Church Services, Preachers

Attendence Books

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attendancebook

Memo
To: All Sunday School Leaders
From: Horace J. Studebacher, Sunday School Superintendent.

Dear Teachers,

Please take extra care when filling out your Sunday School attendance books for the coming months. The pastor has informed me that his review of the attendance record has turned up several discrepancies which he thankfully caught before sending the monthly numbers in to the Sword of the Lord. We need to do better. Let all things be done decently and in order, amen?

To that end, here are a few guidelines for keeping your attendance record books accurate.

– Sunday School attendance is defined as people who actually have visited your Sunday School class this week. “They were here in spirit” is not the equivalent of attendance nor is their spouse taking them home the handout enough to count them as present.

– If you are prone to filling out your attendance books on Saturday night, please do so in pencil so they can be corrected. Let’s make it as easy as possible for our pastor to spot those who are falling behind in their Sunday School visits.

– Pregnant Sunday School attendees do not count twice unless they actually give birth in your classroom on a Sunday between 9:30 and 10:15 a.m.

– While Pack the Pew week has always been a time of friendly competition between Sunday School classes for the annual Top Fishers of Men award, it is not appropriate to “trash talk” the leaders of other classes in church the parking lot. In addition the use of door prizes, and other promotional stunts such as swallowing goldfish is discouraged unless you are working in the bus ministry.

Hopefully these reminders will serve to get us back on the path to good honest record keeping. It is important to conduct ourselves in a Christlike manner as we all focus our efforts on getting our Sunday School numbers to new record-breaking levels.

education, Outreach, Standards

Occassionally Chuckling At Themselves

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bus2

My hat is off to the good folks at Maranatha Baptist Bible College who evidently have the gift of being able to poke a little fun at themselves.

Check out their listing for a Masters In Bus Ministry with courses like:

BM 103: The Bus Ministry and Homeland Security
BM 210: Corn Crossbreeding and Home Ethanol Distillation
BM 302: Negotiation Skills and Pre-Adolescent Biting
BM 305: Petroleum Industry Futures Trading
BM 306: Long Bus Routes and The Exodus: Reformed Theology Examined
BM 409: Assigned Seats?: Calvinistic Thought and the Bus Ministry

(thanks to melissa for the link)

Church Services, Standards

Unspoken Prayer Requests

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prayerUnspoken prayer requests are a staple of any fundamentalist prayer meeting. Far from being a simple acknowledgment of an private and personal need, “unspokens” have a variety of classifications.

The All Inclusive This is the most common form of the unspoken request. This call for a show of hands often comes at the end of time for spoken prayer requests, but can also come at any time before someone prays. (Bro. Dwight will now bless the food, are there any unspoken prayer requests out there?) If a person can’t think of a specific unspoken request it’s best just to raise a hand anyway in case they think of one later that they needed covered. This call for unspoken requests may also be accompanied by calls for responses from anyone who has unsaved loved ones, knows someone sick, is wearing a red sweater, etc.

The Guessing Game These are unsolicited unspoken requests given in midst of a call for prayer requests. They are often stated in the form of “I have a very special and important unspoken request.” The game for the audience is to try to guess what the person’s unspoken request might be by counting the number of adjectives used to describe it. Bonus points are awarded to the person with the most creative answer in the after-church unspoken request phone chain.

The Spoken Unspoken There are also the quasi-unspoken requests which go something like “I have an unspoken request that I really can’t talk about that involves my sister. I can’t say a lot but her marriage is having some trouble…and without giving a lot of details there’s also a Bolivan chef named Roberto involved and his three adopted kids and their second grade teacher.” The air is filled with the sound of pencils scribbling furiously on prayer request sheets around the room. Who knew that the unspoken could say so much?

(thanks to mark for the unspoken suggestion)

Church Business

Business Meetings

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churchsignEvery few weeks, the congregations of most fundamentalists churches range themselves in dread array and enter the fiercest kind of battle: the church business meeting. One wonders if these events are what Paul had in mind when he called Christians to fight the good fight…

Summary of the minutes from the monthly business meeting of the Faithful Hearers and Doers Baptist Church.

Pastor Hiembaugh opened with prayer for wisdom, strength, and to the grace to avoid “what happened last time.”

Old Business:

– The committee charged with reducing the electrical costs in the church building reported that they been standing outside the bathrooms after services and reminding people to turn out the lights as they leave. Mr. Tom Brown objected that this might create the wrong impression with visitors but was quickly shouted down by Deacon Holstein who opined that anyone who couldn’t follow a few simple posted rules weren’t the kind of people we wanted around this church anyway. After another thirty minutes of discussion, the matter was tabled until next month.

– The committee who has been working on finding new music for the choir reports that they have managed to photocopy enough sheets for the Easter cantata. Questions from several members about copyright infringement were answered by the pastor with a quotation about ‘eating shewbread.’ This business is tabled as well.

New Business

– The nominations for church officers are read into the record. They are voted in unanimously without discussion making this the twenty-seventh straight year without changes to the officers.

– The new budget is brought to the table and Mrs. Brewbaker brings up that the assistant pastor has not had a raise in five years and Deacon Holstein reminds her that he also hasn’t increased his office hours in ten years either and has missed ten days of work this year due to being deathly ill and by gum that any employee of his would be lucky to have a job at all much less a raise. Mrs. Brewbaker decides to withdraw the matter. The budget is passed unanimously without further discussion.

Pastor Hiembaugh closed in prayer and thanked God for the opportunity to meet together and do His work. What of God’s work got done in tonight’s meeting was unspecified.

(I would thank stan for the reminder about the joys of church business meetings if they weren’t so painful that thinking about them makes me want to tear out my own eyeballs.)

A silly blog dedicated to Independent Fundamental Baptists, their standards, their beliefs, and their craziness.