Here is a "top ten" list... The Top Ten Ways a Pastor Can Tell if His Church Is Unhappy With Him. We will start with number 10 and work down, because that is the way top ten lists have always worked, at least since some time after the Ten Commandments, anyway. Don't look at me, I didn't make this rule.
Without further ado (or further adon't), here is my list. I will not comment on how many of these have ever happened to me personally (but I had to get my ideas from somewhere, right?)!
10. The only time anybody says "Amen" is when the pastor leaves the room.
9. At the last deacons meeting, a motion was raised to decorate both the pulpit and the platform with an abundance of large, spiny cactus plants.
8. The motion was seconded, and would have carried, if the Treasurer hadn't first reported on the actual cost of decorative cacti.
7. A sneaky church member keeps leaving the local newspaper's Help Wanted section in the pastor's office mailbox.
6. There are usually several janitorial positions circled in red ink. And over-the-road trucker jobs. And lots of third-shift and weekend jobs. And offshore oil rigger jobs. And one time, a recruiting poster for the Foreign Legion.
5. Someone hides a tape player in the pastor's office that randomly plays the "Get Out!" scary voice from a haunted house movie.
4. After the tape player breaks, the ushers take turns hiding outside the pastor's window to make the scary voice.
3. The ushers' schedule for outside-the-window duty is posted next to the nursery schedule and in the bulletin announcements.
2. At the church pot-luck dinner, the only food items brought in are all things the pastor is well known to be deathly allergic to.
1. This includes what his own wife brings!
Hey Pastors, I hope that none of this never happens to you!
--Victor Mowery
