On Sunday night, we went to an international service at our church. There was a childcare mixup and the childcare workers mistakenly thought that N was supposed to go to the service with us. The best thing was to just take him with us to the service and sort it out later. So, off to big church for his first time. No crayons or activity book, but more importantly, no preparation talk ahead of time. If we had planned ahead we would have practiced our whisper voice all week, talked about what would happen, explained the different parts of the service, etc. Nope. He got a couple minute, not well thought out, run down and in we went!
The first thing that made me laugh was when a very passionate guest got up for the opening prayer. I mean, this was a prayer with gusto. N leaned over in his not yet perfected whisper voice and asked, “Was that an angry prayer?”
When it was time for the offertory, the whisper voice was completely gone. “They’re taking everyone’s money now??!!??”
The guest preacher had more gusto than the guy who led the opening prayer. Now N was even more curious. “Is he a bad guy? He’s being pretty mean.” No honey, that’s just passionate Baptist preaching at its finest.
He tried to imitate the preacher’s hand gestures for a while but it didn’t last long. They were too complicated. There was the point up and then point down move, the point to you and then to me, the vertical hand slice, the bible tap, the power punch, the finger shake, the arms open wide, and the heart touch. N gave up after the point to you and me move. The speed and precision of these moves take years of practice to perfect.
Time for the closing prayer. More gusto. N leans over, pretty good whisper by now, “He’s definitely not praying for us.” a little later, mortified, “Mom, he just said BLOOD.” what COULD he be talking about??
Then, of course, the invitation. There’s a call for a hand raise and N’s is the first hand to shoot up. He likes this interactive stuff. We stuff his hand back down just in time for the second call for a raise of hands. Up again.
Well, we had a debrief afterwards and tried to straighten out the questions in his little mind. I’m glad he got to go. It was worth the laughs!
Tags: Big Church, Laugh
February 16, 2010 at 11:17 am |
Thanks for sharing this! I’m glad it ended up being entertaining! I spoke with the childcare coordinator this morning and explained that N should have been allowed to stay. There shouldn’t be a problem in the future. Sorry for the mix up!