Dryvetyme Onlyne

Courtesy of Rhymes with Kerouac, author of the blog Today At The Mission: Daily Life in a Homeless Shelter, I present to you his 50 questions with my (slightly snarky/caustic/sarcastic/tongue-firmly-in-cheek) responses. Comments & participation are appreciated! The questions appear after the break.

1. Why don’t we give church members keys to the kitchen?

Probably because they’d throw big parties in them. Or maybe your church doesn’t have a kitchen. What if a church is so large they get everything catered all the time, whether it’s the “Young Moms in Their 20’s Tuesday Tea Time” or the “Distinguished Gentlemen in Their 70’s Monday Morning Coffee Collective”. Who needs a kitchen when you can afford to get everything delivered all the time?!? Oh to be blessed financially of the Lord!

2. Can we throw more parties?

It all depends upon what kind of party it might be. Who’s doing the catering? Have you made the correct appointment with the proper pastoral secretary and filled out the necessary forms? We can’t have 3 groups converging on Meeting Room 3C on the South Wing of the church all on the same night, now can we??

3. Is this Fair Trade Coffee?

What is Fair Trade Coffee? Does Starbucks carry it? Does Folgers make that blend? What makes it fairly traded? Does that mean that you bought for a great price at Wal-Mart?

4. Do you know how many people say, “how are you?” and don’t listen to the answer?

Ummmm…. Could you repeat the question? I wasn’t listening very well. My mind was on higher matters, like how to wake up earlier on Sunday mornings in order to park my shiny, new SUV in a more prominent parking space so that I can display God’s blessings in my life.

5. Are you one of them?

What did you say again? I wasn’t paying attention to you. I thought that the pastor was calling me over for a private conference to discuss important matters.

6. I’m coming back to the heart of worship. I’m sorry Lord, for the thing that I’ve made it. Did I miss something or is that song still all about me?

Where can I find that song in the hymnal? And besides, what is this heart of worship he’s talking about anyway?

7. How many people in the congregation on a Sunday morning have the gift of preaching?

Obviously only one person. Why would God give my church more than one preacher?

8. How many of those people - gifted for the edification of the church - get to preach?

See my answer to #7. Why do you want me to repeat myself?

9. If God has given each believer a spiritual gift, and all those many and varied gifts are intended for the edification of the church, why does our church practice bear no relevance to this fact whatsoever?

I don’t know what you’re talking about! We have our great pastor, his wonderful wife, the organist, the song leader (when he’s not getting too loud or preachy, trying to steal the pastor’s glory), the associate pastor (he does a great job with the announcements!), and the wonderful ladies in the nursery (bless their hearts!). Who else or what else do we need?

10. What would happen if there was no big building for us all to go to on Sunday morning?

I’m sure we’d go find another church to attend. How can I go to church without going to a large building? Where else am I supposed to assemble together with other Christians?

11. Can a coffee shop breakfast with the guys still be church?

Ummmm…. Don’t heathens & pagans work in those places? Why else do I wait in the drive-thru for my Triple Venti Iced Caramel Frappuccino, burning $3.00-per-gallon gasoline? I don’t want to actually see or touch those people. Just give me my calorie-laden drink & let me drive away!

12. It’s Sunday morning and the worship band is struggling. Am I going to be okay with that?

Most assuredly not! If the music isn’t top-notch, I won’t be able to glorify God! My praises need the best soundtrack possible!

13. Why does every event have a guest speaker?

How else are we going to find someone new to compare the pastor to? We always need fresh topics to complain about.

14. If I only had 12 people in my congregation, and one of them ends up turning on me, one of them flat out denies he even knows me, and the rest bail out just when I need them most… would my ministry be a success or a failure?

Only 12 people?!? That’s not a success! That’s merely the size of a couple of the homeschooling families in my large church. Don’t you know that size really does matter? And that unfailing, blind loyalty is key to ANY ministry?

15. Are you as tired as I am of being called a ’sheep’? Actually, I don’t mind that so much, it’s the ’stupid, dumb sheep’ part that kind of bugs me.

I’m no sheep! The pastor comes to me for advice on important church matters. The sheep are those other folks who go to the pastor for advice on what brand of cat food to buy this week.

16. How is it that nobody likes a gossip, but they hardly ever get called on it? Tell a dirty joke at the church social and get told right then and there. Gossip all day long and… nothing. And no, I don’t want to tell them, either.

Hmph! I don’t gossip! I only tell the truth. And besides, I’m selective about who I share these truths with — my spouse, my kids, my best friend, my friends, my unsaved next-door neighbor, my tailor, and my CPA.

17. Why is bigger better?

Because it’s proof of God’s blessings in our lives. If it’s not big, it’s not blessed!

18. Green Prosperity Hankerchief. Need I say more?

More than what?!? That because of my investment in that preacher’s ministry, he now has the funds to purchase the private jet he needs to fly about the world preaching to people.

19. Millions of immigrants coming to our country every year, and every single one of them needs Jesus. Has a more glorious opportunity ever been so inelegantly squandered by the church?

They need to go back and get Jesus in their own countries! Don’t they know that we’re sending a team of teenagers down their this summer to teach them songs & do puppet plays for them to tell them about Jesus? If they all come here, we’ll have no place to send our teenagers to get them out of our hair for at least one week in the summer!

20. If our entire bible consisted only of the four gospels, how would our religion look today?

Only the Gospels? What about Daniel & Revelations? How am I going to figure out when the Lord is going to return and take us out of the forsaken world full of sinners? What a ridiculous question. Don’t you know that we must have Paul to help us make sense of all of those “do-gooder”, “love your neighbor” things Jesus talks about?

21. Why don’t we stop explaining our faith to atheists? Yes - my faith is completely, totally and absolutely irrational. That would be the ‘faith’ part. Duh.

How else would they know about Jesus if we didn’t pull our Josh McDowell & Ravi Zacharias books to explain logically and scientifically how Jesus was born of a virgin, died, was resurrected, and ascended into Heaven in order to forgive us of our sins?

22. Of all the sermons about forgiveness you’ve heard, how many times have you seen a preacher stop and say, “Okay, this is how you forgive someone…?”

Hmmmm…. I’m supposed to tell people that I’m sorry if I do something wrong? Who said I ever did anything wrong? And besides, if the other person is wrong, they should apologize to me! I’m not going to just go around forgiving people willy-nilly!

23. Why Thomas Kinkade?

Simple. He’s a beautiful “painter of light” who captures the world as it should be, complete with little cottages, tree-lined paths, and nice, bright colors.

24. Is playing cards still a sin?

Most assuredly! We all know that playing “Uno” leads you down the slippery slope towards playing No-Limit Poker all night long in Sin City Las Vegas.

25. Have you ever heard someone pray and they say something like, “…and Satan we bind you from blah, blah, blah…”? Everytime I hear someone do that I want to stop them and ask when they started praying to Satan.

How else will Satan know to listen to us? If we pray to Jesus to bind Satan, the instructions might get confused in translation. Jesus might do things His way instead of ours.

26. Sometimes I also have to ask… Are you praying to the congregation?

If I don’t pray loud enough in front of people, how else will people know what are the best words & phrases to employ in order to have maximum effectiveness when bringing Jesus around to our way of thinking about a problem?

27. And then sometimes I also want to ask… Is this a prayer or a sermon?

Didn’t you read my answer to #26? If we don’t come up with a good 3- or 5-point prayer, how else are going to convince Jesus to do things our way?

28. “We thank you father, that you, father, have blessed us father, that you loved us father, and that, father, you are here with us now father.” Why do people pray like that?

If we don’t, how else are we going to remind God to listen to us when we pray? And besides, repetition is a good rhetorical device that helps concepts sink into the subconscious. How else will God know what we think is the best thing to do in any given situation?

29. I have yet to be at a congregational meeting, church business meeting, elders, deacons or committee meeting of any kind that does not open with a devotional message from the bible. Does anyone else find this odd?

Don’t you realize that we must purge our minds of the world and fill our minds with heavenly things at every opportunity before doing anything relating to the Kingdom? And besides, the more time we spend reading cheesy inspirational messages, the less time we’ll have to talk about anything of any importance. Don’t you know that meetings are only about time-wasting, castigating those who missed the meeting, and praising those of us who DID attend?

30. And is anyone else no longer surprised at the number of times that devotional message is about unity?

How else are we supposed to be unified? We have to read Psalm 133 before we have any meeting just so we know what’s supposed to happen. You don’t think we actually get along in reality, do you?!?

31. If a church event is meant to be an ‘outreach’ to our friends and family, shouldn’t we be going to where they are? If not, perhaps we should change the name to ‘inreach’.

Ummmm…. Where “they are” is in the world & I can’t bother myself or sully myself by visiting them in their world. I have to call out from afar & beg/cajole them to come close enough where I can physically drag or emotionally guilt them into visiting.

32. We went from old hymn books to new hymn books to song books to overheads to Power Point. What’s next?

We’ll hopefully be able to sit in our own private cubicles at church & have the songs, sermons, announcements, and everything else downloaded onto our PDA’s so that we won’t have to actually interact with our fellow Christians.

33. Wooden pews. What were they thinking?

It’s all about making sure that our surly teenagers, bored husbands, and sleeping grandfathers have good posture at all times.

34. Remember bus ministry?

Unfortunately I do. All of those kids running around without any of their parents to watch or take care of them. Good riddance to all of their screaming voices!

35. Everybody at church knows what the rules are, everybody knows how to behave, what’s expected of them. No-one ever sat you down and said, ‘these are the rules…’ but you know them anyway. How did you learn the rules? Of course, you can’t really understand this question until you get a bunch of folks together in a street church, where no-one knows how to behave in church…

Of course there are rules! If you would come to church for every possible event like a good Christian, you’d see how you’re supposed to live, walk, dress, eat, talk, speak, gossip, breathe, and accessorize!

36. Here’s a little game to play. Sit in church. Pick a man or woman - someone you sort of know, but don’t know real well. A Christian person. A nice Christian person. Ask yourself, “If they fell off the wagon and ended up downtown, living on the street, sleeping in their own urine and vomit… would I go get them?

That’s someone else’s job. Not mine! I’ve got to keep myself pure & untainted by the world, a spotless lamb in case Jesus comes back in the next 15 minutes! If I’m caught helping out a dirty drunk, Jesus might get confused & think I’m one of them!

37. Would any of us go get them?

If that was their “ministry”…

38. Or would that be the pastor’s job?

I’d hope not! People wouldn’t come to our church if they saw our pastor hanging out on the seedy side of town! He has to stay extra clean!

39. Why are we afraid of art?

Because that’s the area where godless, sexually deviant pagans have been making their livings for years. Just think of all of those Biblical characters represented in nude, lewd forms by those Renaissance artists. David indeed….

40. There’s crackers in the communion plate. Is it just me or…?

Or what?!? Are you saying that we should be eating actual bread & drinking actual wine? Don’t you know that bread violates my Adkins & South Beach diets and that wine is an alcoholic beverage that I should be avoiding?

41. Why do missionaries always live somewhere else?

Because they have to save the rest of the world. It’s not my job to travel over there! And besides, we have churches here to reach our lost; we don’t need missionaries.

42. There’s a guy outside of town with the words, “Jesus is alive” painted on his roof. His neighbour has painted the words, “So is Elvis” on his roof. Which guy would you rather have a beer with?

**Almost faints at the audacity of such a question** We shouldn’t even be thinking of imbibing any of the devil’s drink! Moreover, we shouldn’t ever consider spending time with a man who believes that that drug-using rock-n-roller is still alive (even though he did sing some lovely Gospel songs).

43. Rich Christians are blessed by God. Absolutely destitute Christians must live on faith for their every need. Which is better?

I’m blessed because I have faith! I had faith that God would make me rich & He has done so! I’ve always had the faith that I’d be able to afford my 5-bed, 5-bathroom house & 3 cars. God doesn’t want His children to be destitute!

44. Which is better when you haven’t eaten in three days?

Again, if I’m truly blessed, I’ll always have enough money to buy plenty of food to eat. I can’t imagine being hungry as a child of God.

45. Why do all our pictures of Jesus look like us?

Well, since we’re supposed to be made in God’s image and following in Jesus’ example, I just thought that it would be easier to make all of the pictures of Jesus look like us Western white Christians so that we wouldn’t have to change very much about our behavior.

46. You have a Christian Fish on your car. What are you attempting to communicate, and to whom is that communication directed? Why? Okay, that’s three questions. So sue me.

I just want everyone to know that I love Jesus as well as where I shop for Jesus! All good Christians should be shopping at their local Christian bookstore so that Jesus will be blessed by our holy consumption!

47. Why is it that none of us can walk to church?

Why would I want to walk to church? If I walked, I couldn’t show off the clothes, vehicle, jewelry, and other accessories with which God has blessed me. If I walked, I’d get sweaty & gross and the pastor wouldn’t want to talk to me!

48. Why is there a copyright on bibles?

We have to protect the intellectual property rights of whomever wrote those wonderful notes that fill my Study Bible! If they don’t get paid for talking about Jesus, then how will they have evidence that God has blessed them?

49. When will we stop praying for revival and start living like the revived?

How can we live it when it hasn’t arrived? We have to keep praying for it & praying for it until we KNOW it’s arrived. We have to KNOW that revival has come & that means LOTS AND LOTS of growth!

50. Where do we go from here?

We keep going. We keep growing. We don’t change anything that we’ve been doing because it’s all been working so far. Why else have we been on this wildly successful building program for so long? If there’s no growth, then how will we know that God has been blessing us?!?