The Church Mechanic – Christians Need to Know

Jim’s Maxim

Played out in risk sensitive fields. The electric outlet not GFCI protected becomes the favorite to run extension cords out to parties on wet grass. The corporate exec who uses “password” as password.

As a pastor and insurance adjuster, this maxim to capture the Delta-V of where you are likely to experience a loss. It is a moving target. In my last church, now over 80 years old, we inspected and protected every outdoor outlet with GFCI “ground fault” protection. To my shock (forgive the pun), the lawn carnival, water slide vendors, not finding a nearby outlet, opened the nearest door and plugged extension cords into 20 amp nonprotected electrical outlets.

Using “Jim’s Maxim,” the jump-house people, who assured us that all their equipment was “GFCI protected,” admitted to me they either didn’t have GFCI or forgot to bring it. Now we had 500 youth and children on campus to enjoy the nearly inflated water slide. We had a choice – shut down the main event …. or make a Home Depot run for a solution:

Solution: a 20 amp GFCI extension cord.

-Pastor Jim

The Pastor and the Floozy

“The issue facing us is not the left versus the right but the crisis of intolerance.”-Pastor Vincent Woolsey

Tolerance … “The pastor’s wife is a bar-fly who frequents a bar. We don’t want our church money going to a floozy … ”

So, the rumors wafted about the local teetotaling Wesleyan Methodist pastor’s wife and family, friends of mine. Visiting in their home, they came clean to me. Their only beautiful son, a toddler, had serious medical problems. As they couldn’t afford healthcare on his pastor’s chicken feed salary alone, they agreed she would take a job waiting tables at night in a Phoenix restaurant that happened to serve alcohol. To this day I wonder if some of those very church members dined in that restaurant? I, too, am a floozy for Christ .

-Pastor Jim

For Flock’s Sake, Shorten Sermons!

Pope Francis, on the subject of preaching, said, “How many times have we seen people sleeping during a homily, or chatting among themselves, or outside smoking a cigarette?”

When people laughed at the image, Francis said, “It’s true, you all know it … it’s true!”

Concluding that line of reflection, Francis said, “Please be brief … no more than 10 minutes, please!”

Pope Francis said this to the fifth General Audience of 2018, attended by 8,000.

Baptist deacons responded in shock about parishioners smoking during the sermon, declaring that “the Christian thing to do is to humbly slip out, have brunch at the local diner then sneak back in before the benediction.”