1) You open each service with “These are my deacons, I am who they say I am, I can do what they say I can do…”
2) At least three times a week someone says to you “I noticed your car was at your house.”
3) The phrase “But we’re a loving church” is the church’s unofficial motto.
4) When someone in your church has their picture in the paper it will be pinned to the bulletin board.
5) You have two revivals a year. The Pastor gets to pick the speaker for one and the deacons get to pick the speaker for the other.
6) You have more deacons than widows.
7) You have more deacons than windows.
8) The budget committee just whites out the dates on last years budget and runs off copies for the new year.
9) There is a woman in the church that you are deathly afraid of.
10) You have two people you consider friends at the church. One of them is in the third grade.
11) When the phone rings you’re just praying you don’t hear the words “Preacher I need to get in the church.”
12) You have a church van…YOU have a church van.
13) You have to plan your vacation around VBS.
14) You are regularly volunteered by a specific person in your church without being asked first.
15) There is a man in the church that once said to you “Preacher, do you know how much money I give to this church?”
16) Most of the charter members seats are marked with small blankets in the sanctuary.
17) A couple of times a year someone wants to sing a country music song as a special.
18) The congregation appears to double in size when the choir comes down.
19) Your wife strategically plans her grocery store trips so she doesn’t run into as many church members.
20) There is a weekly spot in your bulletin that reads “The flowers in the sanctuary were given in memory of…”
21) If you’ve ever witnessed visitors being asked to move because they sat in “our seats.”
That actually happened in my first pastorate! Thankfully, it was my mother-in-law who sat in the wrong place. She wasn’t angry, just amused!
This had me rolling.
I pastor a small, rural church. None of those 20 things, nor does Dave’s addition of the 21st, apply to me or our church. However, if I pastored the big FBC in town that runs about 800 people, I’d be able to relate.
I am with you Dale. None of the above 21 really apply to me either. I still found the post to be amusing.
Yes, it is funny, for sure. I wonder how many small churches buck the generalities described and how many larger churches fit it?
Dale:
These really don’t describe my church either. But we are more frontier that rural. Maybe, #2, which is more small town and #8 (but in that case I’m kind of the budget committee and it is just easier).
You probably need a older, established church to fall into a lot of these. Still, the list is pretty funny…
Adam, DBBC must have really changed, because several of these made me think back to my years there.
Of course, that was likely before you were born…
hahaha…thankfully, I think my experience has been altogether different from yours. A lot of time has passed. A lot of people have died. Others have moved on. There probably aren’t many left that were here then.
Or if you have a really poorly painted picture of Jesus in the foyer that you can’t remove because someone’s now-dead husband painted it for the church.
How about this…A painted picture of Jesus, downward out stretched hands (showing the scars) positioned directly over the men’s toilet…as if to say…”right here.”
Or, a stained glass window in the back of the sanctuary with Jesus’ finger pointing toward Heaven. Looks more like he’s saying, “We’re number one!” Every time I sing in church, I have to stifle a giggle! (immature, I know)
Bawahahahahahahahahahaha.
Love it! Other signs:
— Most everything in the church, including the water fountain and stair rails, are given in memory of someone (probably named Eugene or Eunice).
— Half the church members have memorized Robert’s Rules of Order. The other half want to know who Robert is.
–A couple of times a year some older lady offers to buy you a haircut or give you some of her husband’s old suits (without implying anything, of course).
–Everyone on the Personnel Committee is married to someone on the Finance Committee.
–Exactly five people read the newsletter, but ten get mad if you don’t have one that month.
–You will have at least one last-second announcement handed to you as you walk up to the stage each week.
–You routinely recognize birthdays and anniversaries from the pulpit. Bonus points if you have a little box shaped like a church on the Lord’s Supper table that people with birthdays or anniversaries put money into.
–You have a wall of former pastors’ photos that begins with some guy who looks like Robert E. Lee. Bonus points if one of your former pastors was actually named Robert E. Lee.
A couple of times a year some older lady offers to buy you a haircut or give you some of her husband’s old suits
Does this happen to Dave when he wears the lime green suit?
Every one runs away from the lime green suit.
where do you think he GOT the suit?
First pastor of the church I pastor: 1895, George Washington Green.
this post and comments make quality stand-up comedy material . . . LOL
P.S.
is it REALLY like this? 🙂
As they say, “It’s funny because it’s true . . .” 🙂
My thought was that it sounds like the material Garrison Keillor might use in the News From Lake Wobegon.
It does!
Funny! Regarding #15, I thought, “only once?”
Here are a couple more:
-Your sanctuary is also used as the adult Sunday School classroom.
-The family of the previous pastor still attends the church.
When the phone rings and it scares you.
That’s not just small churches Joe!
When the parsonage bathroom double as the ladies room on Sundays.
Please tell me that really isn’t so!
When you go on vacation, you’re scared that you’re gonna be called back home, because Aunt Matilda Ann Lucille is having “female” surgery, and expects the Pastor to be there. And, if you don’t drive back from the Colorado Rocky Mountains to Muscle Shoals, Alabama…to be there for the surgery…. then, you’re a bad Pastor, who doesn’t really care about your people.
The day you realize that the parsonage has the same, exact, dark paneling as the Sunday School rooms in the old part of the Church building. Then, it hits you…..your living room has the same, exact, gold, shag carpet that the old Sunday School rooms has, as well.
The parsonage has a huge spot in the backyard….you know what it is? Small, rural, Church Pastors know……it’s the garden spot…..where you can plant your maters, and taters, and sweet corn, and peas, and watermelons.
Is that spot above the septic tank?
Right beside the well. 🙂
About half of those where I am…but my first pastorate was about 75% of them.
Add in: church members just let themselves in to show the previous pastor’s family around the parsonage to show off the remodel done in between his departure and your arrival.
And then they wonder why it’s an awkward moment for all involved.
As far as I’m concerned, #1 is comedy gold. Brilliant.
yes
“Everyone on the Personnel Committee is married to someone on the Finance Committee.”
LOL. I would add though –
“…and the nominating committee is made up of their children.”
I’m trying to figure out where you guys get enough people to have different folks on the nominating, personnel, and finance committees…and how you separated the functions!
Doug
Easy! The committees never change and three members have been dead 5 years.
Oh, I get that–mine never change, either. But there’s a few who have inherited the slots on nominating committee, so the nom and finance are the same.
We don’t have a personnel committee, actually.
But we do love Jesus. Just not by committee.
This is too depressing…
I’ve experienced 2, 3, & 16… Maybe it’s just me and n, but I had this happen twice in a row: after you leave, they hire back the guy who was there before you… :-/
Heh… That happens when you get cut off and come back… “and n” = “and not a small church thing.”
I’ve had two churches want to do that…
But he was deceased, and therefore unavailable.
They still wanted him, though, as he was apparently *still* a better preacher.
The ironic thing is one of the two was my 8-month complete disaster experience that it seems every pastor has to have one of… My first seven months when most of the people mentioned him it was with complete disdain and talk about how terrible he was… The last month all the ire was aimed almost exclusively at me…
I can only figure they decided I was so terrible that they forget all the things they disliked about him… Six years later and he’s still there…
My requisite 8 month disaster experience only lasted 2 months as a seminary student staff member………Now 30 years later I look back and laugh, but it wasn’t funny when I was going through it.
I just got a request for reference on a guy who is currently being considered for that church’s pastorate. The Pastor Search Committee secretary added a personal note stating that she remembered my wife and I “fondly” from way back then. I have to admit that my response to her remembrance was a “Yeah. Right.”
Dale
I had a pastor who followed me in a church call me at 1:30 AM and was distraught to the point of a breakdown. A lady in the church kept telling him what a better pastor I was and how he should be and do more like me. His question was what did I do to make her like me. My answer, which was the truth, she would have run me out of town on rail if she could have found the tar and feathers. Funny how we get better after we leave.
LOL.
Some people only like 2 types of pastors over the course of their entire lives.
One they used to have – and – the one that they will have after they run the current dude off.
😉
Ain’t it the truth
In the little SBC church I got married in 31 years ago we once argued in the business meeting about whether to allow congregational singing from both sets of hymnals the church owned or whether all the hymns needed to be just from one set. It was not a doctrinal concern about either set; the argument was strictly about procedure and whether using more than one set of hymnals was acceptable. One member offered the opinion the whole argument was “silly” and received a number of concerned looks, even from his wife.
Oh, and the vote to use two sets won. I don’t remember the totals, but probably something like 35-15. Yes, it was a very small church.
Mike
Here in Montana that is a nice size church 🙂
When even if you don’t have a lot of bad things in your life, nearly every bad thing in your life is church related.
Dear Brother, D.L. : You are a hoot. I had forgotten about that example from your ministry. Maybe we ought to get together and write a manual from our experiences as to what ministers could expect from practically any size church. Since I spent all of my pastoral years in small churches, and you served on the FBC circuits until becoming a DOM which involves saving the small ones from extension, I dare say we could write a pretty lively manual. I think of the committee for homecoming, where the one of the leading lady wanted a certain singer for the afternoon hymn sing. I said I did not think that was a good idea for a number of reasons without saying I had info. from the singer’s pastor. The dear lady crossed her arms, and I knew I might as well throw in the towel right there. So I said okay and she dropped her arms. Ah, but after we had the singer, who pulled some of his self-centered stunts, practically ruining the program for the other singers, she said, “Next time, we will listen to Dr. Willingham.” Thankfully, the fellow did not do his absolute worst, but he did prove my point about the fact we really didn’t want him.
Dr. JW
I think she joined my church after that LOL 🙂
Have a great Easter my dear Brother!