It’s only a matter of time until I get caught and the other night, I almost blew it.

You see, right now my wife and I are “stealing Awanas,” the Bible club class that is kind of like VBS our kids attend once a week. Our church doesn’t offer it. It’s not their thing and I’m cool with that. But in order to have our kids involved in it we had to scout out other churches in the area and then quietly embed ourselves as if we were members. Like some sort of spiritual SWAT team we swing through the windows, grab all the ministries we need and then high tail it out of there.

And we found the perfect church down the street from us. So every Wednesday night we drop our kids off and then buy dinner in the dining hall with all the unsuspecting members of this church, but I almost messed up the whole operation.

The problem was that my wife wasn’t with me. She was at a consignment sale at another church we don’t attend. (We’re a couple of pew pillagers aren’t we?) So after Awanas was over, my daughters and I walked over to the dining hall. Everything was cool until a man walked up to our table and said, “Mind if we join you?”

“Oh snap, ” I thought to myself. “Be cool, Jon, be cool.”

“Sure, go ahead.” What do I say, what do I say to this guy? Make conversation, talk about the traffic, this is Atlanta, that is a fall back, go to topic. Instead I heard my mouth utter the worst possible phrase, “Do you attend here?”

He immediately looked at me with a quizzical expression and said, “Of course.”

Worst is over right, we’ll move on and talk about something else? Wrong. He continued.

“My daughter is in the choir.”

Uh oh.

“My mom is the one serving food right over there.”

Oh no.

“I actually work at this church and have for years.”

Yowza!

“I’m also on the security detail that tasers people who use our facility without attending this church.”

OK, he didn’t say that last one, but I was sitting with the ”President of this Church.” This guy was going to figure out we didn’t belong here. It was only a matter of time, so I did what any mature Christian parent would have done in that situation, I told my daughters to hurry up and finish their chocolate pudding and hustled us out of there like we were the Usain Bolt family. (Topical!)

What mistakes did I make? What things do you need to be aware of if your church is focused on certain things and therefore doesn’t offer some services/ministries you’d like to be part of? How do you pew pillage without blowing it like me?

Here are a few pointers …

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