James Calvin Schaap

Children's services can bring out the worst in people…and the best in God When the Rev. Allen Spender left church that night and took a country road out of town, he was thinking that while not every church had a steeple anymore, every congregation had a bozo.

Last Saturday night, when his wife, Maureen asked the Lord for sunshine during the youth retreat, Paul Berg was uncomfortable. He was pretty sure the Lord didn't want to be hassled with your and my little hangnails. He didn't say a word about it, but neither did he sit and sip his coffee as he usually did once the kids got up and the dust settled. Instead, the minute the amen passed Maureen's lip Paul started clearing the table.

Not even the Bible's best could win congregational support. When Pastor Rog left Springvale Church, there was no weeping or gnashing of teeth. Not that he and the members of Springvale didn't get along. Pastor Rog was easy to like—and he followed the rules. He wore the right clothes and sent his kids to the right school. He frequently attended local society functions—often enough anyway to keep up a presence for the church in the city. And his wife had a respectable part-time job at a local nursing home.

By special request, Tyrone Mitchell, seven years old and a member of the Brookside Assembly of God in town, visited First Church last Sunday to bring them a ministry in music. Just like the pros, he took along his own hand-held microphone—one of those big ones with the round, red ball on the end. He took along his own cassette player too—a tiny unit that miraculously held a six-piece country-western band. And when he stood up in front, he put on a Norman Rockwell smile beneath his bush of dark black hair and bright happy eyes.

Once upon a time in a land not so far away, a church named Rivervale met to conduct worship every Sunday in a very nice sanctuary. Always their service followed a pleasant style, tastefully created by a liturgically sensitive Committee on Music and Worship. Rivervale members were of one mind in claiming that at their church everything was done in the best possible order. When the event I am about to relate took place, both Rivervale pastors were absent.

Fratting, IL (AP) Officials of Fratting's First Covenant Church are assessing the damage today after a midnight bombing ravaged the massive fellowship hall of Covenant's five-year-old church building. Left undamaged by the powerful blast were the sanctuary itself, located directly west of the fellowship hall, and the education wing, located in the basement.

Whenever he went out, Rev. Meersinkwore a beret-that was the problem.Oh, it wasn't the beret really, Marlenethought. The beret was merely asymbol of Meersink's inability to outgrowthe sixties: he always had to be different.When it came to music, for example, Meersink wasn't content with the books in the pews. He kept running off new hymns and handing them out with the bulletin, giving the impression that he'd spent hours treasure-hunting through a hundred flashy books from Texas, looking for some new ditty that would bring on a revival single-handedly.

Every Sunday morning of Wilbur Faber's youth, his parents took him and his sisters to church three-quarters of an hour—to the minute—before the janitor rang the bell at five minutes of.

“So, on a scale of one to five, what's my Sunday dinner rate, Mr. Eminent Critic?” Sandy said, leaning back in her chair. “Three-and-a-half stars. Maybe an anemic four,” Pete said, one eyebrow cocked, while spreading what Sandy considered too much margarine on the last piece of coffee cake.