Summer shower

YOU SHOWER upon us typos and bits of trivia from church bulletins, and we must share the blessing. Like the blessing that was announced at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Helena, Arkansas, which must be offering bovine healing. Its worship folder tells us that Bishop McDonald was inviting couples to the cathedral "to renew their cows during Mass." Bethel Mennonite Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, announced a seminar on "Christmas and elf-Esteem."

That dwarfs anything going on in the Crystal Cathedral.

Then there's this announcement from a Sarasota, Florida, newspaper: "First Non-Judgmental Church of Sarasota will worship . . ." As soon as there's a Second Non-Judgemental Church we'll see whether the competition will lead to envy, and then we'll see which congregation casts the first stone.

The Toronto Star reports the death of a "cherished member of Scarborough Gossip Temple." There was whispering among the pallbearers.

The minutes of a meeting at a United Church of Christ congregation in Bartlet, Illinois, said that it discussed "the formation of the Execution Committee, and whether such a committee was needed." They didn't waste time discussing such things in the French Revolution.

Churchpeople were invited to hold meetings at Adam's Mark, a hotel in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The flier bragged that the facilities "two eloquently decorated ballrooms." And that's not mere rhetoric.

It may have been a secular picnic in Buena Vista, Colorado, but the newspaper assures us it was clerically blessed. After the "10 A.M. toilet seat race," it said, "a local minister will do the `blessing of the burros.'" At 1:15 an "outhouse race" was scheduled, which would be "followed by another public hanging." A capital idea, to punish those who dreamed this all up.

First Christian Church, location unknown, announced an event that might not only collect food for the hungry but also boost attendance: it was going to collect "porn n beans."

Atonement Lutheran Church in Rapid City, South Dakota, offered food certificates in a fund-raising campaign. The newsletter explained that "at the desecration of each store, you may or may not be given cash change when redeeming certificates." If they messed up my store, it would be "not."

Hacker Art Books advertises Robert Katz's book Naked by the Window, the story of the sculptor who was acquitted of "punishing his beautiful artist wife out of a 34-storey window." She had probably made a typographical error.

An audiotape about the late great theological Helmut Thielicke advertises that he was a "pariah priest at Ravensburg."

At Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary people must have been interested in Peter's night on the Sea of Galilee. The seminary offered the lecture "Learning to Sink Theologically."

Turned off? Smithfield Baptist Church in the Maine in a bulletin asked worshipers to "remember in prayer the many who are sick of our church and community." Take roll.

A subscriber spotted this twist in Biblical Preaching Journal: "It was the faithlessness of the people, who even threatened to atone Moses, that caused him to appeal to the Lord for relief." Probably by knocking the rock with the staff.

COPYRIGHT 1997 The Christian Century Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning