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I didnt get a thing out of your sermon today
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“I didn’t get a thing out of your sermon today!” That’s what a deacon’s wife told me years ago at the end of worship, and I understood why she said it. Let me explain why.

The church had a nursery, but it was hardly ever used. Members would say, “The way I look at it, the sooner you break in the young ‘uns to church, the better.” So instead of putting their toddlers in the nursery, they brought them to church. The only problem is that God did not make 2-year-olds and 3-year-olds to sit still for an hour.

One Sunday the spirit moved, but it wasn’t the Holy Spirit. The kids fidgeted, they cooed, they jumped up and down, and they fell off pews. And when they fell, they cried. As soon as one child stopped crying, another one started up. It seemed as if they were playing toddler tag team, and I was the preacher who was getting pinned to the mat. I tried to ignore the noise and focus on my message, but it was hard, because from the start to finish, my sermon was accompanied by the wails of the infants. Never before or since have I preached an entire sermon over the constant crying of babies, but I did that Sunday.

While crying babies can make it hard to hear from God, some people make it hard all on their own. Bucky Kennedy, pastor of First Baptist Church of Vidalia, tells how he has seen people cross their arms, look at their watches, and then say with their faces, “Bless me. You’ve got five minutes.”

One fellow even took out his watch, shook it at the Brother Bucky, and held it out as if to say, “Do you need a watch to know when to stop?” So the preacher took his own watch off and put it out of sight in his pocket, as if to say, “I’m not going to worry about the time.” Bucky said, “My Dad got mad at me for ignoring his watch like that.”

Which reminds me of a truth. You might ignore your earthly father in church, but you don’t need to ignore your Heavenly Father. Listen to His voice, and give Him time to bless you in worship. And put away your watch, because it will probably take more than five minutes.

(Copyright 2011 by Bob Rogers.  E-mail: brogers@fbcrincon.com. Read my blog at www.holyhumor.blogspot.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.