Back in the days when I was a professional Christian, getting paid to do what God was asking everyone else to do for free, the church that I was in charge of was not a normal church. I’m not sure there is a normal church with everybody showing up with their sins and all … crowding them into the same room … all demanding forgiveness at the same time. But I digress.
The congregation that came to my church was comprised of several little old ladies, homeless men, hookers, incarcerated drug abusers who were dropped off by a guy with a gun, and a bunch of radical seminary students who refused to get their hair cut at Dairy Queen (swirl tops) or wear suits. There were also a lot of kids from the projects who were running around.
When I first got there, the previous professional Christian refused to let a lot of these people inside. But I knew that a Sanctuary is a place that you get into. This one had bars on the windows to keep people out. I did away with that and the result is that a zoo was created.
Sunday School rooms were turned into apartments and the Baptismal Pool into a bathtub so that homeless guys could take baths. The social hall was turned into a Drop-In Center so that people who had no place to go could hang out. The kitchen pumped out food so people could eat. We broke a lot of rules.
We orchestrated good times as everybody individually managed through their tragedies. So the Prelude to the Sunday morning worship service was mostly the dance song from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” which got everybody in a good mood. Many mornings we would all break into dance over this with everyone mimicking the dance of their favorite Charlie Brown character. I do a mean Pig-Pen.
The offering plates got passed around but nobody had any money to put in them so the collection was always interesting. The little old ladies wrote I.O.U. on offering envelopes. The homeless guys would slip in discount coupons from the McDonalds around the corner. The incarcerated guys would spit their gum in. The Seminary students would dig deep into their pocket to find lint. The place never broke even.
Then when it came time for me to be the center of the universe for 20 minutes and preach, I was challenged to keep everyone’s attention. It took me a while to figure out that preaching a regular sermon wouldn’t do it. The few times that I tried the little old ladies snored so loudly that no one else could hear anything that I was saying.
So I got a little dramatic. That is an understatement. I got a lot dramatic.
One of my favorite sermons was on friends accepting one another as friends regardless of our imperfections. As soon as I made the point, I looked at our D.J. (yes we had a D.J.) and he hit play. Bruce Springsteen’s “Bobby Jean” came on and everybody got up and started dancing. It is a song that makes the same point as I was making and Bruce is the Boss and all. Everybody seemed to get something out of it.
Another time I was talking about having faith and Jesus walking on the water. The Baptismal Pool was full of dirty water so I wasn’t going there. Instead I walked across the pews. I jumped off the stage onto the top of the first pew and then danced to the second one and then the third and so on. It was a miracle that I didn’t fall and break my neck. Afterwards the entire congregation came to believe in miracles.
Of course I wasn’t always successful. Once in the middle of a sermon a drunk homeless guy carrying a baseball bat made his way down the aisle giving me a death stare. Talk about stopping the word of God dead in its tracks. This guy didn’t like my preaching. Lucky for me there were several other homeless guys who did and they tackled him and beat him up in front of the pulpit.
After they were done everyone was staring at me and I just stared at everybody for a second and said, “Let’s eat.”
What else do you say?
So I lasted for eight years. But it was a very good eight years.
Then I moved on to unprofessional Christianity.
