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How do you put a red-letter Bible on an audio cassette?
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“The Wittenburg Door” has gathered a strange collection of classified ads for religious products that can take some weird turns.

Bible lovers can buy the red-letter edition Bible on audio cassette (maybe it’s also available on CD). “How do you do that?” you ask. According to the manufacturer, “Christ’s words are emphasized in heavenly sounds.” Download that in your iPod and certainly you’ll be filled with the Spirit.

For the spirit-filled golfer, there’s the praying hands golf tees. For the woman who wants her legs to send the right message to those watching, there’s the gold cross fragrant pantyhose, with a gold cross stitched on the calf of every pair.

There’s a salon that wants to hire a spirit-filled hairstylist to “stand in the gap” and a spirit-filled manicurist for “laying on of hands.”

The daffy and dumb don’t discriminate against denominations. There are products for all kinds of churches. For those who baptize infants, there’s the baby tuxedo for stylish christening. For those who immerse believers later, there is the “Baptistry Couch” that lowers you into the water “quietly, beautifully and easily.” Either way, for only $7 you might want to pick up the Jordan River baptismal set, complete with certificate for framing that you’ve used holy water from the Jordan River.

In Missouri, a company advertises Christian Book and Gift Parties by saying, “If you walked into 90 percent of America’s homes you couldn’t tell whether they were Christians are not— but you can change that.” Their solution is to sell Christian books and gifts.

This last ad represents the reason most of these ads are ridiculous. The sign that a home is Christian is not what products they have on their coffee tables, but what proceeds from their mouths as you share a cup of coffee. You can tell the driver in the lane ahead of you is Christian not from what his bumper sticker says but from how he drives.
While there is nothing wrong with buying Christian products, it’s our lifestyle, not hyped up products, that best witness to our faith.

The apostle John said it well: “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:18, NIV). No red letters are needed for that verse. It’s clear in black and white.

Copyright 2008 by Bob Rogers. Email: brogers@fbcrincon.com. Read this column each Thursday for a mix of religion and humor. For more “Holy Humor,” go to the Web page of First Baptist Church of Rincon at www.fbcrincon.com.

Is there a church for a big woman with an itch?
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A pastor was called to be guest preacher at a church. He knew this church was different when the congregation ended every line of the hymn with the shout of “yeehah!”


As he stood to preach, he noticed that people were spread out on the pews. He would see a person, then a space, then another person, and another space. He wondered why nobody sat next to another person, when he noticed on the pew beside each person was a cowboy hat.


Another time this same preacher was invited to a new church in the city. He was surprised to see that everybody there looked like they had fallen face first into a tackle box, because they had piercings and earrings on every part of the body imaginable. A rock band was playing alternative music on the stage.


As different as these two churches were, they were both growing and reaching people for Christ.


Years ago I was pastor of a small country church in the backwoods of Mississippi. There was another Baptist church just five miles away in the town (population 600). The pastor’s wife at the town church asked me, “Why don’t our two churches merge?” I said, “There are people in my church who would not feel comfortable or fit in at your town church.” She said, “Oh, come on. We’re a small town church. What could be so different?”


I said, “Well, I got one really big woman in my church who, when she gets to feeling an itch, she pulls her dress halfway up and she scratches herself.”


The eyes of this pastor’s wife got really big and she said, “I see what you mean.”


I forgot to tell her about another woman in my church who saw a roach running across the wood floor, so she stomped on it with her bare foot, laughed and shouted, “Aha! I got him!”


Yep, the culture was definitely different where I was pastor.


Jesus upset the religious establishment because He crossed cultural barriers. He loved to eat with tax collectors and Gentiles and other strange people. Jesus walked into the land of Samaria, full of half-breed Jews who worshiped in weird ways and talked different and smelled different.


Jesus walked right up to a Samaritan woman at a well and started talking her language. He accepted her culture, but he let her know her sinful lifestyle had to change. Soon she had the whole town following Jesus (see John 4).


So what cultural barrier is keeping somebody in your community from hearing the gospel? If you tear down the cultural barriers to share Christ in your neighborhood, you may hear the angels shouting, “Yeehah!”


Copyright 2014 by Bob Rogers. Email: brogers@fbcrincon.com. Read this column each Friday in the Herald. Visit my blog at www.bobrogers.me.