Help… someone moved the church around!
- jbharper21q
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
We are all creatures of habit. That’s why we drive the same way to work each day even though Steve in the office is adamant that our route is slower than his by at least 7 minutes. It is why we have jacket potatoes for tea (dinner) every Wednesday despite the fact we don’t actually like them, but we have always done so, ever since we were 6 and our mother would bake them after work whilst endeavouring to tidy the increasingly chaotic house. It is also why we sit in the same seats, on the same row, at the same time each Sunday morning. That is of course assuming that the seats are there. Once in a while something goes wrong, disaster strikes and you have to face the very real possibility of change.
I am sure this has happened to all of us at some point in our church attending life. If on the other hand you have never attended church, well firstly give it a go and secondly, imagine the same scenario but for your favourite seat at the cinema, or in the canteen at work or even worse, your own lounge.
The leader, preacher, teacher, pastor, elder, bishop, pope or in other words whoever is in charge, has decided to swap things round. Yes, that is correct, they have taken leave of their senses and instead of the pew like rows, which have graced the church ever since the large wooden seats were removed over a decade ago, you arrive to find tables and chairs. Yes, you heard me correctly, tables and chairs! It is as if your local church has become a bingo hall overnight, or at least it is how I imagine a bingo hall to look, I’ve never actually been in one. What has happened? Why has it happened? OK so when you took the pews out more than a decade ago, you all agreed it would give you greater scope to move things around, so that you wouldn’t have to sit in rigidly defined rows, but you didn’t mean it. The real reason the pews went was because a) they didn’t go with the trendy modern decor, which is now starting to look dated if truth be told and b) chairs are a lot more comfortable, and I mean a lot. The rest of it was just a ruse, a clever excuse to bring the ‘radicals’ on board, it was never meant to happen.
Ten and a half years on and suddenly the church has abandoned years, decades, even centuries of order, for what? For tables and chairs! This isn’t a WI coffee morning – though if it was the cakes would probably be better. Of course this happened once before, after the pastor had come back from a 6 month long sabbatical. On that occasion, the chairs had gone completely and old Mrs Whisletop, not having the best eyesight and being pretty immobile, had sat herself where she assumed a seat would be. Given that a seat had been there since before she was born, over 8 decades earlier, it was a pretty understandable assumption. Unfortunately, there was no chair so she hit the floor with some force and had to be wheeled out the doors, onto the waiting ambulance and spent the next 4 weeks in hospital. It has never been tried again… until today.
It’s not that your chair is special, but you carefully chose it so that you have a good view of the screen should the preacher abandon their 40 minute talk and decide to show a movie, whilst also being close to the coffee and biscuits. Not today however… today you find yourself shuffling forward with the other confused members of the church. Even the steward is looking hesitant, so much so that they forgot to offer you a Bible as you walked in. This is mainly due to the amount of abuse they are currently receiving, as if they single handedly caused the chaos.
“What in the name of all that is Holy, is going on here?”
“Why have YOU done this abomination?”
“I’ll have 3 bingo cards please and a diet coke to go with them.”
The Steward attempts to ignore these unanswerable questions whilst welcoming a new couple into church. As for you, well it turns out you will need a plan, a different plan, but what should this cunning plan be? You have four clear options.
Option A
Stand your ground, literally. Find the place where your seat is usually positioned and stand there for the whole service. This will clearly express your frustration in a peaceful and non-confrontational way. You may look a little out of place during the prayers and your feet will get sore if the talk is too long but you’ll fit in well during the worship. Added to that, you might find you start a revolution, your simple act of brave defiance may lead others to join you in your silent vigil. All good revolutions start with a simple brave voice of calm. This could be you.
Option B
Offer to do a different job in the service, one that would come with its own seat and therefore negate the need to find a place on a table. You could offer to make and serve the coffee, though I must add a word of warning, you will probably find a number of people simply ask for their usual, without giving any clues as to what this might be. They have attended church for 48 years, surely everyone knows how they like their coffee by now? Don’t they?
Alternatively you could try and wrangle your way onto the sound desk, or to work the laptop, though you may need to have had several days worth of intense training before they will let you be within a metre radius of this equipment.
Your final option might be to find a tringle and offer to join the music ground, to share your talent at playing percussion. Afterall when you were 7 you played the wood block in the school band with great aplomb.
Option C
Give in, accept your fate and find a table. This is fraught with angst and potential pitfalls. You may feel like Indianna Jones as you navigate around chair legs, bags and the odd stray mobility scooter. The key is to find a table with some confident speakers on, then when the inevitable ‘turn and talk to the person next to you’ occurs, you can let them take the lead.
If you do acquiesce you can always spend the service using the notices sheet to map out exactly how the church should be set up, with a set of full-scale blueprints and your regular seat marked in bold, then leave it lying around for the leader to find.
Option D
The final and boldest option is to follow the example of Jesus. After all isn’t that exactly what the pastor tells you every week. Last week you were meant to give up all your wealth to follow him, the week before it was about taking up your own cross. To the extent that the pastor had brought in a number of large heavy wooden crosses made from tree branches that had ‘fallen down’ in their garden. They made you parade it round the building, you still have the bruises to prove it. Surely therefore, they won’t be able to complain if you do what Jesus did and… turn the tables. You probably wouldn’t need to do all of them, like in the temple, a few tables over and no doubt the pastor will get the idea.
Conclusion
Whichever option you choose you may also decide to pray that by next week the pastor has had a change of mind, that or they are taken ill with a mild cold and in their absence you can go back to what you have always done, sitting in the same place, at the same time, with the same view and nodding off at the same point in the same talk.
