Locked Church

By -


 

My great-grandparents helped to clear the land for the brush arbor that then grew into a church. As the church grew, they helped to build the church building. They were very active in the church. My great-grandmother was a youth leader and a Sunday school teacher. My great-grandfather was an ordained minister and a deacon of the church. They put many things in the church such as a fellowship hall with kitchen, a nursey, the pews, and classrooms. The one thing that no one had ever installed was a lock. The people of this church believed that the church should always be open. This was for several reasons. 

  • What if someone was caught in a rainstorm? They could use an unlocked church for shelter.
  • What if someone needed to pray? According to Jesus, the church is a house of prayer. 
  • What if someone was passing through and needed a place to rest? 
  • What if the women wanted a place to meet?
  • What if the men wanted a place to meet?
They had the church unlocked for all of these reasons and possibly a few more. This went on for many years. This church was founded in 1940. That is until about the late 1980's or early 1990's. A new preacher came in. The preacher asked for the keys to the church. The deacons explained that there were no keys because there were no locks on the doors. 

The new preacher was from the city where locks were everywhere. He insisted on locking the church because of the valuable equipment (speakers, microphones, etc.) The preacher insisted so much that he, without anyone else knowing, installed the locks. 

The next Sunday the preacher was surprised to see an angry crowed waiting for him. They complained that they had been waiting for the last hour. They complained that the church had never in all their days been locked. Some complained that breakfast was now very late, and the children were hungry. This preacher had thought he was arriving 1 hr. early. He did not realize that this group of people normally came 2hrs earlier than the service for fellowship that including breakfast and prayer. 

The dispute was settled by giving a key to every member household. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Journey

By -
When I was about 6 or 7 years old, I watched Rev. Charles Stanley on television. At that time, my family only had three channels. Many times, I would wake up on Sunday mornings and watch television while eating peanut butter sandwiches or peanut butter and crackers.  Two of the channels only had news on it. The other channel had preaching. Therefore, the preaching was more interesting to me. I have never liked watching news. One memorable Sunday, I was sitting in the recliner eating peanut butter sandwiches while listening to Rev. Charles Stanley. He must have been preaching a sermon about repentance because I remember that he gave an analogy concerning heaven and hell. I do not remember it word for word, but the main idea has stuck with me. According to the analogy, people are on a journey. They can only go two directions. One direction is hell. The other direction is heaven. When you are born, you start out facing the direction of hell because of Adam’s sin. When you get older
Read more

Car Trouble

By -
Image
Image via Wikipedia When I was about 7 years old, I lived about five miles outside of a small town with my mom. It had one post office, one gas station, an elementary school, and a small meat market. There were no sidewalks, traffic lights, or streetlights. We did not even have a police station or cell phone towers. There were several churches . In addition, a train track went beside the town. My dad was a long haul truck driver; therefore, he was always gone. Therefore, it was normally just my mom and me. Every Sunday my mom and I would go to church. In own community, all of the churches had two different services on Sunday. There was one in the morning and one at night. Most people, including us, went to both services. There is one Sunday night that I will remember for the rest of my life. However, it is not the sermon or the singing that I remember about it. I cannot even remember the songs that we sung that night, but we normally sung “Victory in Jesus”. This particula
Read more

Missing Child

By -
Image
It started out as a normal afternoon for Jennifer. As usual, she had walked over to a neighboring apartment to tutor a boy in reading. After the lesson was over, Gab had asked to play with her son Levi. Therefore, Gab, Alex, and Levi went outside to play. Gab and Alex’s grandfather sat outside to watch them because their mother was busy. Jennifer stood and watched all three boys, but mostly her son, Levi. Levi is big for his age; however, he is only 2 years old. Jennifer saw a car pull into a parking place. She noticed that 2 or 3 children got out of the car. Then she went back to watching the three boys. After a few minutes, it was time for Jennifer to walk back and start cooking supper. Alex and Gab were sad. Alex started following Jennifer and Levi on his scooter. Another boy was outside riding his scooter also. Let’s call him Joe. Joe started trying to play with Alex. Alex’s brother followed after him. Their grandfather followed both of the boys. Joe and Alex decided to ra
Read more