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Why God did not send a Baptist to die for your sins
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Denominations are often the subject of church humor. For example, it was reported that it was so dry in this summer in Sumter, S.C., that the Baptists were starting to baptize by sprinkling, Methodists were using wet-wipes, Presbyterians were giving out rain checks, and Catholics were praying for the wine to change back to water.

The caution in using such “dry” denominational humor is that one must be careful not to insult another’s denomination, unless it is your own. For instance, since I am a Baptist, I can tell you about two Baptist groups that met in Europe, one from America and the other from Germany. At the dinner table several of the American Baptists began to smoke. The German Baptists were highly offended. In fact, the Germans were so shocked, they almost dropped their beer.

I suppose the beauty of denominational stories is that it pokes fun at stereotypes of who we are and what we stand for.

One of my favorite such stories is about a Baptist man named John Smith who moved into a large Catholic neighborhood. On the first Friday of Lent, John was outside grilling a big juicy steak on his grill. Meanwhile, all of his neighbors were eating cold tuna fish for supper.

His neighbors decided to talk him into converting to Catholicism. They took him to church, and the priest sprinkled some water over him, and said, “You were born a Baptist, you were raised a Baptist, and now you are a Catholic.”

However, the next Friday they smelled steak coming from John’s grill again. They rushed over and saw John standing over his grill with a small pitcher of water. He was sprinkling some water over his steak on the grill, saying, “You were born a cow, you were raised a cow, and now you are a fish.”

No wonder Jesus said, “You must be born again” (John 3:7). It takes a supernatural act of God to truly change me, not a denomination.

Aren’t you glad that instead of a Baptist or a Catholic dying for your sins, God sent a Jewish carpenter?

Copyright 2007 by Bob Rogers. Read this column each Thursday for a mix of religion and humor. You can read more “Holy Humor” on 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.