Church Research
Part 1: The Idea
Back when I was in college, a long time ago, one memorable assignment came from my Religion/Philosophy course. The prof, a pretty decent teacher as it so happened, told us to go out and attend worship services at five different churches, interview the pastor/reverend/priest, and write one heck of a report about it all.
I did as directed.
It was a great deal more interesting than I expected.
I wrote a heck of a report and aced the course to boot.
And that was that for many, many years.
The assignment came to mind one day a couple months ago. I can’t explain exactly why it came to mind, but it did all by itself. It was a clear and crisp swat to my skull that brought back strips of memories that should have been long forgotten. But there they were, bright as scraped copper, daring me to ignore them. From this kind of stuff ideas softly erupt. It seemed like a good idea to do the assignment again and note how my point of view had changed after all these years. And, of course, considering what often happens when I jump into things like this, a series of unexpected events followed.
Hang on, I told myself. Church Research was about to begin anew. Believe it, just believe it. Have faith.
Part 2: The Fate of the Presbyterian
The beauty of this kind of research project is that it’s easy to plan your week. The bulk of the work will happen on a Sunday morning, it probably won’t consume much more than a couple hours, it’s indoor work, and it’ll be quiet, mostly, with some singing.
So there I was on a Sunday a couple months back, walking up the steps of the neighborhood Presbyterian Church, joining a goodly number of faithful. A gentleman in a sharp navy suit greeted me at the entrance with a vigorous handshake, a copy of the day’s program, a bociferous “welcome, friend!”, and a heartfelt invitation to “sit anywhere”. It was brilliantly evident, however, that there were certain areas where it would be wise to not sit within the seated flock. I found a nice spot in the very back row, perfect for a discrete early exit.
The interior of the church was about as ornate as a church could be without someone like me walking in, gasping slightly, and thinking, “Holy smokes! This is very, very ornate!” You know, church tasteful. Subdued elegance. They’ll invest in things to keep the place looking sharp, but not shove it in your face.
The minister’s name was Oscar Nugent, and he presided over the Sunday service in an appropriately regal manner. When the introductory pageantry was dispensed with and it was his turn to deliver the sermon, Oscar burst forth with a surprisingly booming voice considering he was such a pipsqueak of a guy — no taller than about 5' 5" on tip toes. If you closed your eyes you could imagine that voice coming from a veritable giant of a man with a thick mane of shiny hair and a full, lustrous beard. A quick look around the assembled throng showed that many worshippers did indeed have their eyes closed.
I took notes and timed Oscar’s sermon. I suspect I was the only one in the room doing so, and the loyal followers sitting near me suspected the same. The good minister’s message seemed to revolve around making choices and according to my watch he had 21 minutes and 37 seconds worth of opinions and recollections and ideas on the topic, buttressing his remarks with muscular references to scripture. Proverbs apparently had a lot to say about making choices, as did good old Matthew. But, as we all know, Matthew had a lot to say about many things.
After dropping a few bucks in an offering plate, I sneaked out and strolled around the neatly sculpted grounds.
Checking the program later, I noticed that Oscar could be contacted by email, so I sent him a message asking to interview him, briefly explaining my research project. About a half an hour later, Oscar Nugent replied.
“Sure,” his message began. “How about Tuesday? I’m grilling burgers in the back yard. Come on over anytime after 6 pm. There’s free parking!”
What could happen? Burgers and a nice chat with a man of the cloth.
Well, you know me.
It can’t just be burgers and a nice chat.
And it wasn’t.
Not by a long shot.
Part 3: Ecumenical Madness
Sometimes the best laid plans take a sideways path. My Tuesday burger cookout with Pastor Nugent was postponed by a last-minute work obligation. I dashed off a hasty email note of apology, to which an eerily prompt reply flashed back from the minister: “No problem, there’s always next Tuesday. See you Sunday?” My reply: “Sorry, no. I’ll be attending another church. The demands of my research.” His instantaneous reply: “Understood. Church research. See you next Tuesday!”
The following Sunday I visited a Unitarian church, a starkly different experience. The church was formerly a dollar store tucked into a shopping plaza, blazingly expressing the time-honored notion that a church isn’t a building, it’s a group of people. The dress code was casual but neat: no suits, no skirts or dresses, few collared shirts, many sandaled feet, several types of head gear, smatterings of bright colors blossoming from Hawaiian and tie-dyed shirts. The seating was not rows of pews, but a ragged circle of unmatched padded folding chairs surrounding a wheeled office chair where the leader of this band of Unitarians, a portly fellow named Gregg, sat with an iPad on his lap and a wizened grin on his face. Someone yanked the door closed at several tardy minutes past the advertised starting time and Gregg spun his chair a nifty 360 degrees, calling out grandly, “Let’s begin!”.
There was no printed program. The worship service just kind of flowed along on its own merry, cherubic way. A cluster of five children presented a skit about tolerance and bullying (for one, against the other). Gregg asked for hymn suggestions and selected two from the many that were shouted from the circle. He added a third, describing it as a favorite for this time of year. The singing was enthusiastic, blaring, and pretty bad, followed by applause and polite whooping at the end of the third hymn. To me, it felt like a reimagining of the very first church service ever. Here we all are, we don’t know what the heck we’re supposed to be doing, so let’s praise and celebrate and see how it goes.
After the kids’ skit and a rambling prayer by a fellow sporting a Santa-like white beard, Pastor Gregg leaned into his sermon. Unlike Oscar Nugent’s prepared, written speech, Gregg’s words were more like offhandedly sifted musings. His message, if it had a specific topic, was sort of about renewal and embracing change and, if one day was any indication, Gregg sure had a crush on the word “embrace” in all its grammatical forms. Gregg blended sociology, current events, a few wistfully pointed political remarks, and a weird reference to Ursula K. LeGuin. In the middle of a brief exposition on meteorology, he abruptly stopped with a, “And that wraps it up!”
By strategically inserting umms and uhhs and likes and you knows into his message, Gregg stretched his part of the program to eighteen minutes and 21 seconds.
The entire service lasted a moment longer than forty minutes. Instead of passing offering plates around the circle, people dropped coins and bills into a haphazardly decorated milk can near the door. Others crowded around Gregg to donate to the cause by swiping their credit cards across a little nubbin of a thing attached to his iPad.
I stayed behind. As we stored the chairs, I described my research project. I asked for a longer interview. Sure, Gregg said, but the coming week was kind of booked solid. He scanned his iPad. And found half an hour at noon Saturday. We agreed to meet. Walking out, I saw a table with plans and a 3-D model of a church, with a sign: Our Future Home. I commented about the 3-D model and how nice it looked. Gregg nodded and said his “flock” (he motioned the quotes with his fingers) deserved new digs, they were good people, but it didn’t matter much to him.
A couple days later, I stood over two Weber grills flipping burgers with Oscar Nugent. Gregg the Unitarian was there, too, along with three other people of the cloth from different churches in the area. I had stumbled upon The Secret Society of Various Ministers.
Part 4: The Secret Society’s Secrets
With a dim plan of reliving a research project from a Religion/Philosophy course in my long past college days, I ended up breaking bread with a group of five ministers. There we stood on an overcast Tuesday evening, in the back yard of a house near a Presbyterian church. Two grills going — one with burgers and hot dogs and the other with vegetable kebobs.
The tiny congregation was hosted by Oscar Nugent, Presbyterian Pastor. Tending the burger/dog grill was Gregg the Unitarian, whose service I had experienced the previous Sunday. Rounding out the clerical crew: Baptist Gordon Williams — a sturdily constructed black man who introduced himself with a grindingly firm handshake; Methodist Constance (call me Connie) Johnson — 40s, gymnast lithe in her matching workout togs, hair tied back in a neat pigtail; and Lutheran Trace (just Trace, no last name provided) — a tall, slim older fellow with a wild shock of gray hair and thin arms poking out of a black t-shirt.
Out of their Sunday uniforms, they looked like regular folks.
Human beings, no different from you and me.
Hiding in plain sight.
Ready to pounce on us.
Grab us up and convert us to their ways.
And I was in among them.
If they thought I was easy prey, they ought to be beseeching thineselves to think again.
Before eating, there was a moment of silence and then the food was passed around. I smirked, said “huh”, and snickered just enough to be noticed.
Oscar, sitting to my right, said, “Yes?”
“No prayer,” I said while gobbling my burger.
“Nope,” Oscar said. “Surprised?”
“A little. I guess I was expecting five of ‘em.”
Instead of five prayers I received five chuckles.
“I’ll offer up a prayer,” Greg said.
“Oh, boy,” Gordon said while inspecting a kabob for something edible.
“Hey, Lord,” Gregg said. “How about blessing this burnt meat and scorched veggies!”
“Amen to that,” Trace said as he dispensed of a carbonized nibble of burger. There was more chuckling followed by the sounds of six hungry people eating.
The table talk was devoted to anything but religion, which also caught me off guard a bit. During dessert, a sinfully tasty devil’s food cake offered by Trace, Oscar asked me to explain my project. I did. Gordon, Connie, and Trace immediately invited me to their churches. Gregg said he’d sure like to hear my thoughts after my research was done. I promised to provide a full report, and I asked if these Tuesday get-togethers were a regular thing. Oscar said yes, indeed, they were and I was always welcome. Oscar excused himself and walked to his house.
“You’ll like this, Connie said.
“Oh, mercy, mercy, me, yes,” Gordon said in his best Marvin Gaye impression.
Oscar returned with a deck of cards and a large cardboard box. He held the cards aloft and the group proclaimed in unison, “Let the great game begin!” Oscar shuffled the deck as deftly as a casino croupier and dealt each minister, including himself, seven cards face down. Starting with Connie and working around the picnic table, each minister turned over a card. There were three rounds of card revealed before Oscar announced, “We have winners!” Thinking back on it, I still haven’t the slightest idea of the nature of the card game; it makes literally no sense to me.
There was cheering and hand slapping, and then they all turned to look down on me with finely honed reverential solemnity.
“You must swear to tell know one what you’re about to see and hear,” Oscar said.
“It is a ritual we take great care to keep secret,” Gordon said.
“Can we trust you to keep our secret?” Gregg said.
“If you cannot, then we bid you a good evening,” Trace said.
I scratched my chin to emphasize my careful pondering and check for food scraps.
It was a tough pledge to make in front of this august group.
But, I thought finally, what the hell.
“You can trust me,” I said.
Part 5: The Secret Ritual Revealed
It turns out that these ministers were a pack of rascals. They lined up across the picnic table from me and for reasons that escaped me at the moment, looking for all the world like the scruffy team of weirdos from the movie Guardians of the Galaxy. I laughed and spat out, “Hey, are you guys superheroes from outer space?” Gregg was about the same size and shape as the Star Lord character, Gordon could easily pass as Drax, tall and spindly Trace was the perfect Groot, Connie would work as Gamora, and Oscar fit the mold for Rocket. They chortled at my comment, and who would blame them?
“Superheroes from outer space? Really? Where’d that come from?” Trace said, which was a lot more than Groot said in the film.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was just being a nut.”
And then, with looks and nods, they decided it was time to explain their secret stuff, before I came up with another outlandish theory.
Their big, fat secret was an exercise in deception, it seemed to me upon first hearing it. Then I thought about it for a minute and there were some intriguing components. Here’s how good old Oscar the Fancy Presbyterian described the group’s secret:
“Every 8 weeks we preach someone else’s sermon.”
The five holiest of holies gazed at me with goofy little grins welded to their faces. Connie shrugged and giggled.
“That’s it?” I said, trying to sound as if I was aghast, or at least nonplussed, but I really wasn’t. Their huge, obese secret was a giant notch down from my superhero theory. “And the strange card game?”
“That’s how we decide who preaches whose sermon,” Gordon said. “I’ll have Trace’s message.”
“I’ve got Gregg’s,” Oscar said.
“It’ll be my honor to deliver Connie’s sermon,” Trace said.
“Me,” Connie said. “I have Oscar’s award-winning sermon.”
“And I get the fun one,” Gregg said. “Gordon writes a heck of a sermon.”
I stood by for a moment or two as Oscar opened the cardboard box he had brought with him from the house, along with the deck of cards, and pulled out manila envelopes. Each envelope was signed by one of the ministers. Oscar distributed the envelopes, which I presumed contained sermons. They opened their envelopes eagerly, pulled out sheaves of paper (two were hand written, three were typed), and dove into the pages. There were snorts and sighs and heads shaking and words of approval. It felt like a good time to make my departure. I had one question for the group before I left.
“I’ve visited Oscar’s and Gregg’s churches,” I said. “Who should I visit next?”
“Gordon!” the four of them proclaimed in unison.
“I swear it shall be done,” I said. I’d be visiting Drax’s church on Sunday.
Part 6, Gordon Preaches Up a Storm
Gordon’s church was a typical, normal, run-of-the-mill church on the outside. White siding accented with a bright blue color of paint (the kind of bright that proclaims “Buy me, I’m on sale!”), stone steps up to proud double doors. People tramped up those steps in a steady stream and I was swept along with them.
Inside was a whole different deal. Everything from floors to pews to walls to ceiling to pulpit to you name it was made of wood. Everything. The inside of Gordon’s church felt like it had been carved from a single giant tree. The wood was polished so brightly it shimmered.
I was tucked in the middle of a row about halfway back, or up (depending on your point of view), stuffed in a spot where one family ended with two neatly dressed little girls to my left and another family began with two reluctantly suited young boys to my right. I introduced myself to the youngsters, receiving practiced fake smiles and greetings ranging from a warmish “pleased to make your acquaintance” to a mumbled “’hullo”.
About the time I got all comfy, the service began.
The girls to my left sat bolt upright and were stone silent.
The boys to my right squirmed and elbowed each other and frowned.
I fake frowned to my right and sat up straight to my left.
The children’s choir marched up the middle aisle, singing grandly and about a thousand times better than Gregg’s entire congregation of off-key unificationists, or whatever they called themselves.
As the choir passed a row of pews, the people would stand, many clapping softly in rhythm with the voices, and then slowly sit back down in a gently rolling human wave that was a great deal more pleasant than the stupid waves I’ve endured at baseball parks. The children formed three tidy lines on the steps at the front of the sanctuary and as they wrapped up their number with a fading “amen” the adult choir glided in from stages left and right with a sweet segue into their hymn. Again, the worshippers rose, starting with the back row and deftly cascading to the front row and sitting back down in reverse order. The children’s choir joined in seamlessly for the second stanza.
As the choirs finished with a jubilant flourish, a gentleman materialized at the pulpit and gave the opening prayer in a reserved oratorical flair that brought ringing truth his simple words.
The churchgoers rose as one.
All eyes but mine were tightly closed.
Some arms were outstretched, palms up.
The girls to my left stood stock still, hands clasped in prayer mode.
The boys to my right pressed their eyes closed mightily and mashed their hands together as if they were squeezing coal into diamond.
As the prayer leader let his final word drip into an “amen” that drifted around the room, a woman appeared onstage and filled the air with some seriously gorgeous singing.
I remained standing.
Everyone else was seated.
It felt like the singing woman was staring right at me, with not terribly kindly eyes.
The girl to my left latched onto my sleeve and gave it a yank.
“We sit for Miss Odette’s hymn,” the girl whispered.
The boy to my right shook his head yes and looked down at his shoes.
“I probably should sit down then, huh?” I whispered to the little girl.
“Good idea,” the boy said.
I sat down with a creaky plopping noise that filled the meaningful pause in the singer’s song.
The four kids bordering me tried as hard as they could to not laugh really hard.
They failed.
Others joined in; laughter bouncing off the wooden walls, wooden ceiling, anything wooden.
Miss Odette stopped, mid-note, and stood with hands on hips, glaring at me over her stylish eyeglasses. And then the right corner of her mouth turned up ever so slightly. The laughter died down of its own lack of momentum. Miss Odette finished her song. I looked down at my shoes.
“I’ll tell you when to stand,” the little girl to my left said in vague seriousness.
I don’t remember much of the rest of the service, other than it was choreographed like a Broadway show. Gordon delivered Trace’s sermon as if it were his own. It clocked in at a brisk 17 minutes and 49 seconds. The girl to my left wore out my sleeve tugging me upright and back down again, over and over. I was swept out of the church as I had been swept in. Gordon was out front, shaking hands and hugging bodies and slapping backs.
I got a shake and a slap.
“Enjoy yourself?” Gordon said with a bit of a smirk.
“I should apologize to Miss Odette,” I said.
“She thought it was hilarious,” Gordon said. “She just has to keep up appearances.”
“Who is next on your list?” he asked while being pulled away to meet with a family.
“Constance, I think,” I said while backing away diplomatically.
“Interesting,” Gordon said, waving as he was ushered off into a swarm of people.
And it was, surely.
Part 7: The Constance Experience
The next Sunday I prepared myself for an entirely different church experience. I’ll round off and say the walk from the parking lot to the front steps of the United Methodist Church, where Constance presided, was a half a mile. Not a necessarily tough half mile walk, as the grounds were lovingly tended and anything that could be in bloom was blooming to beat the band and all the greenery was as green as green can be. It looked like someone had plunked a church right square in the middle of a botanical garden.
And that’s where the bulk of the work was done, I discovered upon entering the church. Where “spare no expense” seemed to be the theme in the area around the church, expenses were definitely spared indoors. Words popped into my head as I was ushered to my seat in the rear of the sanctuary.
Austere
Puritanical
Spartan
Functional
Modest
The atmosphere inside the church was that of an assistant principal’s office, a place you walked into for one reason and one reason alone: to be dealt a good, sound chewing out. This was the home of the vengeful Lord who had been watching us sin our way through the week and it was now time to get what was coming to us, and the only response expected from the whipping were we about to receive was a meek request for a few more lashes.
The pews could not possibly be less comfortable. Somehow, through a well-crafted demonic carpentry trick, the glassily smooth seating surface felt like it was padded with a bed of fresh burs and barbs and thistles and stinging nettles. The angle of the seat back was measured by a satanic protractor to invoke lower back pain after a little over a minute. The pews also jutted out at the perfect distance to pinch and poke and grab at the back of your knees.
The sanctuary was windowless and the walls bare, commanding you to keep your eyes focused on the action at the front of the room, where important information about how you might be able to atone for your ill-considered behavior would be delivered in no uncertain terms.
The service began exactly on the hour, as the plain black-and-white program announced.
Every single note from the organ struck my forehead like a cannonade — music that stung.
The choir squeezed every last molecule of joy out of and away from the hymn it sang, moving from note to note in a jarringly bludgeoning sequence that reminded me of a construction crew sledgehammering huge nails into railroad ties.
The opening prayer could have been lifted from a work by Edgar Allen Poe, and seemed to be pleading with God to smite the whole lot of us right then and there and get things over with.
A cranky, gravelly-voiced member of the congregation began the day’s Bible recitation at Matthew 1:1, and I fully expected him to read the entire New Testament, and we would sit quietly and take it because we deserved it based on the way we carried on all week and let this be a lesson to us all every one.
Then it was time for the minister to administer profound and concussive justice upon us all.
Had I been wearing boots, I would have quaked in them.
Those who wore boots, quaked, no doubt about it.
Connie stood straight-backed at the pulpit, eyebrows lowered and shoulders squared. Her solemn words bore down upon us with a tone that screamed “now listen and listen good, I’m only gonna say this once”.
A more furrowed brow I have never seen.
A stonier visage I have never experienced.
A more piercing stare I have never endured.
Connie’s message revolved around duty. We hadn’t done ours, and right about now was a good time to get after it, if we knew what was good for us. She beat this message into us for a ponderous eighteen minutes flat, after which the offering plates were passed. Dropping cash into the plate felt like I was paying a toll on an ecumenical turnpike leading in one of two directions, and maybe an extra dollar or two might get me on the road heading upward.
The choir reassembled to give us another aural thrashing, somehow succeeding in turning hymn 66 (Praise My Soul…) into a dirge.
The Children’s Moment featured one of Connie’s assistant pastors doling out a proper browbeating to the collection of waifs and urchins, reminding the wee ones that their every waking second was littered with temptation and they were only this far from making a pact with you-know-who, the consequences of which were too horrible to describe, but here are a few examples that ought to keep you up at night.
One final prayer, along the lines of “in case you weren’t listening earlier, here are a few more dire warnings”, was descended upon us and we were finally allowed to skedaddle in an orderly fashion back out into the brilliant sunlight and splendor of the arboretum-like grounds.
The congregation, psychological shackles removed, shook hands and slapped backs and hugged and laughed and cavorted like inmates released from long stints in the pokey. Connie strolled among her flock, joining in on the gaiety. She saw me and waved crazily with both arms.
“Not exactly like Gordon’s service, was it?” Connie whispered as she planted a big hug on me.
“You got that right,” I said.
“There are a lot of ways to deliver the good word,” she said.
“Apparently,” I said.
Connie excused herself to romp with a brambling group of kids.
I wandered off to do my duty, hoping to avoid The Wrath and/or The Reckoning.
Part 8: The 96th Thesis, According to Pastor Trace
After sitting in on Presbyterian, Unitarian, Baptist, and Methodist worship services, and experiencing four distinctly different approaches to celebrating religion, I was ready for anything at Trace’s Lutheran church. What I got, I guess, was what I deserved: a stereotypical, generic church. The building and grounds were churchlike in every way. There was a steeple and inside there were all the people, dressed in their Sunday best and smiling engaging in chit chat with friends and neighbors. A few recognized me as a stranger and they welcomed me. I sat at the end of a row populated by two families who lived across the street from each other a few blocks from the church. They took the walk together every Sunday. While I didn’t say it to their faces, I suspected the families were actually aliens from outer space, observing us humans and reporting to a massive vessel parked just barely out of radar range, waiting for the exact right moment to launch an all out attack.
This scenario somehow became so real to me that I worked out the details of the space aliens’ elaborate plan while the worship service took place. I scribbled notes all over my copy of the program, and even borrowed a second copy from the placid grandmother to my right so I could finish my story, which had evolved into a battle between earth and several other planets and it was kind of looking bad for us humans until this one scientist, let’s call him Jack (just for fun), discovers the weaknesses of all the alien species and earth prevails as the last of the aliens flies whimpering back to its home planet, never to return, although there was a possibility that one group of aliens may strike a tentative alliance with us, both sides being necessarily skeptical of the true motives of the other.
As I was about to borrow a third copy of the church program and finish off my alien-invasion story notes, Trace concluded the service and the packed house tromped joyously out of the church to live their lives unaware of the possible alien threat that lurked above the clouds.
Trace found me out on the lawn, folding my two copies of the program and stuffing them in my jacket pocket.
“Took a few notes, eh?” Trace said.
“Yup,” I said. “Notes.”
“So,” Trace said, “how did you like it?”
“Good,” I said. “Real good. Nice. Nice and good. Real nice.”
“Will you be at Oscar’s Tuesday?”
“I plan to be, yes.”
“A full report, then?”
“Absolutely.”
Trace slapped me on the back and waltzed over to the two space alien families with whom I had shared a pew. One of the children looked over at me and pointed, and her finger appeared to glow slightly. Probably glare from the sun peeking through the clouds, clouds which may have been hiding a massive spaceship, weapons poised.
Part 9, the Final Chapter
It was another Tuesday, around 6 p.m., and I found myself pushing hot dogs around a grill in hopes of cooking these dogs to the inexact specifications and watchless eyes of five people of the cloth who will eat pretty much anything cooked any way and rejoice in the experience. Oscar the Presbyterian Preacher tended the grillful of burgers next to me.
The picnic table in Oscar’s backyard was set with paper plates, plastic cutlery, and heaping bowls of stuff brought by the group.
The burgers and hot dogs having been grilled to imperfection and served, we sat together.
To accommodate me, I suspected, each preacher preached a short pre-meal prayer. They were all smiling like a bunch of naughty 4th graders.
We munched away on our dinners.
Small talk was lobbed around the table.
A silence happened and all eyes but mine turned on me.
I ate quietly, trying to ignore the stares, but to no avail.
“I’m guessing you want a full report,” I said through as much food as I could cram in my mouth.
“We sure do,” Oscar said.
I reported. The group sat mostly motionless and looked down at their condiment-stained plates. Trace chased three baked beans around his plate with a plastic fork that had lost a tine. I finished my report with a spirited, “And, so, there you are.”
Another swath of silence limped across the table. Connie deftly manipulated a paper towel to sop slaw sauce off the corner of her mouth. Gordon downed the remaining 39% of his burger in one bite. Gregg gobbled sliced greens doused in homemade Italian dressing.
“So,” Oscar said. “You liked all the services?”
“Yeah,” I said. “They were interesting. For different reasons, but all were interesting.”
“What was the deal with timing our sermons?” Connie asked. “Just out of curiosity.”
“Oh, that,” I said, urging out a faint chuckle. “It comes from a short story by P.G. Wodehouse, called The Great Sermon Handicap. The characters in the story place bets on which pastor will preach the longest sermon on a certain Sunday.”
“Sounds like a nice story,” Gregg said as he hauled lettuce out from between his teeth like a sailor pulling up rope connected to an anchor.
“If you like that sort of thing, yeah it’s very good and really funny,” I said weakly. “And there was another connection in the story. One pastor preaches another pastor’s sermon.”
The group smiled at that remark.
“Was there anything about the services that you learned that you didn’t already know?” Trace asked as he sliced an apple pie Connie had baked.
“One thing struck me,” I said. “But I’m kind of hesitant to bring it up.”
“Hmmm,” Gregg said. “We’d probably like to hear what that thing is.”
“I suppose so,” I said.
Gordon held up a generous slice of pie.
“After you tell us,” he said. “You can have some pie.”
“Is that a Christian thing to do?” I said.
“You think just anyone got some of those loaves and fishes?” Gordon boomed in the voice I had heard him use in his worship service, followed by raucous laughter.
“Well, OK,” I said. “Here goes. I’ve heard church officials say that they were called to a life with a church, as if it’s not a personal choice but a divine selection process. Please don’t take this the wrong way, because it seemed to me like you’re all very good at what you do. I mean, every one of your churches was full and the congregations looked like they genuinely enjoyed themselves. But I got the distinct impression, and I don’t know why, that you’re all in actuality just working stiffs. You’re like anyone else in any walk of life. You like what you do and you’re good at it. A calling? I’m not so sure. Or at least not any more than a nurse or teacher or scientist is called to a profession. So, you can call it a calling if you like, but to me it’s more that you found a profession that fits your set of skills. I think that’s a pretty good thing.”
I put my hands up and shrugged.
Gordon passed me the plate of pie very, very slowly, and he grinned a wee bit.
Connie’s eyes widened and she turned her head slightly and robotically.
Oscar said, “Hmmm.”
Trace drummed his fingertips on the table and made some smacking sounds.
Gregg stared straight ahead and squinted so hard it forged a crazy smile on his face.
“Working,” Gordon said in a questioning way. “Stiffs? Working stiffs. I’m. A. Working. Stiff.”
I angled up and out of my place on the picnic table bench.
“Time for me to go, huh?” I said.
“Working stiff,” Gordon said. “I like it.”
“Yeah,” Gregg said, “Stay for a bit. Hang with us working stiffs.”
“Hey,” Connie said. “Which one of us preached the longest sermon?”
I sat back down.
Stayed a bit.
Quite a bit.