After you say the opening line of your sermon and someone stands up and yells, “It’s because of heretics like you: repent, repent, repent” while there are boos and the slow methodical rhythm of hand clapping you have officially won the title of most awkward church service for July 13th 2008.
How do you respond to that chaos? Sing a hymn of course!
Watch the awesomeness and hope this never happens when you get up to preach.
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Somehow, I think this is probably the best that many could do if someone starting yelling at them that they were a heretic during their sermon:
BOOM goes the dynamite
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I think the biker guy in the church video plagiarized Jim West and his response whenever Chris Tilling writes a post concerning Bishop Wright or Zwingers. Someone from Germany sent me this video of Chris trying to make his way to his computer from a football match to write a response to Dr. West’s accusations:
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Finally, watching the sermon above reminded me of a couple of church moments that, while less awkward, certainly did not help the flow of the sermon.
First, the visiting pastor who in fine charismatic fashion asked for a “clap offering to the Lord.” Except that he said “crap offering.” Um, not very effective in evoking a praise response.
Second, one Sunday my father was preaching. Good old school stuff. A little Bible thumpin’, some fist pumpin’, and Holy Ghost jumpin’. Now as all the charismatic preachers know there are a few necessities to preaching. One is finishing the majority of your words with an “uh”: Jesus-uh, God-uh, forgiveness-uh, and most importantly “offering-uh”.
Another important rhetorical device is working yourself into a righteous fury. I believe this is necessitated by hour long sermons; therefore, you have to wake the audience intermittently. Anyways, Dad was working himself up, and getting louder and louder. Finally, he finished his point using the full range of his outdoor voice with the exclamation “Jesus Christ-uh.”
There was a young boy at the back of the sanctuary and he gasped loudly and said even louder, “He swore!” The service never returned to normal; however, there was much laughter.
Now it’s your turn: give me your awkward or funny church moments.
Filed under: Christianity, Church, Religion
First time I ever preached was Easter Sunday at a small rural church that was without pastor. I delivered my less than Keller-esque best effort and stepped down from the pulpit.
I brought my notes with me of course. But as I pulled them with me, I also pulled the church Bible. I stepped down the stairs as their huge, gold embossed, 150 year old Bible fell with a deafening crash onto the stone floor. The spine broke and pages went flying.
I kept walking. Longest 10 feet ever. I sat in the front pew and sweated the remaining hymns. Surprisingly few people shook my hand at the door that morning…
zoom,
LOL! That is awesome!!! I would pay to see video of that.
IMHO, “biker guy” gave the best sermon I’ve heard in any church in many years – brief and to the point.
And I love the “bouncers.” Sweet touch.
The bumbling sportscaster is probably my favorite youtube video ever! He should be offered a job at sports net as an attraction. I’d wet my pants laughing every time he’d refer to “The Dissociated Press.” How he’s not working for TSN right now I’ll never know.
I can’t wait until my hair is really long and you preach somewhere… Man I hope they have bouncers too…
Oh, also. My favorite awkward church moment EVER happened at the Church I used to work for when the person speaking that day (one of your favorites I might add as well) was trying to lighten the mood by making an anecdote about daytime planner books and how they rule our lives. The following is a quote:
Preacher: “And have you ever noticed how most daytimers are Black? Now I don’t mean that in a racist way, I just mean that these big black things tend to give off a very threatening an ominous ‘vibe’ if you will…”
*incredulous stares at Preacher and at the worship leader (me) who was leading the service that day*
Worship Leader in the Balcony: “Dear God of the Old Testament, it’s me, Jake. All of my everything I give to you for you to either strike him down, or me down. Cause I sure as hell don’t want to follow this guy’s performance…”
Jake,
“The Sermon.”
Could be an entire other blog post: “The sermon” was part of a series on the fruit of the Spirit. On said particular day the fruit in question was goodness. At the end of 35 minutes of rambling the speaker had talked about everything–Elijah and the prophets of Baal (???), some jokes, some anecdotes, exhortations to be better people (bootstrap moralism), not to mention said epic incredibly stupid statement that certainly won awkward church service moment for the month in North America; however, the speaker forgot one very important thing considering he was talking about the fruit of the Spirit: the Spirit!
I wish I had the video to deconstruct for seminary classes; it would be an invaluable tool.