

"Father, I stretch..... no other shall to I...... hasten his other.... help throne In grace .......that live no ......while trouble rise .......dangers to me!"

 

And then, one of the deacons in this obvious show of anger and frustration motions with his hand for everyone to set down in a way suggesting he really wanted to say, "Fuck off!" You can tell what this was doing to my little 13-year old mind. I was sitting with the choir, biting the sides of my cheeks to keep from laughing.

[BlueGiant]

I have seen priests make some pretty nice recoveries when things go wrong during a mass, or at least take a turn for the unexpected.

 

At one point someone's cellphone rang during the homily and they ran out to the vestibule to answer it. The priest just said : "That'd better be God calling..."

 

The second was when a baby just hit the sirens right after the gospel was read. Now the slightly mortified mother ran to the "cry room" and the priest just commented that, "The gospel has been known to mention much wailing and gnashing of teeth."

 

Ah the years of growing up in a Catholic church, priests and their one-liners.

[Guest bdp]

The second was when a baby just hit the sirens right after the gospel was read.  Now the slightly mortified mother ran to the "cry room" and the priest just commented that, "The gospel has been known to mention much wailing and gnashing of teeth."

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Ah, that reminded me of my second Celebrant tour; we were helping to lead responses and worship in the mass, and it was time for the father to give his homily. There had been a child fussing through the service and it chose this time to open up and just wail, but the dad still tried to quiet the kid down, staying in his seat. Finally the priest broke off and, looking right at the guy, said 'sir, take your child out of here, we have a perfectly nice cry room at the back - that's what it's there for."

 

bdp

[Guest bdp]

About the group I was in, the Celebrant Singers: it was ecumenical, mixed Catholic/Protestant but even though we played in 60/75% Catholic churches the groups (20/25) would only have three or four Catholics at best. This meant we had Protestant musicians who needed to be cued in every mass, and if the director wasn't intimately familiar with mass it could get really hairy. On my second tour our drummer was a protestant who made no effort to learn mass and when to come in or cue the others; in one service he was trying to signal to the group that the count for the next response would be on '2' - he signalled '1,2' to demonstrate, our synth player thought it was the cue, and forcefully struck her opening chord just as the priest was lifting the chalice for the changing of the wine to the blood of Christ, the holiest part of the service. In another service the priest was trying to give the benediction 'The mass is ended, go in peace- and three times in a row our drummer kicked off the recessional before he could speak and had to be stopped - the priest finally looked at him and said 'Do you mind if I finish?'

 

Also we protestants were encouraged to mimic the Catholic responses, such as crossing one's forehead, mouth, and heart with the thumb before the reading of the Gospel; one girl got confused and crossed her nose, and when she saw some of the Catholics choking back laughter got so embarassed that she never attempted to fake any of it again.

 

bdp