“Pastor, I have a rat in my house. Please come get it!”
It’s a true story. I was the pastor. And I was over 30 minutes away from the senior adult who made the “request.” I tried to call several other church members on the phone to get them to help.
I could find no one. Strange.
I chased a rat in the senior adult’s home for over an hour.
I love pastors and church staff. I love hearing their stories. And, on occasion, I like to provide a bit of levity. Such has been my theme this week.
Today, I let these pastors and church staff persons speak for themselves. I made minor modifications to a few so the story does not inadvertently reveal the church members. I don’t want the pastor to get fired. No comments on my part are necessary.
- “A church member asked, during the Lord’s Supper, if we could have a prayer for her dog that had died earlier in the week.”
- “A church member called, telling me her neighbors sheep were out in the road. Of course, I was supposed to help since I was her shepherd.”
- “I officiated a funeral where the family did the wave and hit beach balls during the service.”
- “A lady called me to let me know her son-in-law wasn’t praying long enough before his bed time. She felt I needed to counsel him.”
- “A church member was a funeral home director. He called me frequently to help him pick up just-deceased bodies.”
- “A church member called to request I euthanize an injured rabbit.”
- “I was asked by a church member to bury a dog.”
- “I got a call from a church member asking me to inform a lady she has grandkids she didn’t know about.”
- “I was asked to baptize a body at a funeral.”
- “A lady brought a chirping bird into a worship service and asked me to ignore it.”
- “I was visiting a member of our church in the hospital. He insisted I hold his kidney stone. I was young, so I did.”
- “A church member asked me to do a funeral for his horse.”
- “A deacon, after checking on a clogged toilet in the men’s room, told the pastor, ‘You need to go to the men’s room with me. You’ve got to see this!’”
- “A church member asked me to put her mother’s funeral on my calendar. She wasn’t dead.”
- “I was asked to wear a crushed velvet hat for a wedding.”
- “A church member asked me to do an imitation of a character from The Princess Bride during the wedding ceremony.”
I have no doubt these stories are true. I’ve had many weird requests made of me as well.
Let me hear from you.
Posted on May 4, 2016
With nearly 40 years of ministry experience, Thom Rainer has spent a lifetime committed to the growth and health of local churches across North America.
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196 Comments
Friends, we REALLY have to learn to say no to this nonsense. Dress-up, theatre, funny voices, and misappropriating the Gospel for sentiment and nostalgia are vain uses of God’s name and Word.
Being neighbor may call us to help in times of need but we do a disservice to the Office of the Ministry and the Church of God by relegating it to the do-gooders club instead of bringing life and salvation.
Would you call your physician, pharmacist, kid’s soccer coach, or auto mechanic to do such things?
Hilarious to be sure, but we’ve got to have some boundaries lest we veil the Gospel.
Faith and evangelization are about a lot more than words. It’s about how we live our lives. Do these situations indicate fuzzy boundaries? Perhaps. If I can show my Christian love for someone by doing a random deed for them, how is that doing a disservice to the church and “office” of ministry? I don’t hold an office, I’m a human being and a flawed one at that, just like my congregation. If just one person asks why I’m so happy to help folks that need me and I can tell them it’s because of what God has done for me that’s a GOOD thing.
About 7 years ago a man walked into my office in the middle of the day with a plastic grocery bag in his hand. After about 15 minutes of explaining to me in his deep baritone voice that he’s actually “half man and half woman,” he reached into the bag and said “I got this just for Valentine’s Day” and he pulled out a bottle of rum, set it on my desk and asked me if I wanted a drink. I declined and he left. I’m still not sure how I was supposed to take all of that. lol
I did a memorial service for a man who had been cremated. They asked me dig the “grave” to bury the ashes. Of course I did it. When else would I get a chance like that!
My father was pastor of a small church in Ohio in the late 50’s. The song leader had just finished leading the song service and had sat down with his wife. He asked her for a piece of gum. She found only one piece in her purse. They were in the middle of dividing the gum when my dad had got wound up and to make a point, he hit the podium with his hand and said “shall we stand” then paused for a moment before continuing. The song leader and his wife was so startled, they stood up thinking the end of the service was close. After realizing they were the only ones standing, they meekly sat back down. Everyone laughed except my dad – he didn’t lose a beat and continued with his sermon.
Once asked by a widow to keep the teenagers from shooting off fireworks in the church yard on New Year’s Eve. Reason? Her deceased husband buried in the church cemetery “did not need all that noise.”
A grandmother in my church asked me to call her misbehaving granddaughter, and tell her that God had told me she was misbehaving and needed to stop or God was going to punish her.
I did not call the granddaughter.
I would love to do a wedding as the Impressive Clergyman from the Princess Bride. Have you seen that?
I first thought that I had no personal experience that was relevant; until I started reading the comments. I performed an outdoor wedding ceremony that included celebratory gunfire. When I said “I now pronounce you man and wife” I fired a 12-gauge into the air (at the couple’s’ request).
Some from Outback Australia:
-Got asked to have a look if the highly poisonous brown snake is still under the church building.
– “Would you mind getting rid of these drugs? The dealers would try to get their hands on it soon” – This minutes after a drug user passed away.
– Just before our Easter Services – the toilets are all blocked, would the pastor unblock it? And when I was unsuccessful, I got asked to announce that the woman’s toilets would be five houses down the road, and the men’s toilet the tree behind the church. I was a brand new pastor, so I did.
We also have a funeral home director in our church. He once asked me to come help him lift an extremely overweight individual with a wench and shove him into a too small casket. I thought he was kidding so I stopped by. He wasn’t kidding.
He would have fit better without the wench. I think he mean winch.
I was asked to film a congregant’s Lasik Surgery so they could show it to others.
Someone came to me this week between services and asked if I could help distribute eggs. Her chickens had been very productive and she needed help finding people to give eggs to and help delivering the eggs. Some of the eggs were more than 7 weeks old, but they keep for a long time.
They don’t teach you this stuff in seminary.
Let’s reverse this. I got a call from my pastor who proceeded to tell me he had a dead deer in his back yard. It had been struck by a car and ended up in his yard. I was at work at the moment when he called, after a few seconds I realized he didn’t know what to do with it. I offered to come over after work and haul it off. The sigh of relief in his voice was obvious.
I came over and dragged it out of the back yard to my truck. Needless to say it made a mess in the driveway. I had to take a hose and rinse the driveway off. Later, the sinful fleshly part of me wanted to bring over some other deer I had in my freezer and tell him this was what I had salvaged and offer it to him but I didn’t. The spiritual side of me won out. Later he asked me where I dumped it and I explained I went to a very rural back road and dumped it out on the side of the road. The look on his face was priceless.