We’ve been so busy with all this political rhetoric (which I am totally tired of and won’t be revisiting anytime soon. Ugh) that we haven’t had our regular “Open Mic” post. So here’s our “open mic” question for this week:
Have you ever just “lost it” (i.e. found something unbearably funny) in church? Gotten so “tickled” that you had to leave? Found something so funny that it was all you could do to contain yourself from exploding with laughter? Well, what was it? We want in on the story.
What happened in church that was so funny you “lost it?”
The Internet Monk Archives 
I grew up in a genuine singing and dancing and tongues charismatic nondenominational church in Detroit. We had a large stage with a large worship band and a propensity for hours of long, joyful singing, dancing, and other expressions of the spirit, and the sactuary walls were decorated all over with various colorful banners and flags declaring the majesty and beauty and authority of God.
One Sunday, the assistant pastor feels a strong calling to spiritual warfare, and takes up the sword that his father had given him upon his ordination and begins dancing with it, furiously hacking and slashing the air. The music crescendoed, his hands got a little sweaty from the exertion, and three feet of shiny Made in China steel flew across the stage and thunked point-first through the silver-and-pink “Rose of Sharon” banner and into the wall…several feet above the head of the (blessedly) short flute player.
Amazingly, everyone was lost in the spirit, the pastor scurried over to retrieve his sword and stow it under his seat where it belonged, the floutist continued fluting, and the entire youth row went from horror to disbelief to “did you see that?! Holy cow!” in a matter of seconds.
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I was a new Christian, visiting a local church. The minister was preaching on the Rapture. He said, “It will be like a big snatch in the sky”. I looked over at my friend who was leaning over to hide his erupting laughter. The minister said it again. “It will be like a big snatch in the sky”. My friend and I tried to look down at the ground and ignore each other. As soon as I caught his eye, we burst out laughing. I had to leave.
Suffice it to say, I am not a pre-trib, pre-mil, dispensationalist, Freudian.
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In the middle of our Sunday Worship Service, the pastor rose to deliver his homily. He closed his eyes, and grasping the well worn sides of the pulpit, began to pray:
“Lord, We thank you for this food…” (Long pause)
a muffled snort erupted from the second pew as parishioner’s opened their eyes and shot questioning glances around the room.
“…that is your word.”
Wow! Nice save!
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Baptist church…preschool nursery…my one year old daughter was pushing a chair around the room saying sh– repeatedly… I didn’t think she had heard me say that. Later found out toddlers get their words mixed up and was combining chair and sit.
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Do Sunday School stories count? When I was in graduate school, our Sunday School teacher had the idea to re-create a youth campfire tradition where you write a specific sin of yours on paper then throw it in the fire. Since we were inside, she decided to do this with an aluminum pie pan. Her husband had the idea of placing a large candle in the middle do help dissipate the smell. As we lit our paper and placed it in the pan, it began to melt the candle, until very shortly the entire pie pan became like a huge candle with a flame that was at least three feet tall. Things were spiraling out of control quickly, with images of the church being burnt to the ground going through all of our heads. The teacher had the idea of blowing it out – she took a breath and gave a small blow to the flame with no effect. Thinking she hadn’t blown hard enough, she took a huge breath, leaned forward, and blew as hard as she could. The flame was fanned, and for a moment became a huge ball of fire. As someone went to get water, I grabbed a towel which was nearby and extinguished the flame. Obviously embarrassed, the teacher continued as if everything was normal. She was unharmed, but what she didn’t know was that the front of her hair and her eyebrows were very singed. For the rest of the class time, there was suppressed laughter. We tried not to look at her, but didn’t want to appear rude. I can only imagine her dismay as she went to the ladies room after the class and discovered the truth. File this incident under “Stupid Church Tricksâ€.
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Thanks everyone -I have laughed and laughed and thoroughly enjoyed the stories!
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I was leading worship on Friday night for a Bill Bright Prayer and Fasting conference in Houston, Tx, when verse three of “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name” popped up on the screen with the unfortunate typo: “O that with yonder sacred thong…” I’ve never led that verse again.
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Our church has about 180 or so in the morning service. Pastor was making some point – I now have forgotten – related to watching too much TV. He started talking about a show that makes fun of Christians and that no one in this church should ever watch it. You know what show I’m talking about, he asked? The Simpsons. Being a Simpson’s fan, I turn to my wife and whisper – D’Oh. The people directly behind us heard it as well. We thought we stifled our laughter pretty good, but were approached by many after the service to find out what happened.
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My now husband and I, and his best man decided to attend the church one Sunday before the wedding (since it wasn’t our own). It was a small, cute little church on the beach. I can’t remember the denomination, but it was United something and it wasn’t methodist but it was affiliated with Church of Christ.
Anyhow, we sat down, and there must’ve been like 20 people in there total. They did a little reading and sung from hymnals (which was cool), but the first hymn we sang was some song about the glory of God as creator and it talked about the universe and the atom and the like. I found this song to be pretty funny, mainly because being in that church felt quite strange and forced. And the two guys I was with (then fiancé and his best man) were also finding the situation funny, so we kind of fed off of each other.
It’s not that there was any one thing that set me off, it was more of the entire atmosphere and strangeness of the place that made me laugh uncontrollably. I felt bad, because obviously others could hear. I eventually calmed down and listened to the sermon which happened to be a description of the Chronicles of Narnia movie. His intentions were good, but we were left kind of going, “what?”
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I think Lane and I went to the same church…
I do remember the time when our pastor, who always seemed to mispronounce at least one word per week (hyperbole as “hyper-boil”, etc…)
The Sunday before Memorial Day he announced that we were going to honor all our “Veterinarians”…
And the time in a business meeting, when we were debating on whether the pianist and organist should be paid for weddings and funerals, he suggested they be given a “pituitary”. We can only assume he meant “gratuity”.
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1. Back in our college days, a friend and I drove a couple of hours from Memphis to hear a “gifted” minister preach in a small town in Missouri. He stood up to preach, and he was a shouting sort who “did not waste a breath in the service of the Lord.” He built up a good head of steam and was expounding on how through Jesus we could overcome every “ob-STACK-le” with extreme emphasis on the 2nd syllable. My friend and I looked at each other as if to ask, is that how “obstacle” is pronounced in Missouri? We both could hardly contain ourselves and couldn’t look at each other the rest of the sermon as he continued to make his points about those pesky “ob-STACK-les.” We laughed most of the way back to Memphis too.
2. A couple of years ago, one of my current pastors had taken his fill of cell phone interruptions. When one rang as he was just starting his sermon, he looked at the person and said, “If that ain’t Jesus calling, turn it off!”
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I know there’s been a lot of hilarious horrible solos that cause a lot of this inappropriate laughing. My Dad pastored a small church and was always gracious enough to let most anyone share their love of the Lord through song. There was a guy who played the organ and loved to sing, albeit quite badly on both counts. One Sunday night before singing he went into a long explanation about how God had given him this song in the night. He immediately starts playing a horrible organ rendition of Paul McCartney and Wings “Let ‘Em In.”
When he started singing “Someone’s knocking at my door, someone’s ringing the bell” and then switched to “Jesus is knocking on my door, Jesus is ringing the bell.” My husband and I looked at each other and in unison said “I think it’s Paul McCartney knocking.” We just lost it then and there and had a few disapproving looks.
I have lost it so many times through the years with really crazy signing.
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I was in a church meeting where the main (guest) speaker started telling stories about him and his younger brother. For some reason he rambled into talking about how he and his brother would crawl around in apartment stores and look up the skirts of the female mannequins, “and there was nothing there!” I think his point was that we’re sinful by birth, but many of us had to suppress our laughter.
Then in the SAME MESSAGE, he ended up talking about the apostle Paul being so frustrated with the Jewish leaders of the time and their emphasis on circumcision, that he wished they would cut themselves off. His point was we need to get rid of our sinful nature through the death of Christ, and not through the law. But he kept referring to the act of circumcision. He emphasized “just cut if off!”
At that point I looked at a church elder who was usually very serious. His face was bright red. We were both thinking the same thing, here’s a message referring to both female and male genitalia. And so we lost it together.
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Yes, I was singing with my High School’s chorale in a church and one of our members was the student conductor for a song the men sang. As he conduced he swooped down and flicked his music right off the music stand. We all grinned, but it would have ended there had not our friend nearly lost it, gathered himself back together, flashed us a smile, and winked.
We almost collapsed on the platform at that point.
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I have two. The first one is more embarrassing than funny. My Pastor called all the kids up to the front to say their memory verse. He had them sit on the floor while he said something and while they were sitting my son let rip the loudest fart I had ever heard it was immediately obvious who had done it because of the look on his face and all the other kids inching away from him.
The second one was poor Jeff. Jeff was the kind of kid that didn’t fit in well anywhere but desperately wanted to. He had started playing the trumpet in the school band and asked our P&W leader who was also the Pastor’s wife if he could play with her on Sunday Mornings. At this time it was just hre and her little electric keyboard so she said that he could do one song with her. The decided on “Blow the Trumpet in Zion”, an obvious choice. Before the service, the P&W leader came to me (I was the youth pastor and Jeff was one of my teenagers) and warned me that Jeff’s trumpet playing skills were a little rough so I should tell the kids what was going on and tell them not to laugh and I did so. When it was time and Jeff mounted the stage I looked at my kids with a look that said “Remember what we talked about! No Laughing!” Then he started playing. It was like someone had thrown a cat into a blender and it just wouldn’t die. I was losing it and I can feel the tension behind as all the kids tried to stand directly behind me so no one could see their faces. I don’t know where the self-control came from to not break down but to this day, when I think about the sounds he made come out of that poor trumpet, I can’t help but laugh!
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Our pastor had the habit of putting his lapel mic on as soon as Sunday school finished, a solid half hour before the service. We were all sitting in the sanctuary one Sunday when we all began to perceive a talking voice from out of nowhere. It sounded almost like a sermon rehearsal, with a few grunts interspersed. When the toilet flushed the sound tech finally caught on the pastor’s mic was not muted and he was in the restroom.
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Sometimes I get my mords wixed up – I mean my words mixed up.
During a sermon on the grace of God, I mentioned the testimony of a Texas woman who had just been executed for murder. She had received Christ while in prison, and had a very real transformation. Her name was Karla Faye Tucker, except I mixed up my words again. Twice. With emphasis.
*sigh*
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Our pastor was emphasizing a point in his sermon when he said pausing between each word, “but…but…but… Our 3 year old daughter blurted out, “He said “Butt, butt, butt!” loud enough for the entire church to hear. Everyone burst out laughing. Our pastor, good naturedly addressed my daughter with, “Well yes I did Annie!”
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I was probably in the nursery when this happened, but it’s a story told numerous times by my parents. We were a military family so I attended various churches growing up, from the mainline protestant chapel on base to fundamentalist SBC to the occasional pentecostal church. We were members of a fundamentalist SBC church near Fort Bragg, NC in the early 80’s when my dad was asked to read a Bible passage one Sunday. He prefaced his reading with, “Everyone get out your King Jimmy and turn to…” Needless to say the lack of reverence for the “one true translation” went over none too well – so I guess this is more a story of humor after the fact as there was more stunned silence than actual laughter at the time.
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One time, at a Bible study, we had a plate of deer sausage on the table. We started to pray and then my brother spontaneously (and very sincerely) began to sing the song “As the Deer Panteth for the Water.” We tried to sing along but then we all had a meltdown laughing.
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1. When our church first added a projector for the hymn lyrics I had to type out the songs and discovered occasional typos. One Sunday we had to sing “Glory! Glory! How the angels sin!”
2. Another Sunday we experimented with letting the music director prepick all our songs instead of the random unorganized way of his normal doings, and thus after preaching a serious and convicting sermon on Hell we sang for the invitation “Set my soul afire, Lord. Set my soul afire…” I completely lost it and wouldn’t have been able to handle it if anyone came forward anyway.
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I’m Catholic, but my brother-in-law is Church of Ireland, and one time they put on a children’s pageant at the CoI cathedral, which we attended because my nephews would be taking part.
I admit, I was curious as to how they would cover the Reformation and the taking-over of the cathedral by the Protestants from the Catholics, and so I sat expectantly there as the kids trooped out one by one to do their bits: first the monks, to represent the monastic foundation in the 6th century… building of the round tower in the 9th… arrival of the Normans in the 12th century… then it leaped ahead to Oliver Cromwell’s visit in the 17th century and I had to excuse myself to go out for a “breath of air.”
Since obviously, between the 12th and 17th centuries, nothing at all of note happened. No activity on the continent and the neighbouring island whatsoever. No historical happenings of any interest at all in the five centuries or so in between the Normans and Oliver, much less anything to do with religion 🙂
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My husband is the pastor of our small reformed baptist church. My daughter and I were sitting there in the service, when she hands me a note that said “What is in the world is Dad wearing?” I looked at up at my husband and he had on a blue plaid sports coat, a gray and black striped shirt with an odd patterned, very very colorful tie. I lost it and so did my daughter, we laughed so hard that we were shaking. I really must look at him before we leave the house.
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OK, a little late on the thread, but here goes. Three stories:
1) Our dear pastor had just married off his youngest daughter the previous day. So before the sermon he’s reminiscing, getting rather maudlin about his little girl and how he remembered when she was so old and did such and such, when an ALARM CLOCK rings inside the pulpit! Brought the house down. Needless to say, that was the end of the reminiscing. What was even funnier, I found out later that the clock was set by my own dad, who would be the very last person you would suspect…
2) Different church, different pastor. Older gent, he’s at the end of his sermon, wallowing in profound emotion and conviction, leaning on the pulpit, with his MIDDLE FINGER EXTENDED. For five solid minutes. I have no idea what he was preaching about, just that he flipped off the church for five minutes. OMG!
3) At a service on the Navajo rez, a lady is giving a prayer request for her son, who’s having abdominal troubles. She asks for prayer for “my son’s intesticles, which are all swolled up reeely big like that” …
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Sometimes, it is the Pastor who has to hold it in…
The director of our WMU program and I had decided to present a “skit” to introduce our Lottie Moon Week of Prayer and Offering…which takes place in December. Our plan – she would dress as Lottie Moon, complete with period costume and jet-black wig. She would come in from the back at the beginning of the service, “distrupting” my Lottie Moon introduction. She had a lapel mic on to facilitate her dialogue. She was to come to the front, and explain what the Lottie Moon offering was all about. On paper, sounded and looked great…remember how plans tend to go wrong?
Thnings seemed to be going great – but I had never seen her in the “full” getup…nor had anyone else…it really looked good…but she did not look anything like herself…
I finished the opening prayer standing at the pulpit…and began to talk about Lottie Moon…the back doors burst open…she came striding in, beginning her dialogue…sounded great…but…what I did not know was the entire opening part of her dialogue was only projected on the stage monitors – no one in the congregation heard it!
So…she strides forward, and the congregation looked on in shock! Several, I could tell, couldn’t decide whether or not to tackle her, or just let her go forward…meanwhile, she is oblivious to the confusion behind her…and continuing in her dialogue! I realized what was going on, tried to get her attention…no avail. Unfortunately, I could see the looks on people’s faces…and had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing and interrupting! Our sound tech finally got the house speakers going, and the congregation was able to hear the 2nd half of the monologue…which, by now, was JUST a monologue, because I couldn’t talk…tears were running down my face…I was holding the pulpit to keep from falling over laughing! My good worship leader realized what was going on, and led in a prayer, and straight into music – with the comment “Let’s let Bro. Hill have a quiet moment to himself” – somehow I turned, collapsed in my chair, buried my head in my chest…and laughed silently as I could. After the service, many complimented me on my prayerful attitude during this time…
Several months later, a group was commenting on the “arrival” of Lottie Moon – and mentioned that I looked strange during the event…I came clean, and told them of my laughter…
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I once attended a wedding at a non-intrumental denomination church in the 80s. I found it perhaps more ironic than humorous, but it was funny, that the pastor stood at the back of the sanctuary as the bride entered. As the bride and her father headed down the aisle, the pastor switched on a tape recorder that he was holding that played the “Wedding March.” I laughed to myself, I don’t remember tape recorders being mentioned in the New Testament.
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There were about 40 of us packed into a small room on a youth/twenties week away with a Pentecostal church. We had just taken commununion and all heads were bowed in contemplative silence when a young man from India decided to start a song.
The trouble was he was horribly and hopelessly tone-deaf. And the song he had picked was an obscure one. I knew the song, but I also knew that if I opened my mouth to help him out I would lose control, so I buried my head in my hands hoping to avoid eye contact with anyone and thinking the most solemn thoughts I could to avoid laughing. The poor Indian guy soldiered on alone with his tuneless rendition of a song about the cross.
The trouble was, some of the less mature members of the group couldn’t contain themselves, and before long someone had let out a squeak of laughter which set off several others.
Sensing that this was developing into a very embarrassing situation for the Indian man, some of the others in the group thought they had found the perfect solution. It was the time of the “Toronto blessing”, so they tried to pass this off as holy laughter, totally unrelated to the tuneless singing incident. They fell off their chairs rolling on the floor laughing and shouting “hallelujah” and “thank you Lord for your joy”.
It did at least allow us all to have a good laugh, but sadly our Indian friend was less than convinced by our explanation.
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Lane, your open-mic-on-Jesus story is the winner, hands down.
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One Sunday night when I was in high school, an elderly man was preaching (can’t remember for the life of me what his sermon was on), and he commented that he couldn’t understand why people have to read/watch movies to understand what love is, because, and I quote, “I learned everything I need to know about love in the backseat of my car!” Needless to say, my friends and I all stared at each other in shock, trying (not very successfully) to control our laughter.
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During the introduction, our pastor was talking about growth in the church and the community. He shared how he had learned from a town council member in the church that the town’s current population was 664. He then went on to demonstrate the growth God was providing by pointing out a lady who was with child, saying, “and when so-and-so is born it will be 665” and then he pointed out his own wife, who was also pregnant. However, he stopped short of enumerating his progeny. I thought he played off his near-blunder skillfully, since I seemed to be the only one who caught it.
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I was visiting a church with a friend and the associate pastor who was preaching that day was a quadraplegic and in a wheelchair. He was using the “Bridge Diagram” to explain the gospel (For those of you who are not familiar with the bridge diagram the point is that no one can jump the gap between us and God on our own, we need Jesus to bridge the gap). He then went on to say that most people could jump about 5-6 ft, someone like Michael Jordan may make it 10-12 ft but no one can jump far enough. He then pointed to himself and said “I just sort of roll of the edge”. Now everyone in the sanctuary laughed, however I lost it and my laugh went on about 2-3 minutes, and then after regaining my composure it returned again about 5 minutes later. I was so embarrassed but couldn’t help it.
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ooh weddings are always a good source for amusement…
Here’s a simplified story (incase for some reason the bride or groom happens to frequent this blog – because it might not be hard to figure out who it might be – but I doubt I was the only one who found it odd)
Bride, in a wedding dress with a big beaded train, gets down on her hands and knees to wash the grooms feet, apparently to his surprise and certainly to the congregations.
1) I’d think you’d pick a simpler dress if you wanted to do such a thing and
2) it just seemed so medieval to me to only have her washing his feet – certainly not something I would have done personally – I understand the sentiment but 1) I wouldn’t be trying to encorporate it into a wedding ceremony, and 2) even if I did you’d better believe the groom better wash my feet as well! (I’m egalitarian if you can’t tell, but this was in all honesty a fairly complementarian church, even if its in a denomination that does ordain women – we just never saw any of them!)
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And then there was cousin Betty’s funeral. The funeral was pretty conventional until the very end, just after the casket was rolled down the aisle and the beneficiaries wadded up their hankies and followed it. As the rest of us sat reverently…there was an awful racket over the PA system. My little son, who’d fallen asleep, shot bolt upright in the pew, terrified. He’d never heard a loon call before. Scary stuff, but that wasn’t the funniest thing.
The pallbearers rolled the casket out of the front door to the waiting hearse and lifted it into the back, then got into their limo. The funeral director lined up the cars to follow it to the cemetery, and the hearse driver rattled the door on the driver’s side of the vehicle…without success. Then he tried to open the door on the passenger side. It, too, was locked, and he could see the only set of keys in the ignition. By that time, it looked as though Betty was going nowhere.
Finally the funeral director (all 6″+ of him) crawled into the back of the hearse, muscled Betty’s casket to the side, and crawled through the little window into the driving compartment to retrieve the key.
I think we all laughed after that…all except for Betty. She would not have been amused. And she was paying for the funeral.
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My friend was teaching the kids about the ten commandments. He was talking about the sabbath, saying that God commands us to have a a day when we rest, lie around & do little, etc. It came out “God COMMANDS us to sleep around…”. Funniest thing was seeing one of the other leaders rolling around on the floor laughing at this.
The worst song typo I have ever seen:
Bold shall I stand in that great day; And none condom me, try who may
I could feel the strain as 600 Christian uni students tried to hold straight faces as we sang that song. The following day we sang the song, with the overhead sheet reprinted, and you could still feel it in the room and see it on the song leader’s face as we sang that bit.
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1. My first Sunday as the new youth pastor, I was helping the Senior Pastor lead communion. I was supposed to pray for the wine. As I sat there, literally seconds before I was called on to pray, for some reason my communion cup tipped in my hands and dumped the wine right square in the front of my light tan cotton pants. The worst thing was that it caught me off guard and I started laughing. Most people couldn’t see what I’d done…they could only see me laughing during communion for no reason…
2. After church on Sunday at my Bible College, announcements were being made. One of the music groups that toured for the college needed a new piano player. The elderly professor who was making the announcement asked that anyone interested in playing, contact Mr. Russel, the faculty advisor for that group. However…his wording was unfortunate.
“Mr. Russel needs a pianist.” (say that out loud). Right away a group of freshman in front of me started laughing. I was trying to be mature (fourth year student) and let it pass. But the teacher just wouldn’t stop. He just kept saying it over and over.
Finally I lost it (along with 800 other students) when, with great gusto he said, “Please, I implore you…talk to Mr. Russel about his need of a pianist!”
3. Lastly, one Sunday an elderly homeless person came into our church and joined the service. It was a good church, and no one had a problem with that. They welcomed him and found him a place to sit. The problem was that he kept Amen-ing and shouting “Preach it brother!” through the whole service. We weren’t really a “Preach it brother!” kind of a church. What got even funnier was when, after the sermon when the announcements were being made, he Amen-ed those as well, with the occasional “Preach it!” thrown in for good measure.
There’s so many more…but that’ll do for now…
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Growing up in a SBC church in a small town has made for dozens upon dozens of ‘can’t hold it in’ stories. but here are the big two;
1. Somewhere in the 80’s, someone got the bright idea to have an Easter pageant every year. So the weeks leading up to Easter were filled with pretty much every regular attendee either singing or a part of the ‘drama team’. On opening night in ’88, we had reached the most solemn moment of the production, the actor playing Jesus (who was recruited because he had longish brown hair and blue eyes) had been lowered ever so carefully from the cross, carried to the “tomb” as the choir sang an acapella version of “When I Survey The Wondrous Cross”. As Jesus was placed in the tomb, one of the disciples tripped and dropped Jesus on his head. We know this because of the “ow! watch my fu**in’ head” coming from Jesus’ open mic.
2. During high school, there was a guy named Allen in our boy’s SS class who was Forrest Gump-ish, only, not as smart. Which always made it entertaining. but one Sunday the lesson centered around 1 Sam 18:25ff…the story of David and the 200 foreskins. A lesson for high school boys…right. I must admit, we kept it together very well until the end, when the teacher asked someone to close us in prayer. And Allen volunteered. He started with “Lord, thank you for David and All Them Foreskins….” and it just went down hill from there. He literally said the word ‘foreskins’ no less than 10 times in a 30 second prayer.
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Back during the presidential election season in 1984, when Mondale and Ferraro were on the Democratic ticket, my Dad was on a business trip in Detroit. While there, he attended services at a large Assembly of God church. At one of the services there was a guest preacher who was a revered (and elderly) Pentecostal evangelist. Evidently the poor old fellow must have been drifting a bit into senility because he suddenly stopped his sermon and said “That damn Ferraro”. Then he resumed his message as though nothing had happened.
At the chapel services of the Christian high school I attended, our sound system would sometimes get interrupted with the messages from CB radios of truckers who were passing through the area. I wish to this day I could remember what exactly some of those messages were. “And the Lord said”. . . “How you doing out there, good buddy?”
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via a friend: Short on communion bread, someone grabbed a loaf of what looked like French bread out of the fridge. Unfortunately, it was garlic bread.
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Peacetrain, no offense but that is the most ridiculous story I have ever heard! You’ll excuse me if I have a hard time believing it, but it was a great read all the same. 🙂
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Here’s another…
Funny, I don’t even have to be creative to come up with amusing stories from when I worked in church. All I need to do is be still for a moment and allow myself to remember. The longer I’m quiet the more information floods my memory, seems like I have a hefty reserve available.
This came to mind.
The young boys name was Monte. He was a tow-headed fellow, face full of freckles, great big toothy smile- probably around 7-8 years old. He made a point to speak to every person he came in contact with. Not being shy, he didn’t filter much of his conversation and one could expect a wide range of topics to talk about. He had no friends because of his difference. He was treated more like a pet than a child. Monte would try to fit in and become like the other children but he seldom found much success. He spent all his time with his grandmother in the nursery. She was the church’s paid babysitter during church services. She was quite old and her health was failing but Monte was always near her.
Monte had Down Syndrome and acted like any other child except he was limited on his functionality. Kind, caring, trusting eyes greeted every person. Even though he was alone in this world he was not a loner. I would often find myself on the floor engaged in deep conversation with him.
Monte had one peccadillo that caused many people in the church to have pause. I believe if this one little issue could have been addressed, his life might have been totally different. He might have been allowed to play with the other children had this been extinguished, but such was his fate. Monte looked different from the other kids and acted different from the other kids, yet deep down inside, he was just like each and every other kid.
His downfall stemmed from his discomfort with clothing. Monte simply didn’t like the way he felt when he wore clothes. To him walking around the hallway of the church completely barren was a natural as breathing. This of course bothered many of the people and his poor old grandmother would apologize and try to put his clothes back on him.
Imagine the shock of horror found on a visitors face as they approached the nursery only to be greeted by a nude boy walking the other direction. I’m certain he welcomed them and tried to strike up a conversation, but to no avail. Whenever a loud scream was sounded we knew Monte had decided to go for a walk and he happened upon someone who wasn’t quite as understanding as most of the people from our church.
Monte made that church interesting, he kept things really fresh, we never knew when he would take one of his famous walks. Truthfully, I thought he was entertaining and looked forward to each exciting chapter with him. As one would imagine, complaints began to accumulate and the grandmother was told she would need to prevent Monte from parading himself about the church or he would not be welcome anymore.
After this pronouncement I would go by the nursery from time to time and see Monte sitting with his grandmother with the life in his eyes beginning to dim. A sad image to take in. His spirit was broken and he became a lifeless little boy after that.
Like all good rebels in life, the downtime was actually used to plot his next move, and boy, was it going to be a doosie. Monte had a plan.
The sanctuary was full that Sunday morning, the choir looked angelic in their crimson robes, this was to be a Sunday service not soon forgotten. After a rousing anthem by the choir the pastor strode triumphantly to the pulpit. With his arms flailing and fists pounding, the message reverberated throughout the sanctuary. At first the sound was almost indecipherable, but then it grew progressively louder. Finally everyone focused their eyes on the location of the incoming noise. As the collective congregants watched, Monte leaped from the steps of the baptismal pool into the water. A wave of liquid slowly strengthened and delivered a baptism on the choir unlike any they had previously witnessed. The drenching was so complete that church members met some choir members seemingly for the first time. Make up and hair spray serve a purpose, especially for a choir made up of blue haired saints like these. Wow! The pastor stood stunned as the choir began to scatter in every direction. Sheet music went everywhere…people starred in disbelief. It was only a brief period but it seemed to last an eternity, this surreal moment had everyone asking, “did that really just happen?â€
When the ruckus dissipated all eyes were transfixed on the image before them. Swimming happily in the baptistry with only the clear glass wall facing the congregation was a naked Monte. Everyone in the church that day understand completely that he was all boy. And as a boy he would do the same things other boys his age liked to do and today that meant going for a swim. His big toothy smile was back in full view as he hung on the front of the glass waving to all the bewildered onlookers.
Monte and his grandmother didn’t come back to our church after that and they seemingly walked off into the sunset never to be heard from again. That was truly a shame. I’ll never forget that silly boy and his crazy antics that one very special day. He did what no one else could do back then, and believe me, many had tried. He managed to shut up that long winded preacher and allowed us to go home early.
I like to call it the “Miracle of Monte.â€
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1. For several years, my father was the pastor of the church we currently attend. One weekend my grandparents came down to visit and brought another couple with them; these friends had never heard my dad preach before. When church was over, the husband walked back to where Dad was shaking hands with everyone. He stuck his hand out and said in a hearty, booming voice, “Hell of a sermon, Robert!” Mom wanted to crawl under the floor.
2. Back at Christmas, we were having choir practice one evening and our current pastor, who was brand new to us at the time, was sitting in the seat beside me as we were singing. He crossed his ankle over his knee, and I looked down to see that he was wearing black socks with wreaths and “HO HO HO” spelled on them in red and green. I’m glad he was so secure in his masculinity, because I completely lost it for the rest of the song.
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Another one. Our church was small and the person who prepared the Lord’s supper was out of town at a funeral. We realized a miscommunication and scrambled to gather some bagels and punch from that morning’s snack table. The pastor took the “bread” and discovered mid chew that it was a jalapeno bagel. The look on his face (not fond of spicy food) was priceless, and we lost it.
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A Reformed Baptist church I used to attend used the word “unction” quite often to describe zeal for religious things. The way it was adopted into their subculture was very funny. One day at my next church, a guest preacher used the word in his sermon, and I lost it. Stomach muscles in knots, turning red, almost convulsing from laughter driven coughing fits, I hit the side exit door.
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In the mid 1980’s, our (then) lily-white church had its first high-profile interracial wedding. The bride was the sister of a famous Hispanic preacher, and of course the whole family turned out. Everybody was supportive and happy for the couple, but cultural faux pas’ were inevitable.
This event was also the first time we were using a wireless mike system, and the technology of that era was such that, as the sundown wedding commenced, it started (unbeknown to the sound tech) to pick up an AM radio station. The preacher-brother gave away the bride, and as they ascended the steps to the altar, the wireless mike channel was turned up, and the radio station played War’s “Low Rider”!
This was before we had stage monitors, so thankfully the bride and groom could not really hear it… but it was quite obvious to everyone else in the sanctuary.
The sound tech tried to pull it down in the mix, but when they exchanged rings/vows, he turned it back up, and a supermarket commercial said “Lucky! Lucky! Where great deals begin for less!”
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One time while leading worship I hadn’t bothered to spell-check the Powerpoint slides. When we sang the hymn “All Hail the Pow’r of Jesus’ Name” the slides said “let angels’ PROSTATE fall.” Oh, what a difference an “r” can make.
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Our start-up church met in the basement of the local Masonic temple…with the lit-up Coke machine right behind the portable pulpit…and the men’s room just to the left of the pulpit & ladies room just to the right. During the sermon, a little boy (about age 4) ambled into the ladies room. Then he ambled out with his pants down around his ankle. I have never seen a woman move as fast as his mother did when she ran up there and shoved him back in the ladies :))))))
That infamous ladies room had a little vestibule without a light–the light was right OUTSIDE the door. Another night, a gal sneaked in during the sermon and found that the light hadn’t been turned on. Funniest thing to see her dis-embodied hand sneak around the corner to turn that light on!!
And then there was the elderly lady who played the piano. At the height of the Wisconsin humid summer, the keys always stuck. She stood up, looked under the hood and sat down and continued playing the offeratory without 2/3 of the keys.
Those were the days.
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I remember attending a co-worker’s wedding at a “Metaphysical” church. The minister conducting the wedding used some way-out quotes as part of her wedding sermon.
“Be like two trees, standing together, but a part…” stuff like that.
My wife and I were sitting up towards the front–and I got to chuckling, she felt me chuckling, and soon she was chuckling. I had to bite down on my tongue so hard to keep from laughing out loud.
Finally the service got over and everyone laughed and applauded, I burst out laughing-the bride and groom just thought I was happy for them. Little did they know! (But the minister did-giving me the evil eye during her homily).
Moral to the story: Don’t preach wacky stuff if you want people to take you seriously!
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I had a friend relate this story to me. He was in a service where they had a Children’s sermon. The pastor commented to a young girl, that was around five years old, that she had on a very pretty dress. The little girl said thank you but my mom says it is a B#&%$ to Iron. Don’t think her mom thought it was that funny but it cracked everyone else up.
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Two stories. The first may be apocryphal, although a former pastor claimed he was in the service where it happened.
-Just before the sermon, the pastor would ask someone from the congregation to pray. On this particular occasion, he called on old Miss Peabody. Somehow he accidentally jumbled his words, and said “Miss Praybody, would you please stand and pee for us.” Apparently, neither the pastor nor the congregation were in any condition to make it through a sermon after that request, and the service was dismissed.
-I was in the service where this one happened: We were “between pastors”. A college student preparing for the ministry was filling in as pastor. An older, experienced pastor who supervised the pastors of all of the churches in the area was visiting our church that particular Sunday and was going to bring the message.
The fill-in pastor’s job was to introduce the older pastor before the sermon. When the young man got up to make his introduction, he told us that he had dreamed the night before that he and the older pastor were riding in a car together to the service. In his dream, a tire on the car had a blowout. The car careened off the road and smashed into a huge tree.
The next thing he knew, both of them were standing by the wrecked car, looking at the mess, including their dead bodies. When they realized they had died, they looked around and saw golden steps going up into the sky.
They decided they should climb the steps. Eventually, after climbing untold thousands of steps, the young man grew tired, and sat down. He told the older man he couldn’t go any further. The older pastor told the young man he couldn’t give up, because they must be almost there. So he offered to carry the young pastor on his back.
Traveling this way they eventually reached a glorious meadow, with golden gates on the other side. When they reached the golden gates, an angel came out to meet them.
The angel greeted the young pastor by name.
“Welcome Bill! Glad you made it. Climb down and come on in. You can tie your jackass to that tree over there.”
When the college student/fill-in pastor finished the story, there were several long seconds of total silence while we all absorbed that ending. Then Mrs. D. started to shake. Then she snorted while trying to suppress laughing. Then everyone in the church started laughing. I’m not sure if we were laughing at Mrs. D. trying desperately to suppress her laughter, at the story, or at the idea that the young fill-in pastor would have the audacity to tell a story with such an ending.
About ten minutes later, presumably after the laughter had finally died down, the older pastor attempted to preach a sermon. Every few minutes, Mrs. D. would start shaking again, and it would start all over. I remember people literally laying down on the pews and laughing until the tears flowed.
The older pastor finally gave up trying to preach and dismissed the service. I don’t remember anything the older pastor said except, “I give up. Let’s dismiss and go home.
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I was in a church that had wooden pews. Someone wearing shorts (I guess) rubbed their skin against the pews and made a sound similar to that of a fart. Two boys thought it was the funniest thing. They were laughing and laughing and laughing.
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A very nice, but slightly nervous young man was preaching his first sermon in our local church. He got half way through his talk when a lady suddenly stood up and crashed out of the room. He thought it was something he said.
What he hadn’t seen, seconds before, was a young man who had reached into his T-Shirt to retrieve his pet rat which was wriggling around. He picked it up by the tail and held it up infront of the poor woman, giving her the shock of her life.
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Another one from my daughter (and another children’s address ruined).
Minister: We’re going to have a game of 20 questions. You’ve got to guess who I’m thinking about and I can only answer yes or no.
My daughter: Is it a woman?
Minister: Yes.
My daughter: Is it Mary Slessor?
Minister: Emmm… Yes.
Cue much laughter from the congregation.
If it had been a man the answer could only have been Jesus or David Livingstone.
For this to make sense you have to appreciate I’m Scottish.
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I just thought of another time I about “lost it.” After my mother-in-law passed away, my husband’s brother arranged for a rosary to be done (read? said? I’m not sure how you put it.) Though my brother-in-law is Catholic, my mother-in-law was not (She was from East Tennessee–Primitive Baptist.) I really try to be respectful, I really do. But I had never heard the rosary being done before, and when I thought they said “Fruit of the Loom—-Jesus”, all I could do was picture Jesus in his underwear. I could barely contain myself through the rest of the service.
By the way, Austin, there was a lot of picture-taking by my mother-in-law’s East Tennessee relatives at her funeral. I’d never seen such a thing!
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Our church had about 4 very wide steps from the aisle to the platform. During a Christmas program the 3 or 4 year old class was doing a little scene where the teacher was seated at the edge of the platform in a tiny chair & the kids were sitting and standing on the steps while she read them a Christmas story and asked them questions. One little boy lost his balance on the third step and did a perfect back flip in the the layout position, body fully rigid, neck never bending. One moment he’s standing there, and the next he is totally upside down, feet straight up in the air. A total miracle, and the funniest physical act I have ever seen in church. The whole church let out a gasp as he immediately jumped back up and ran to his position, afraid he would get in trouble for moving out of place. The teacher’s eyes got as big as saucers. My brother and I lost it, not sure we had actually witnessed it, but the confirmation was the fact that the teacher was visibly shaken by the spectacle. I was videotaping it and the platform upon which I was standing was shaking we were laughing so hard.
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Our church was doing some sort of promotion for a bible study and discipleship. The Sunday morning Bible Study class that my husband and I attended decided to do the circle prayer thing and go around the circle and let those who wished to pray about it. When it got around to my husband he accidentally blurred some words together and ended up praying for “bibleship” – whatever that is:>) It was all I could do to hold myself together. We still tease him about it. Maybe you had to be there but it was hilarious.
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Our church choir once set somebody up. We planned ahead of time to stop right in the middle of a verse. The singing, the music, everything just came to a sudden halt while one poor sap sang about 3 more words alone. (You should try this sometime, it’s hilarious.)
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I heard one sermon where we were told about the enemies of Israel which included the Pissites.
The preacher caught himself and was a little upset that we were all laughing.
Sad thing is that I was part of that church for ten years and that is one of the few things I remember from any of his sermons.
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I was leading a team on a six-week language/culture study/mission trip in Moscow during the final months of the Soviet Union. We’d gotten to know a fellow believer, a British university student, who was staying in our same hotel, and who’d been studying Russian there for six months. Once we asked her why it seemed that Brits had so much trouble with Americans, and she told us, “Two things: 1) you always hear them before you see them; and, 2) when they get there, they always take over.”
Our British friend invited us to go with her to a small Baptist church in a village about an hour outside of Moscow. We were squeezed into a room with about 200 others, sitting on hard wooden benches with our knees pressed into the backs of those in front of us, waiting for the service to get underway. The gentle hum of Russian voices was suddenly shattered by a loud female Southern drawl floating in through the window from the courtyard outside: “So, wha-yir ah we suppose to si-yet!” Within moments the traveling choir from some American Bible college was filing into the front of the meeting, displacing the Russian parishioners, until the entire front of the meeting room was filled with navy blue blazers and navy jumpers over white blouses.
Slowly it dawned on us as to the accuracy of our British friend’s assessment of Americans. It was all we could do to contain ourselves.
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One more and I’m finished.
We had a Sunday school teacher who was also the volunteer church janitor. I put this in to point out the humility of this godly man.
He volunteered also to teach a class of 12 year old boys. Unfortunately he was terrible at it and could only read the lessons to us in the most monotone boring voice imaginable.
It was summer and being the 60’s we didn’t have air conditioning (this is Texas in the summer) so all the windows were up.
Our little closet of a class didn’t even have a window.
A wasp had gotten into the room and the biggest smart aleck of us all was standing on his chair swatting at the wasp as the rest of us hooligans cheered him on ignoring the teacher altogether.
Mr. ******* kept telling us to ignore the wasp and it would ignore us.
Well this went on for most of the class until finally the wasp landed on the back of the teacher’s neck and stung him.
He reach back and said,”damned wasp!”
He then looked up to see the astonished faces of seven 12 year old boys and jumped an ran out of the room.
He resigned as teacher immediately feeling he had disqualified himself in spite of the preacher begging him to stay.
For the next several weeks we were allowed to attend the girls class ( a heresy in those days) and wreak havoc for the poor lady atempting to maintain order there.
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I once pastored a church in north Georgia. The ushers came to get the offering. We asked an elderly member to say the offertory prayer. Here’s how it went, all of it out loud and easily heard by all:
“Lord, please bless this food we’re about…oh sh-t!”
I looked up to see this big fellow on the front row white-knuckling his pew and shaking his shoulders laughing. That, more than the prayer itself, made me lose it.
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As a boy I had decided it was time for me to walk the aisle in my home Baptist Church.
It was discussed with the preacher and so I would do so that Sunday.
My mother, God bless her suffering soul, was in the choir.
My dad was sitting next to the aisle, my younger brother next to him with me on the inside.
When the choir started “Just As I Am” I knew it was my time so I got up to edge by my brother and dad.
My brother grabbed the belt loop in the back of my pants and refused to let go.
He is very strong and strong willed and my dad couldn’t even get him to let me go.
Finally, he blurted out so loudly that you could hear him all over the church,”What’s he doing? Gotta go pee?”
The church dissolved in laughter as my poor mother dissolved in the choir.
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Thank you for making my lunch fun.
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I still laugh (and want to cry a little too) when I remember the song our worship leader came up with to motivate people during a building campaign. The chorus contained the lines,
“We’re Building for Life…
Keeping unreached people our goal.”
They sang it every week for like 6 weeks and never saw any irony or humor in it.
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A few years ago, I was helping out in the 3-year old class in the nursery of our church. The service was the last Sunday before the Christmas holiday, so instead of the praise/worship team, our church had a traditional choir performing. A lot of the 3-year olds parents were participating, so I (and the other volunteer) thought it would be nice to troop the 3-year olds into the back of the auditorium for the choir performance. We ended up getting there too early, and the praise team was still doing their songs before the choir came on. So, we were in back with about 20 3-year olds, and some were standing, dancing, others were sitting and clapping. All of a sudden, I saw one take off down the aisle of the auditorium all the way to the front. Her daddy was the drummer, and I was afraid she’d try to go up on stage, so I took off after her. She had a fairly good headstart and I of course was trying not to make a bigger scene. She turned left at the front of the auditorium, ran across and then back up the other aisle where the another parent and I finally trapped her. It wasn’t until then that I realized the congregation was laughing hysterically, and not just because of what they had just witnessed. The song the band had been playing was “I am Free to Run” by the Newsboys.
I think it is fair to say — we all LOST it. 🙂
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Our pastor was doing a series on “Storybook Lives,” revisiting the classic stories of the Old Testament. For the beginning of each sermon, a video had been prepared of one of the children in the church telling that story in his/her own words. On the morning he was to preach on the story of Jacob’s life, a very precocious 6-year-old girl told the story. She gave a very dramatic and humorous rendition of the story of Jacob being placed in the well by his brothers, acting out both the parts of the brothers and Jacob. The crowning moment, however, came at the end of the video. She had gotten down off her stool and started to walk away, but stopped suddenly in her tracks, as if she had just had a brilliant thought. She turned around, climbed back up onto the stool, looked straight into the camera, and pointing her finger at the audience, said, “But you know, being in a well is better than being in hell!” The entire congregation burst into laughter. The minister got up to preach the sermon, and he was laughing so hard, with tears streaming down his face, that he called one of the elders up to say his traditional pre-sermon prayer for him. Despite this, he nor the congregation could contain their laughter for about 10 minutes. It was a great moment in the life of our community.
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I grew up in a tiny country church with a shortage of educated laity. My Sunday School teacher when I was a teen was a man with a big heart, who had a little trouble reading. That was a problem, because for our lessons, he just read straight from the book. This caused several funny blunders over the years.
The funniest of those was when he came upon the word opponent. It completely baffled him.
He said, “Ah-penent, Ah-penent . . .” That ain’t spelled right is it? My best friend and I had to cover our faces to muzzle our laughter.
This man, who again has a huge heart and is a fine Christian man, was also our worship leader, but he coudn’t sing at all. I mean, maybe the worst singer in the entire church, but he was willing to serve. So we had very interesting worship services to say the least. Inability to read plus inability to sing . . . that’s a tough combination for a worship leader.
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Our chapel was an old building with a shallow foyer in back. The bathrooms in the foyer had the unique ability to project every sound into the sanctuary. Our friend’s son (about 10 or 11) had a pervasive habit of always singing or humming, usually without even knowing it. The worship was over, he snuck out to powder his nose, and the preacher started praying.
We all held it in for a couple of minutes until his dad got up. Soon we hear mumbling, then a “What?” Then, “They all can hear you!” Then muffled crying!
He is a very good singer, fortunately.
Then there was the Bible study where we had our resident toddler, but the hosts were also babysitting their toddler nephew. “J” cast a cat toy on the end of his fishing rod for an hour. “A” spent ten minutes trying to diaper the baby while he was standing up. The baby’s parents showed up and, despite having no Christian leanings, decided to stay. The mom decided it was time to nurse, which was fine, we’re just used to women covering up while doing so. “JP”, the one guy who would have been absolutely mortified, was sitting a couple of people down on the couch and didn’t see what she was doing while he engaged her in a serious conversation.
“N” and I made it to the prayer at the end, but we were finished. JP got mad at us for giggling while he was praying, but it didn’t do anything but make us laugh harder.
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We were having a very intense prayer meeting, speaking in tongues, layin hands, etc. Every so often someone who beging singing a song that the holy spirit would lay on our hearts and we’d all begin worshipping. So it reached a point where it was really quiet and I started singing:
“I will enter his gates with thanksgiving in my heart! I will enter his gates with praaaaiise!”
I guess I broke the intimate mood or something because no one joined in and people just looked at me weirdly and I all of a sudden felt mortified, but I felt like I had to keep singing even though I knew the song was going down like a lead balloon, and then the pastor just started laughing uncontrollably 😦
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When I was about 12, a man in our church sang “The Holy City”. One lyric says, “Until the day I see the city”, only he started to sing the word “temple”. He got out the “T”, realized it and changed to the right word, thus singing “until the day I see the titty”. Classic.
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at a revival service in NE Alabama a local guy who was a little “slow” but functioning took out his guitar and proceeded sing “If Heavan Ain’t a lot like Dixie”
there is a guy who travels around locally who comes to church dressed in a white shiny robe with all sorts of weird sayings on it
my family still (NE Alabama again) takes pictures of the deceased at funerals, i preached my great grandfathers funeral about a year ago, you would have thought my cousin was doing a photo spread for a magazine there were so many shutter flashes, my wife was mordified
for some reasons I’ve been in two churches where the song director (to use the term generiously) had a major speech impediment, (not making fun) but I just wonder why and how that happened you couldn’t understand a word he said
an SBC preacher friend of mine went to preach at at “True Vine” Baptist church that his wife had some family connection at, as he came in the door the pastor confiscated his Bible and told him to preach with his (the pastors) bible, it think it was to insure he didn’t use notes and get all uppity
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My wife and I almost lost it totally one night recently.
Our church’s Saturday night service is set up so that the speaker (Sr Pastor, Asst Pastor, or guest speaker) can answer questions after the sermon. The idea is that it gives those who want further, more in depth information to get it.
Anyway, we had a guest speaker from India who spoke about his ministry. I never heard the question that provoked this response, but the guest speaker started talking about how different Hebrew names in the OT were really based on Indian names. My wife and I both looked at each other and quietly quoted a line that the father in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” repeated…
“Give me any word and I’ll show you where it came from in Greek”.
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Once a funny-looking person came into the church late, after the sermon has already started. I don’t remember what the funny-looking person looked like; I just remember that my friend Staci and I found ourselves smothering in quiet giggles. Staci’s mother, who was in the pew in front of us, immediately turned her head toward us and whispered, loudly and harshly, “Don’t laugh when funny-looking people come into the church!”
If she meant to make us stop giggling, it didn’t work.
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This happened while my husband and I were visiting my brother and sister-in-law’s church one Sunday morning. At the time, they attended a pretty charismatic church. Anyway, we had all been waterskiing the day before and every one of us were horribly and visibly sunburned. When we got to church we were introduced to the pastor and we made the usual small talk. At the end of the service, there was a time for anyone who felt led, to share a “word from the Lord” with the congregration. Well wouldn’t you know it, the pastor’s word for the day was “sunburn”. I can’t even remember how he spiritualized it. All I remember is that if you thought that word was spoken for you, you were supposed to come to the front. My husband and I chose the back door and a bottle of aloe vera instead.
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The hymn “Oh Happy Day” never fails to send me into a fit of giggles.
At the church where I grew up, under the lead of our choir director, “O Happy Day” was the slowest, saddest, most somber and serious hymn you could imagine. My mom (who, back then, was usually a very tight-lipped church-lady type) and I could never get a word out because we were too busy trying to swallow our laughter. It didn’t help that everyone would look so serious while reading the words from the hymnbook and singing, “Happy Day, Happy Day, when Jesus washed my sins away!”
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And — no — he didn’t try to light it anymore …. 🙂
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I was late for Mass with two of my young children and the only seating was in the choir loft of the old Church, this a year so before it was torn down to make room for the new building. Father Kevin was the lone celebrant on this warm summer Sunday, assisted by two altar boys. What only the few people seated in the folding chairs in the loft could see was that there was a mockingbird jumping and flitting between the rafters.
One of the two altar candles– positioned on either side of the table — blew out. Fr. Kevin — a stickler for proper liturgy — seemed to be waiting for one of the boys to relight it. When that didn’t occur, he went himself into the sacristy on the side of the altar platform and got the candle lighter. He lit it on the one burning candle and then crossed in from of the table to light the other one. He then brought the lighting tool (whatever it’s proper religious name is) back into the sacristy. He then took his place back behind the table to continue the celebration. The mockingbird promptly flew from his place above the altar directly to the candle Fr. Keven had just re-lit, and snuffed it out with his wings and flew back to his perch above the congregation.
We were astonished. And we knew the bird was there.
I can just imagine what all the people below thought…. 🙂
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I don’t know why I found it so funny, but the minister called out a song name and number from the hymnal, but when I realized the name didn’t match the number I look at another dumbfounded musician and started laughing.
After the first verse the minister stood up and said to me, “Hey smiley come sit up here in the front so you can smily at the rest of us.”
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I was once involved in the sending of a summer missionary to Australia. During the prayer over the missionary, the pastor asked that she be able to “touch all those people down under.”
I’m usually the one telling everyone to grow up, but I was definitely biting my lip to keep from laughing.
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One Sunday morning, our pastor was recounting a weeding he had performed the previous Saturday. Apparently, he knew the couple very well and was quite fond of them. He launched into an illustration about the beuaty of marraige and how God’s best is for two people to wait until the marriage night to consummate the relationship. Unexplicably he said, while referring to the couples wedding night, “I wish I could have been there….er….in a G-rated sort of way”. Creepy laughter ensued.
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We have communion the first Sunday of the month at our small Baptist Church. This particular Sunday the pastor must have been thinking of other things. The table was set up, the Deacons were in place, Sermon was delivered, invitation given, last song sung and the pastor is at the back door ready to greet people leaving. And there sat the communion table at the front of the church. No one moved or said anything and it took him a minute to figure it out.
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There was an older lady at the church I attended in high school who loved to sing, and thought she was great at it. God bless her little heart. So, she gets up to sing one Sunday night, with her dyed, golden hair, a solid purple long sleeve dress, with gold cords lining the seems, and it started right then. I couldn’t help but notice she looked like an unopened bottle of Crown Royal. It only got worse when she began to sing, and we all wondered if she had actually been using the stuff, instead of simply dressing like it.
She sand “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.” She sounded like Kermit the Frog doing drunken karaoke during a dinner cruise in rough seas. It was wretched. I’ve heard people sing poorly before, but this was by far the worst. Almost every person in the room was staring at the floor, some with their hands over their faces. The pastors daughter actually laid down in the pew she was sitting in, as she couldn’t control her laughter. I made the mistake of saying these things to my best friend, and we absolutely could not stop laughing. We felt horribly, and tried to stop, since we didn’t want to be bad people. But we couldn’t. We were reprimanded by several people (most of whom were laughing during the song as well), and would couldn’t even take that seriously.
To this day, we will leave each other voice mails that only include singing a line or two of that song, imitating the wretchedness of her solo that night. We still belly-laugh every time.
-Alan
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many many times…
1) I grew up in little tiny churches that cut real bread for communion into little squares – first time we attended a larger church with communion wafers (when I was in highschool) I thought they looked like tiddly-winks (I managed to stifle my giggles though)
2) likewise, my mother got one stuck to the roof of her mouth once…
3) some of my extended family is catholic and I attended a funeral where the priest’s bottle of holy water looked like a saline nose spray bottle with a clear label of “holy water” on the side… probably was mostly funny because of the whole grief process, but I’ve still often thought that it didn’t seem very respectful to me to put holy water in something that looks like a nose spray container… maybe the catholics can explain?
4) many many times due to typos in the lyrics… I can’t remember the worst, but there was a whole pew of singles attempting not to disrupt service one time…
5) likewise, a couple of badly attempted praise choruses that were not sung at an appropriate tempo cracked me up – I mean NO ONE was in time with anyone else due to the tempo issues…
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The funniest thing I remember actually happened AFTER church. My father’s funeral was being held, and we didn’t see my uncle (mom’s side) and his wife anywhere. We were standing outside afterwards and he came up and told us he’d gotten lost and wound up at the wrong church, which also happened to be holding a funeral mass. It wasn’t until the priest mentioned the departed’s name that he realized, to quote him, “Holy Cow! I’m in the wrong church!â€
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Spanish Mass at a friend’s parish. The Our Father is sung, and as the musicians play the opening bars, everyone launches into Padre nuestro que estas en el cielo … to the melody of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence.” I kid you not. My husband and I didn’t dare look at each other for fear that we wouldn’t be able to contain ourselves.
I’ve since heard the same music used for the Padre nuestro at a Spanish Mass in another parish, so I’m guessing it’s some common, if hideously ill-chosen and inappropriate, musical setting.
A friend-of-a-friend entry: An Epiphany reading where the lector actually said “gold, frankenstein, and myrrh.” Apparently the congregation did not make too much of an attempt to contain its hilarity.
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#1: New pastor grew up on a farm. Wed. evening prayer service alady requests prayer for her cat, whom she had taken to the vet 2 or 3 times that week & gave gory details about the cat’s upset stomache, etc. At the end, the pastor says, “Don’t you own a rifle?” I knew he was going to be a keeper.
#2: Same church, years later, the youth minister read scripture on Sunday mornings. He was more comfortable on a basketball court than reading strange names in front of hundreds of people, but did his best. Reading Proverbs 5 from the NIV and getting increasingly nervous about the upcoming verse extolling the virtues and satisfaction of a wife’s breasts, he states in verse 14, “I have come to the brink of utter urine in the midst of the whole assembly.” Chaos ensued.
That evening his wife, a PK herself, stood up to testify, saying, “I’d like to thank Jesus for saving me from total urine, I mean ruin.” Now THAT is a good woman. By the way, at every teen fundraiser he had after that, the cassette recording of that blunder would get played.
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In one of my first wedding ever, many years ago, I still did not have down all the details. We came to the part where the best man passes the rings on to the priest to be blessed. So, I held out the pamphlet in which the wedding was printed (single ring wedding). The best man dutifully placed the ring on the pamphlet, edge on.
The ring promptly rolled down the fold of the pamphlet, out the bottom, and dropped with a nice loud ringing sound onto the stone floor. And, then, decided to start rolling down the aisle. Suddenly there is this best man chasing a rolling ring down the aisle, bent over, swiping at it and missing it at least twice.
Needless to say, all decorum went out the window, and, thankfully, the wedding party found it humorous. Yes, there were many good laughs at that reception!
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@ Will Kinchlea,
You owe me a new side. My one has just split. Brilliant!
@ Aliasmoi
You’ve just reminded me of a ‘confession’ one of my youth group made one time. For many years he was under the impression that, in the furnace there was “Shadrach, Meshach and a bendy goat!”
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I was speaking in an African-American, charismatic church and they seemed to do and believe strange things. But I was not prepared for the ultimate shocker. The pastor put on a tape of weird, discordant music and these African-Americans started whopping like a parody of Native-American culture and chopping the air with foam-rubber tomahawks. The pastor kept saying, “Chop down those demons.”
Derek Leman
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This story has shown up a few other places since I shared it on About.com’s old Christian Humor forum, so I apologize if you’ve read it before.
I used to be a missionary, in Haiti. Never mind culture shock or homesickness, the worst part of being a missionary is the language. You’re unable to communicate or understand the most basic aspects of life, from “Where’s the bathroom?” to “How much do you want for that mango?” Sharing the gospel is an adventure in itself.
The first conversation I had along those lines went like this:
“If you accept Jesus Christ, he will take away your dogs.”
“My dogs? I don’t have any dogs.”
“Everyone has dogs, ma’am. But when Jesus forgives them, it’s though you never had a dog your entire life.”
Bill Smith, an Assemblies of God missionary I worked with, told me that he once had instructed an entire church that if anyone wanted to become followers of Christ, they should signify it by raising their legs into the air and coming forward on their hands.
But the all time most embarrassing gaffe has to go to Dale Preiser, another AoG missionary who still got embarrassed when I asked him about this years later, at a church in Easton, Pa.
It seems Dale had been preaching about the dangers of Christians returning to voodoo. The word he had wanted to use on this occasion was “mambo,” a voodoo priestess. The word he used was “mamba”; i.e., “Stay away from mamba! You cannot follow Christ and use mamba! If you use mamba, you will destroy your faith and the faith of others.”
Unfortunately, mamba means peanut butter.
(I’m told people were very open to this teaching, and sales of peanut butter plummeted wherever Dale went.)
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Didn’t happen in church – happened during morning prayers in Catholic School. My friend Beth said, “Our Father who art in heaven, Howard be thy name…” Couldn’t say the Our Father without cracking up for years afterwards. And yes – she totally did that on purpose because she thought that’s how it sounded.
I had a pastor who decided too many of us were drifting during the sermon – so he screamed – LIKE A GIRL! Woke us all up and cracked us all up.
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Our pastor was talking about discipline. He made a commment that he wished he had taken piano lessons as a child. He said that some Saturday nights, late in the evening he liked to come down to the church and tinkle on the piano.
He almost had to end the service right there. This same pastor, just a few months later was talking about having guest over for dinner. His wife served some item of food for the soup latrine. He intended to say “turine”. A deacon corrected him. “It’s a turine”. By this time we are all thinking about the food being served from a latrine. “Oh well, I should have called it a pot”, the pastor said. Laughter erupted.
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The imonk may remember this one. Years ago he served as youth minister in my church and I remember once during the pastor’s sermon the imonk sat on the front row of the church with all the youth including myself sitting on the second row behind him. In the middle of the sermon all the youth noticed an enormous sized spider crawling along the top of the pew toward our leader. Mike was made aware of the approaching spider monster and he, with great subtlety, rolled his church bulletin into a weapon and waited for the slow approaching arachnid. With baited breath all the youth waited for the inevitable execution. Since it was obvious the spider had no intention of walking the aisle for holy reasons, Mike brought his paper anvil down with swift and, to our surprise, a louder than expected pop – both ending the insects life and bringing the entire youth group to hysterical, impossible to silence laughter. Thanks for the memories Imonk!
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One of the highlights of the church year for me is the a capella congregation singing of “Silent Night” at the end of the Christmas Eve service. I’m glad that my home church retained this tradition even as they went all mega-church, installed the big screens, etc.
One Christmas Eve there was a typo on the PowerPoint slide we were singing from; “radiant beans from thy holy face.”
We all lost it.
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In my church of Christ days we were standing for opening prayer. The prayer was being delivered by a man who was notorious for his rambling 30 minute sermons disguised as prayers. My three year old niece was with me. About 10 minutes into the prayer she sees everyone standing there with their eyes closed and pipes up in the lovely toddler voice: “Hey Everybody! Wake up!”
I had to leave.
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My time spent as a missionary in the mountains of East Tennessee were very memorable. It was an area that seemed separated from the rest of the world. The people were terrific but very content with letting life continue as it always had been. Change seemed, way beyond the scope of their reality.
Part of my job was to visit the different churches in the area and speak about the project I was assigned to perform. I tried to enlist churches to support both financially and physically the effort in the area. So like a good politician I glad handed my way through the community overlooking the obvious differences.
There was this one church I was asked to attend that emblazoned a memory in my small mind. This church was further away from town than most, past the railroad tracks and limited on its visits from outsiders.
As I walked into the church my focus was drawn to the object in the front of the church. I had never before nor since seen anything like this. I approached to determine it was what my mind told me. A recliner. It was an over sized recliner somewhat worn but sitting there in all its glory. It took a period of time to accept in my mind this chair sitting there and eventually I moved on.
I went to sit in a pew only to be told I was sitting on the wrong side. Again, I slowed down my emotions to listen to what was being told to me. I was kindly told that the men sit on the other side as this one was for the women. I tried to suppress my laugh as I thought they couldn’t be serious. They were. So I moved to the other side. My mind told me I was in for quite a show today.
As the men settled on their side and the woman settled on there respective side a hush began to take over the sanctuary. Almost as if on cue, the doors to the church burst open. Sometimes life writes a better script than anything conceivable in the mind. The sunlight burst forth through the suddenly opened doors. It was extremely bright and an image appeared in the midst of this explosion. Before I could see clearly this person, I heard him. The breathing was so loud and so labored…almost like a creature in a horror movie. Then one of the largest men I have ever seen began to shuffle in. He had on overalls that contained a tee shirt that was two sizes too small and his feet where barely kept in a pair of worn out slippers. I watched in amazement as he slowly made his way to the front of the church.
When he got to the chair found in the front he adjusted himself in an ungracious manner then dropped into the recliner. It made a loud popping sound followed by a slow squeal as air was rudely forced out of the seat. I sat there in shocked silence. As the preacher moved to the pulpit I heard another unfamiliar noise and watched as the giant put his feet up and laid the chair all the way back. My inside were screaming needing to release the hounds of laughter I tried to hold back. I began to taste blood from my lip as I bit down trying to distract my thoughts.
This is beautiful…I am in the middle of something completely out of the ordinary. It is in moments like these we understand life is found in the oddities of existence versus the ordinary. I wonder if God was giggling ever so slightly as this unfolded.
I heard my name being called, yet my mind was elsewhere, when I snapped out of my moment the preacher was calling for me to open the service in prayer. Finally, a moment of sanity…or so I thought.
As I began to speak I think I got out “Dear Lord, We†and then there was an explosion of voices shouting from every part of the church. As I peeked to see what this commotion was I noted people were running around praying in what seemed like loud screams. I stood in shock and considering what had happened already this was saying a lot. I watched as these men and women tried to outshout each other and see who could last the longest. It came down to two older men both who were starting to repeat themselves as new ideas and needs were running out quickly. At last we had a winner, and when he finally said “Amen†he was so horse he could hardly be understood. I shook my head and walked back to my seat as the preacher thanked me for my prayer. HA…now that was funny.
Probably this story should conclude here as this is enough and your getting tired of reading my meanderings. But you MUST hear about the preacher.
He began his message sounding raspy as a close runner up in the prayer derby earlier. He was an “AHA†preacher. For those not familiar with this style, it involves speaking (yelling) both while inhaling and exhaling. This technique doesn’t let a single breath get wasted in the service of the Lord. Which sounds terribly spiritual but in actuality is quite scary to listen to.
The pastor got himself so worked up at one point he spit into the third row. Fortunately it was the men’s side and no women were harmed in this act of worship. Then it happened. While yelling through an exhale he blew the largest booger I’ve have the bad fortune of seeing with my own eyes. This booger grabbed his bushy mustache like it was holding on for its dear life. Now boogers are never something to focus on and polite society allows one to wipe away such an exposure. He had no need. He just went on flailing about slapping his face each time he jerked suddenly to make a point. Finally it dropped onto the pulpit and just sat there. After what seemed like forever he reached over and grabbed that green goblin and wiped it on his pants.
He finally ran out of inspiration and sat down in a weary heap. I wanted to stand up and shout while clapping loudly. This was great…this was fantastic. Thank you..Bravo! Encore! This would surely be a church service I would never forget.
As I left the church there was a line greeting the pastor on the way out. He went to shake my hand but I would have no part of that. I gave him the biggest hug imaginable. “Terrificâ€, I told him as I skipped away in delight.
Probably to them I seemed weird and to me they seemed nuts. I’m so glad there is room in God’s kingdom for us all.
AMEN.
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I was listening to a pastor speaking on the rampant ‘feels good do it’ age and he started speaking about homosexuality. The 76-year-old man got really passionate about it and started saying that,
“Sex is between a man and woman, that’s the only way it works! Sure two men can try to do it, in a perverse way, but two women? That can’t work at all! Though, I hear you can buy something for that now…”
There was about 4 of us, in the front row, and it was all we could do to not laugh out loud – I think I did, actually.
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In seminary chapel one of our professors was preaching from the passage of Jesus baptism and very loudly proclaimed “Jesus was baptized in the ohn by Jordan.” Nobody heard anything after that.
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1. a child at Sunday night service during prayer request time ask prayer for his uncle, they had not told him that he had died the previous week
2. rapture practice at a church I did a youth service at one night, everybody was told to squat down and then jump in the air
3. a deacon fell asleep and fell out of the pew into the floor
4. I went to the back during the benediction to shake hands and realized before someone said amen that the lady in the back row had just came back from the bathroom with her dress tucked into her panties
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I’m sorry but being in a small rural SBC church, there is nothing that causes more laughter to me than the good ole’ southern gospel concert. Everything from the coordinated mic-stand antics to the story about the singer’s deceased aunt to the crown jewel of southern gospel–“Beulah Land,” which always has me thinking of a country filled with old, large women named Beulah…
cracks me up incessantly…
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My father-in-law always seemed to wear shirts that were a size too small, which translates into a button or two which were always stressed to the point of failure. One Sunday morning he fell asleep while sitting in a pew and started to lean forward. This put more pressure on the already stressed button, which decided to give way. The button literally became a projectile which launched over and across two rows in front of us. It then struck and ricocheted off that pew and struck someone in the face who was sitting there. He then woke up oblivious to the entire thing, only to see me shaking uncontrollably in laughter. I have no idea what the message was about that was being preached at that very time :).
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My Mom tells me this story about how when she was a young child with her parents at mass, it came to the point where everyone was to turn around and greet everyone by saying “Peace on you,” and her uncle turned around and said “Piss on you.” She says it was pretty funny trying not to laugh in the midst of a solemn service, I suppose.
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Thanks for these stories all- I really needed the laugh today.
I was discipling some local guys who are on my disaster response team when I made a pretty big language blunder.
I was talking about forgiveness and the need for us to get with our fallen brothers and pray with them until they find forgiveness. I was working myself up into a Baptist lather as I was telling them to get on their knees and pray with their brothers. Suddenly, one of the guys stopped me and said, ‘Strider, Zino?’ (The word I was saying for knee). I said, ‘No, no, no, not zino, zonu!’ Zonu is knee, Zino of course, is to commit adultery.
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During a revival in a small country church, the visiting preacher, a dean of a Bible college, was preaching on Paul’s conversion. Having had our pastor as a student, he personalized the message wit “When you were at your worst point, God never called you by name, did He?” I, in the very back, said “should have”….there wasn’t a dry eye in the house, as we all burst out in laughter.
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My daughter, when she was much younger, was the bane of many a visiting minister (we were in vacancy for a while). She was always enthusiastic during the children’s address and was usually the first with her hand up to answer a question.
On one especially memorable occasion, the visiting minister held up a dirty potato and a chocolate bar and asked the young people which they would prefer to have (I think he was intending building up to a point about the things that don’t always look attractive on the outside are often full of goodness). Anyway, my daughter’s hand shot into the air and she announced she would like the potato. Somewhat confounded the minister asked why. She then announced that “Vegetables are good for you and my mum says that if you eat too much chocolate you’ll get fat and spotty!”
Cue much hilarity and one completely ruined children’s talk (and one very embarrassed mum).
Not sure if this counts as a ‘lost it’ moment, but when I used to lead our youth group I had one excruciating moment. I don’t remember the talk I was giving, but one of the teenage girls made a particularly profound comment. I, without thinking, said, “Out of the mouths of babes comes wisdom.”
She immediately piped up, “Wow! John called me a babe!”
I suspect you could feel the heat from my blushes across the room. At least the group all thought it was funny and not creepy, so I lived on as a youth leader.
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wow Jared! What Church did you go to in Panama City with the dogs?
1. I find it physically impossible not to laugh at sign language/interpretive dancing. Probably, the single biggest piece of evidence I’m going to hell.
2. Once at a church I visited, the rather hefty music minister led a group of precious preschoolers in a song. As the kids were walking off the stage the minister turned to the church and said “And thats what it’s all about.” Right then one of the little girls turned around and said “You’ve got a big butt.”
3. Once my sister, her friend, and I went to the contemporary service of the SBC church I used to attend. We went because we had met a young man who was in our hometown on a campus ministry trip and he was planning to sing in church that day. Let’s just say that his enthusiasm for Jesus didn’t quite match his singing ability. Anyways, I ended with teeth marks in my knuckles from biting down trying not to laugh. My sister was hunched over with her hands over her face, heaving, trying not to laugh. The greatest thing was that my sisters friend thought she was crying and started rubbing her back! This made the whole situation even worse. I don’t know how we got out of there without truly loosing it.
4. Some visiting American believers came to visit us here in Taiwan. They thought it would be a novel idea for a bunch of white people to sing in church, regardless of wether or not they could indeed sing. Unfortunantely, right before they went up to sing they insisted I join them. I ended up laughing infront of the whole church (about 100 folk) as we sang “shout to the lord” and “I could sing of your love forever.” Funny thing was some of the church memebers had been pressuring me to join the choir before that, but since then I haven’t heard another thing; guess they learned their lesson.
5. I try and make eye-contact with people when they are singing infront of church to make them laugh. Also, evidence…
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My sisters and I lost it one Sunday when we were sitting behind a particularly active pre-schooler. His mom was trying very hard to listen to the sermon and he was pestering her relentlessly. Finally, in exasperation, the mom handed the boy her purse and enjoyed a few minutes of uninterrupted listening while the boy rifled through its contents. But it was 5 minutes of peace she paid dearly for: the boy stood up in the pew, triumphant grin on his impish face and, waving a tampon in the air, shouted out loud enough so that everyone turned to look, “Momma, momma, dis be da bubble gum?!”
Also, I was singing for a funeral (and sitting right in front of church) and was saved from totally losing it by our church’s new funeral pall. This was the first time we used the pall, a white cloth that covers the casket to remind us of being clothed in “Christ’s righteousness” through our baptism. It’s a lovely symbol, full of deep meaning, and I was grateful for it as I turned to read the obituary during the sermon and almost choked on “also well-loved as Chuckles the Clown.” I just wasn’t prepared for that image – and the pall helped me to get over picturing Bozo in the casket!
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We had a hymn with the line:
“In the concert bear your parts”
(bear/bare)
Can’t say I ever had to be wheeled out of church in a laughing fit, but still makes me smile.
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I attended an Anglican church as a kid. One week we had a baby baptism, after which our vicar (who always insisted in referring to the communion table as an “altar” despite a rather lower-church congregation) took the child, held him high in the air and announced “and now we will present this child to the Lord at the high altar!”
Used to his pompous turns of phrase, I would have held it in, had I not been sitting next to our Church Warden who muttered “Rather unfortunate wording, given the reading!” (Abraham going up to sacrifice Isaac!!)My mum lost it completely.
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Growing up in a fundamental Baptist church I found something funny in virtually every church service. Our pastor was an unfailing source of unintended comic relief, often blurting out something ridiculous in the midst of a frenetic sermon. One Sunday he was waxing ineloquent on the story of Samson vs. the Philistines. Having worked himself into a lather relating one dramatic detail after another, he exclaimed, “They couldn’t keep Samson down! He went wild and slew 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of a horse’s ass!â€
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I have had a few funny moments, but my favorite happened at the first church I served as a youth pastor. We were trying to raise money to take the kids on a trip to Hot Springs for a youth conference over Christmas Break and one of our fundraisers was a “beans and cornbread” dinner at the church. We had already covered most of the expenses for the trip except for fuel costs and incidentals. When the pastor announced the dinner from the pulpit he said, “The youth are going to have a beans and cornbread dinner to get gas for their trip.” It still cracks me up to this day. Plus we had a great crowd for the dinner.
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I had a good laugh when an older woman sang an operatic version of Jaci Velasquez’ “Na, na, na, na, na, na, na…” for a Vacation Bible School. It was horrific. But hilarious.
Plenty of bad theology, coercion, and evangelical silliness that has made me angry over the years. My family and I walked out of a church for the last time recently when one of the elders was ranting about how America was a terrible place because of the election of Barak Obama. He called the dedication of certain church members into question right before he announced he was stepping down from eldership. What a goof.
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My Campus Minister regularly says things that are pretty funny. One story in particular is, well, if it’s too much you can always delete the comment. He was pretty drugged up from having had dental work done a day or two before; yet he still managed to get up and talk. This particular semester he had set out a bowl at the beginning and invited us to put questions in it, so he was addressing themes that we chose. Since he got quite a few questions about sex he decided to put them all together into a single session. But since he was pretty drugged it came out wrong. He said “Be sure to come next week because we’re going to have a sex free-for-all.” Then he turned bright red when he realized what he had said. That’s probably the funniest moment I’ve ever had in a church setting.
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this prolly wont count but it was pretty funny. as we were trekking along on our spring break mission trip from alpine tx to the bolivar peninsula this past week we passed a sign on the side of the road that read: do you know where you will spend eternity? and the very next sign read: stay in ozona – 100 miles.
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Here are some funny stories from my wife who grew up in rural Alabama.
1. One Sunday morning at a church in Panama City Beach, I saw a dog show – complete with small poodles, hoops, and a balance beam. I don’t know what dogs doing tricks has to do with Jesus, but at the end of the show the pastor said, “I just love God’s little animals. They done real good.”
2. Another time during a church drama at this same church, a man dressed as Satan emerged from the baptismal pool behind the altar. A wet Satan is a mean Satan.
3. During high school, I went to a friend’s youth revival. The asinine youth pastor had us sit in a circle of chairs in the middle of the church and spit in his face to represent the way we spit on Jesus’s face everyday (are the words theatrical and cheesy in every youth minister’s job description?). I remember being baffled and disgusted by the lack of sanitation. However, I did scream with laughter (on the inside) when one kid straight up hocked a loogie on his face.
4. I once heard someone fart during a solemn foot washing service. It happened while they were bending down to wash someone’s feet. I never could decide which was funnier — the fart or the way people pretended not to notice.
5. During my sister’s baccalaureate service, an elderly lady had a seizure and passed out in the back of the church during a hymn. The teenage boy beside her watched her fall, thrash about and stop moving, all without saying a word. He later said he didn’t tell anyone what happened because he was sure she was “touched by the Holy Ghost”.
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This happened when my daughter was just about two years old and was learning to talk well. Unfortunatly most of the time, especially when she was excited T would come out as an F and she had difficulty even making the sound of R. The buiding was packed with people standing in back and 10 minutes into the sermon a very loud siren came by the building. She assumed it was a fire truck and screamed very loudly, “Mommy, it’s a fire —-!!!” Every kid there hit the floor along with me. Mommy was not happy to say the least.
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My wife and I attended the charismatic church of her upbringing for several years after moving to her hometown.
It wasn’t uncommon for people in that church during times of prayer and reflection to quietly repeat the name of Jesus to themselves and make other noises of praise (I’m not sure what else to call them–I’m not from a charismatic background, so it all stood out for me–hums, “yes”es, etc.).
We were having communion and right after we took the bread, the pastor stood there reflecting and said, quite clearly, “mmmmmmmmmm…Jesus…”
I had just taken the bread, too, and all I could think of was Homer Simpson saying this, followed by his gargly drool.
Still funny to this day.
Sometimes I quip something about transubstantiation after I till this story (but maybe I should brush up on that theology before I do that any more–don’t want to offend).
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My dad was the PA announcer for the local football team in the small town where I grew up. I was 14 year old spotter.
It was a tradition before each game for a local minister to say a prayer.
Well it was game time and the minister was no where to be found.
As they all fretted (we couldn’t start the game without a prayer after all)the school superintendent told Dad he was going to have to say the prayer.
Dad refused (I still don’t know why ) and they argued.
Finally, Dad told the man,”I’m not saying any gd prayer!”
The mike was open.
the crowd roared and I could see my mother in the home stands melting into her seat.
My childhood walk down the aisle was another comic gem but I’ll tell it later.
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I was attending a large Christian Church in Marquette, Michigan. I middle-aged man (whom had never visited before) sat down at the end of our pew. The first odd think I noticed was he was wearing a tuxedo. Then I notice that he started having twitching (what we call in medicine automatisms). Then he grabbed his mouth and started to muffle himself as he was trying to shout something (what we call coprolalia).
I leaned over to my wife and whispered, “I think that gentleman has Tourette’s Syndrome.”
About that time, Bob, a very gentle deacon, wearing a flannel shirt and a bushy gray beard came up to the microphone with his clipboard and pencil. He smiled and looked out over the congregation of about 600. “Does any one have any prayer needs this week or any special blessings that you would like to share?â€
The gentleman at the end of our pew suddenly shouted at the top of his lungs (despite his best attempts to hold his mouth shout with his hand) “Go to hell you hoooomoooosexuuual!â€
Now that wasn’t the funny part. The funny part was that poor ole Bob was in such a state of shock (as almost everyone) that he took his pencil and started writing on the clipboard with a kind smile on his face like he did after every prayer request. That’s when I started to crack up.
Fortunately, after the man shouted another profanity the pastor came up to the microphone and introduced the visitor and explained his disorder.
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my father-in-law was a pastor who had a rather horrid sololist that the choir director was fond of… bad vibratro and all that. the congregation didn’t like her and asked pastor dad to not let her sing so much. well, the choir director just didn’t get the point, so on sunday when SHE stood up to sing, he said, (into the in-house microphone, also being broadcast on the radio) damn, not this bitch again. pastor isn’t in the ministry anymore.
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This one is from my own personal hall of shame.
Once I was leading worship and we tried to do a neat little arrangement of Take My Life and Let It Be Consecrated.
Well we didn’t pull it off so well and I decided about halfway through that the Holy Spirit was leading me into a time of prayer.
Out of sheer desperation I decided to pray through the text of the song.
Obviously, the congregation was painfully aware of our music failure, evidenced by their collective explosion of laughter as I proclaimed, “Dear Jesus, take our lives…”
Whatever intimate spiritual moment just might have happened during our corporate celebration went right out the window there.
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I cannot go to church with my sisters and not end up laughing at something. Some of the things that stick out in my mind that set my sisters and I to giggling are:
1. While seated in the pew behind my aunt and uncle at my cousin’s wedding, a fly seemed to have made a home on my uncle’s very bald head. It crawled around, occasionally hopping to and fro, but never left. I don’t really remember the ceremony, but I’ll always remember that fly.
2. Being good Methodists, we say “trespasses” instead of “debtors” during the Lord’s Prayer. At a Presbyterian service my sisters and I attended, we prayed along with everyone else, except when there was silence after “debtors”, you heard three women saying “–asses.”
3. At our traditional candlelight service last Christmas Eve, my sisters and I couldn’t contain our giggles when my Uncle held the candle a little too close to his nodding head, and his hair started to smoke. (Obviously, this wasn’t the bald uncle, and yes, we did keep him from catching on fire; we’re not that bad.)
There are others too numerous to count. I’m not sure why so many times I find myself ready to “lose it” in church, but it’s definitely not a new phenomenon. I vividly remember as a young child being told each Sunday by my mother there’d be “no giggling this week.” But there always was, and still often is.
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Two events come to mind – this was in a local charismatic church we were in for a while – one time when one of the pastors was preaching, he got to a part about how we were all, and this is honestly what he said… “set afart” – yes, a-fart – ha!! He said it, immediately realized it when people started snickering, and just gave up, said “go ahead, it was funny, just laugh” – classic. I just saw him in Lowe’s the other day.
The other was when, at the same church, when probably wireless lapel mikes were new or something – well, dude, went to the bathroom after the beginning of the service, or after or something, and uhhhuhmm, the mike, was still ON! Aaaaghhh!! Sooo, tinkle tinkle tinkle go the Pastor. Lord have mercy – funeeee.
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Attending a very charismatic church as a child, where the congregation would often start up songs; on one occasion an elderly gentleman started to sing that well known hymn about the second coming … “He’ll be coming ’round the mountain when he comes”.
Things got strangely quiet when we got to the chorus.
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During my first (my FIRST!) sermon in my new church, I was waxing on about a number of things we would be emphasizing. I meant to say, “we’re going to promote success in family life.” What I said very distinctly was, “we’re going to promote sex…” The people tried their best to control themselves, but I said after trying to retain the situation, “Go ahead and laugh.” They roared. I ended the sermon there with no hope of recovery. After eleven years that one still get trotted out from time to time.
DSY
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I’ll try to be tasteful in the wording here but years ago I remember a Wednesay evening service in which friend of my sister had…. gas and it came out in a big way. The church had wooden pews (seat and back) and when “it” came out it sounded like a bomb exploded and it echoed all around that 500 seat room! Talking about falling off the pew… I’m about to fall out of the chair just writing about it!! That moment easily qualified as
a ROTFLMAO moment.
Nearly in tears in Knoxville!!
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This wasn’t in church but it was the result of a hundred nights in church. I was with a large group of guys in a college dorm lounge late on a Saturday night watching the old flick, “The Creature from the Black Lagoon”. In what is supposed to be a tense, scary moment, the creature is climbing up the side of the boat on the outside. From the camera shot inside, his black paw is visible through the porthole and suddenly, in his best alter call voice a kid says in the back, “I see that hand.”
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Once I was at Mass in northern Indiana in what was basically a trailer. All the music for the mass came from a CD in a boombox, which was funny enough in itself, but I could still hold in the chuckles.
What broke me, though, was during communion, when the lady in charge of the boom box played an absolutely terrible song (I can’t remember which now) — and when the 30 or so parishioners present finished communion, she let the boom box keep playing for three more verses. My wife and I almost had to excuse ourselves, and several bursts of breath managed to escape our mouths as we attempted in vain to contain our laughter.
Strangely enough, nobody else present found the situation humorous in the slightest.
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My sense of humor is far from safe. Years ago, an old interim pastor at the church I was serving was trying to tell a story about the horror of the crucifixion. Somewhere in his mind, he had a story about seeing a crucified badger- yes, the animal- on a board. He told this story in all the gory detail possible, and it was like something out of David Lynch film. I should have been horrified, but I was weeping with impending gasps of horrified laughter. The poor man thought this was really moving, but the whole room was simply confused and grossed out.
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I grew up in a small town in South-east Missouri, about 30 miles from Arkansas.
Sunday night was when the less-talented were allowed to sing solos.
Anyway, there was a lady who wasn’t quite all there who they allowed to sing.
I think it’s one of those things that you had to be there. But my mom starting laughing and then all the teenagers started laughing. My mom got up and walked out. The rest of us stared at the floor and tried not to look at each other.
I don’t miss Sunday night church, but I think that’s where the real church memories come from. The people who actually come on Sunday nights are a strange lot and strange things are said and done. Not in a wild crazy pentecostal way, just the strangeness of humans in general.
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Christmas Eve Midnight Mass. Blessing of the Nativity with holy water. Water from sprinkler hit spotlight in front of Nativity. Bulb pops. Big bulb. Hilarious.
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One Wed night in Seoul I attended the regular Bible study. A visiting missionary was asked to speak to the 25 or so GIs assembled. He was known for his far right wing funamentalist teaching. When he got to the part about being sure that he would see less than 10% of his fellow preachers in heaven, I left rather than punching him in his big fat mouth.
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