Smoking or non-smoking?

By pastorscott

Here’s a West Texas story from around 20 years ago.

A family was traveling out toward the Texas panhandle and dropped in on a Sunday night Nazarene service. The church had no a/c, and with the temps hovering around 100 dry degrees, the evap coolers (otherwise known as “swamp boxes”) were the only hope of even pretending to be comfortable. The visitors arrived a few minutes late and were amused to see around 20 people sitting on the left and only two older ladies sitting on the right side of the sanctuary. The family moved to the side with ample seating and settled in for the service.

In a few minutes they were melting from the heat and realized that the swamp box on their side of the sanctuary wasn’t running. Now they knew why everyone was sitting on the left side of the sanctuary! After the service they visited with the pastor and he apologized for the uncomfortably warm conditions and the visitor said, “What is wrong with the evap cooler on the right side of the sanctuary?”

The answer: “Oh nothing is wrong, but those two dear saints always complain that they get too cold, so we don’t turn it on on that side of the building.” He added, “the church folks call the left side of the sanctuary the ‘heaven side’ and you can guess what they call the side you occupied!”

At the Pearly Gates

By pastorscott

On this day there happens to be a backlog at the Pearly Gates. Nothing major, but there’s a line of several hundred people waiting to be processed in.

Once in awhile, there’s a great cheer from those who are close to the front of the line. The folks in the back are not only anxious for their turn to be admitted into heaven, but they are also curious as to what the cheering is about.

The line moves forward and there’s more cheering. “What are they cheering about?” those farther back ask.

Now, they’ve moved forward and there’s a great cheer by those just in front of them. Someone asks the one in front of them, “Did you hear why they’re cheering?”

“Yes,” she says, “Saint Peter says that Sunday nights don’t count.”

“Yeaaaaaa!” the group cheers.

Using Ubuntu at Church

By pastorscott

Here’s a tidbit that will warm the cockles of every computer geek’s heart!

At our church we have 1 computer that runs our Song Show Plus. It handles announcements, words to songs, and all projection duties.

Yesterday we replaced the CD player and tape deck with a second computer. We had a 5 year old computer that lacked an operating system. I installed Ubuntu Linux on it and that’s the computer we used.

The computer will play a cut off of a CD okay, but the main use is that we will rip to mp3 all music we use. Over time we will build a library of mp3’s and the Ubuntu computer will be the mirror for the Song Show Plus computer — that is, the Windows box will do the video part of the service and the Ubuntu box will do the audio.

Here’s the kicker - after everything was working, I gave a quick training session to a couple of people who use the system each week. After walking one person through the ripping in-playing process (which she understood immediately) I said to her, “How do you like Linux?”

She answered, “what do you mean?”

I said, “that’s not a Windows computer, its Ubuntu Linux.”

She looked confused and said, “What’s the difference?”

I think that exchange says a lot about how the ease of operation of that operating system.

As I told one fellow, one big difference is that Ubuntu is FREE!

Who is the Church? #2

By pastorscott

After doing my post on “who is the church” I came across: this article from Keith Drury. I remember reading it but didn’t realize how much it had influenced my thinking. It is one of those deals where I started off saying, “Keith Drury wrote….” then in a month or two said, “I read somewhere” to, after a year or so, “I’ve been thinking.” So, to give credit where credit is due, I thought I had better post the link here!