I need to apologize to every parent I sat next to in church when I was in college. I unfortunately didn’t go that often in college, so the list is short, but I still need to make amends. Why?

I ran into the college version of me a few weeks ago at church.

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I want to be honest with you.

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On January 6th, we came together as a community. (Though I am apprehensive of overusing that word, in this case it applies.) We pulled together, as friends and family members spread across the country. We, much like the oft mentioned Newsies, opened the gates and seized the day. What do we rally against? What force of evil did we thwart?

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Good seat, good seat. I’m feeling alright about my selection today. Few rows back from the front, good entry and exit points. People in front of me look to be of average height, unlike that freakishly tall family I’ve been sitting behind lately. It’s going to be a good Sunday.

Wait, what’s this? The guy next to me has a pack of gum out. I love gum. So many flavors, so many varieties. They’re doing so many fun things with the packaging and the presentation too. You can buy it in little hip cylinders or flip open packets like 5 and it lasts longer like Stride and it even whitens you’re teeth when you’re not looking. And don’t get me started on Orbit Mint Mojito. Unlike their pomegranate flavor which disintegrates the second you put it in your mouth, that Mojito is like a taste bud log flume ride.

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(You can’t stop Curtis Honeycutt, you can only hope to contain him. When he’s not tearing it up over on Just Wallpaper he’s been known to drop a funny guest post on Stuff Christians Like. He’s back today with, Subtle Sunday Distractions. Enjoy.)

Subtle Sunday Distractions

Some Sunday mornings are no match for my wandering mind. I’m sitting there, in the back corner of the sanctuary (a few of us fondly refer to it as “sinners’ corner”), where I can see everything that is going on during the Sunday morning worship service. I feel like Simba looking out on his domain, except my domain consists of subtle distractions that keep me from focusing in church.

Everyone can spot a major distraction. There’s the classic screaming kid. The pastor’s mic doesn’t work. Randy Johnson sits in the pew in front of you so you can’t see anything except for the back of his formerly-mulleted cranial region. Those are easy.

I’m talking about those subtle worship distractions that you notice—you may just not notice that you notice them. I’ve taken the liberty to assign point values to each distraction so you can rate the severity of your problem of focusing on Sunday morning …

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Dear shelf,

I don’t even know where to start this letter, you long rectangular piece of wood attached to the wall above the urinals in the bathroom at church, you.

I saw you just last weekend after the worship service, and I thought to myself, “There you are. You’re great.” I looked at your ample shelf, a flat surface that seems to say, “Hey, got a heavy Bible? Here, let me hold that for you. Go ahead, I’ll shoulder that burden while you’re in the bathroom.”

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You probably shouldn’t have a list of “favorite pastors,” but I do, and Pete Wilson is on it.

He’s one of the pastors of Cross Point Church in Nashville and is perhaps the nicest person I have ever met. In addition, he’s also one of the funniest and recently told me a story I wanted to share with you.

One Sunday night, Pete was headed back to church to preach the 6:00 service. On his way there he stopped at Blockbuster to rent a movie. As he walked through the door, the guy behind the counter recognized him and told him how much he loved Cross Point. They chatted for a minute and then Pete walked down an aisle. Twenty feet into the store and another shopper stopped him to talk about church. Turns out that guy went to Cross Point as well. It seemed as if everyone in that Blockbuster attended Pete’s church.

After a few minutes of conversation, Pete made it to the wall of New Releases. Suddenly he felt a tap on his shoulder, and heard a woman say, “Excuse me.” Believing that this was perhaps another member of Cross Point church, Pete turned, gave the woman a warm side hug and said, “Hey, what’s going on?”

Looking a little startled, the woman, paused, raised the movie in her hand, and said, “I wanted to ask if you had seen this movie.”

She didn’t know Pete. She didn’t attend his church. She wanted a movie recommendation. What she got was a side hug.

I love that story, but I think it highlights a question we all have deep down:

What do we do when we see our pastors out in the wild?

How are we supposed to react? It’s kind of like the first time you see your second grade teacher at Applebee’s and you want to run up and ask, “Why aren’t you at school right now Miss Grondin? Isn’t that where you live? You’re going to put a rip in the fabric of time unless you get back to Cox Street Elementary School immediately.”

And since those pastors in the wild moments can be so awkward I came up with 4 things you can do when you see your pastor outside of church ….

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Whoa, full house today. Should have gotten to church earlier. I didn’t realize it was going to be so packed. And we would have been here on time if our kids weren’t employing the “Mydo” approach to all articles of clothing and demanding that I don’t help them get ready. Shirt? Mydo! And the head goes through the arm hole. Pants? Mydo! And both legs somehow get crammed into the same side of the pants. Shoes? Mydo! And they go on the wrong feet with the pinky toe poking outside of the boundary of the sandals.

But we’re here now at church and that’s all that matters. Hey, there are some seats in the middle of this row, I’ll just get the guy on the end to scoot in. I’ll just stand here next to him until he looks up and then I’ll ask him to scoot. I’m standing 6 inches away from him, he’s going to look up any second now.

I know you can see me guy. I’m not in your periphery vision right now, I am your periphery vision. I’m that close. Stop pretending I’m not here. I can’t believe this guy, he’s acting like I’m trying to cut in front of him in traffic and he’s giving me the blank stare ahead.

Maybe he won’t scoot, maybe he’s anti-scoot. I accept that, I do. He got here early, he staked out an aisle seat, he’s probably going to sprint out of here to some sort of buffet that has multiple forms of fried chicken. I can respect that. I can, but if you hate scooting, at least pay me the Christian courtesy of rotating your legs fifteen degrees so that I can walk by you to my seat.

Maybe the problem is that this guy doesn’t read Stuff Christians Like. Maybe that’s the real issue here, because if you did, kind sir, you would know the three rules of sitting at the end of the aisle …

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I don’t want to lie, if I was a pastor I would have used the balloon boy incident in my sermon yesterday. (If you missed it, a few days ago folks were gripped for hours by watching a homemade weather balloon float 7,000 feet in the air because we all thought there was a 6-year old boy named Falcon accidentally inside. Turns out he was at home in the attic the whole time and never in danger.) Given the pressure of coming up with a new sermon weekend after weekend after weekend, I would have totally ridden that kid’s helium coattails to fantastical sermon illustration awesomeness.

And I don’t think I’m the only one who sees national news events as potential sermon fodder. From the sermon success of Michael Phelps during the Olympics to recent celebrity deaths, it’s tempting to create a sermon illustration that is “ripped from the headlines.” If your pastor does, I hope they will use one of the three following techniques …

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“Hi, it’s nice to meet you, lady who is making me late to church.”

I didn’t say that a few weeks ago when my wife stopped my speed walk to the sanctuary so that I could meet one of her friends after dropping off our kids in Sunday School. That probably would have been rude to proclaim, but that was what I was thinking. Standing there watching people stream in the open doors and fill up the seats, I could feel myself getting anxious.

“We’re going to be late. We’re going to be late. Oh the agony, so close but yet so far away. Any second now they’re going to close those doors and we’ll have to sneak in along the baseboards like some sort of rat or hamster scurrying for birdseed that the Acuffs may have left in the garage without thinking that a rodent the size of a small cat would find it, eventually get stuck on a glue trap, scream so loud you could hear it in the house and then get murdered by a grandmother across the street because you were at work and couldn’t come home.” (Whoa, that just got personal.)

And although we weren’t late that day, I know it’s going to happen. We’re going to show up behind schedule and need to sneak into church at some point, so I went ahead and wrote myself a guide on the best way to come into church late. Without further ado:

7 things you need to know about sneaking into church late …

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