Pastors who have been leading worship for awhile (and some who haven't) often have really great stories to tell about events that happen while leading a congregation. Children who perch inside of pulpits, women who interrupt a sermon for an announcement, various outbursts, quick-thinking ushers, seething parishioners. OK, maybe some of these stories aren't all that "great" but often they make for good conversation, even if we must be well-removed from a current situation.
Until yesterday I had few of these stories to share. There were a couple of cute-kid in the children's sermon stories that I could pull out if I needed, but for the most part my interesting worship experience was limited to second-hand knowledge, or things that had happened while I was sitting in the pew rather than presiding at the table.
I bowed my head to soak in the prayers at noon and we weren't halfway through (I knew, because I'd written them, even though I wasn't speaking them) when I heard a twitter arise from the other congregants. I was a little irritated. I mean, it's Ash Wednesday afterall, a little respect? But when I turned to greet people with the peace, I myself became a bit flustered. Flying around the sanctuary was what I first thought to be a bird. I was somehow ok with that. But when someone called out that it was not a bird, but a bat, I became all a-twitter.
I consider it a gift of grace from God that I was still able to preside with some level of decorum, considering that there was a bat swooping about the sanctuary.
4 comments:
I woulda been OUTTA there.
I quite like bats myself, but not when they swoop in your face. We have a bat problem twice a year or so, at the current church. One evening, I had no actual role in the worship service, so I was on Bat Watch. There was a small friend sleeping on the highest rafter and my job was to stand in the back of the sanctuary with an "inconspicuous" fishing net! Watching it like a hawk...
Oh, ick, I hate bats. I had a bat encounter followed by rabies shots less than two years ago . . . so I hope that if anyone shot out the back door in terror, you didn't take it personally.
Good blog, by the way!
Maybe the bat wanted to ponder its mortality.
There must be something going around because we had a bat in our church last week. It somehow got into the Interim pastor's office and enter into her computer tower. It got ate up in the cooling fan. So glad I wasn't there- and that it wasn't in MY office!
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