BlogRodent: Pentecostal Rumination & Review

And just what as the Reverend Billy H. Burris thinking on that day?

Sign spotted at Praise Assembly of God in Springfield, Missouri.

HT: DocLarry at Lost Chord

[tags]BlogRodent, church, praise-assembly, assembly-of-god, assemblies-of-god, church-sign, funny, humerous, marijuana, pot, reefer, stoner, drugs[/tags]

Remember the "pitch his tents" sermon by Blake Bergstrom? No, tell me you haven't forgotten about the youth pastor who insisted that Lot pinched his bosom ... several times--and then nearly passed out from embarassment. Well, then refresh your memory over at "When sermons go awry", first, because the followup here is priceless.

Blake still has a job, fortunately, but his employers aren't above never letting him live it down. Recently, the film crew of Prank 3:16 showed up with several hidden cameras and wired the church offices for sound.

Okay, okay, okay. I know. This is a day of tragedy and mourning for my lost and beloved RodentMobile. But blame it on Travis Johnson. He posted a link to the “Concerned pastor” voicemail Trent Fuller released on the GraceHead blog, and I badly needed the humor. Perhaps you do, too.

I’m a white guy (well, not really, I’m Hispanic—maybe [long story]—but I think I’m white) so, naturally, I don’t move much when I sing. And when I catch myself moving, I nervously stop, shove my hands in my pockets, and look around with a sheepish grin. The Bride of Rat, though, she loves to move when she sings. She spent a year in Brazil as an exchange student and learned to enjoy dancing over there; consequently, she gets a little rhythm goin’ on during worship now and then.

Nothing wrong with

First, I blogged about Blake Bergstrom and his hilarious attempt to have Lot say “pitch his tents.” Then we had John Ortberg entreating: “Let everything that has breasts, praise the Lord,” along with William Willimon’s story of an evangelist unintentionally preaching the shorts off a church-skipper.

As I shared Blake Bergstrom’s “pitch his tents” experience with coworkers at Christianity Today (especially Preaching Today, where they got a big vicarious and empathetic kick out of it) I jokingly bemoaned the lack of well-known and well-salted preachers who had the grace to let their verbal gaffes get out there in wider distribution. “Wouldn’t it be great,” I fancied, “If we could collect a range of gaffes and Freudian slips like this from preachers we all know and love? I would buy that CD faster than Lot could pitch his tents!”

Well, we’re no closer to that pipe-dream today, but I did stumble across a verbal slips you might like.

The first made by one of America’s foremost preachers, John Ortberg (teaching pastor at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church). And he personally recounts the tale in his book

Okay, I wasn’t going to post merely frivolous stuff here, but this is far too precious to pass up.

You who preach … well. If you gotta slip up, go big.

Here’s a clip below of poor high school pastor Blake Bergstrom, who tried to work his way around a bit of a tongue twister as he introduced a sermon that might have already been doomed, based on his unusual use of metaphors. As you listen, just wait. No: the “light ourselves on fire so they can watch us burn” is not the gaffe you are listening for, surprisingly, but that imagery is bad enough that he might actually have improved his sermon with an extreme Freudian slip!

Here’s the audio:

[audio:http://tatumweb.com/blog/wp-content/mp3/blake-bergstrom-mistake.mp3]

(Here's the link if the flash player doesn't load.)

And Bergstrom has been good enough to actually release the video, which Kevin Rossen