When The Pastor is Away

What does a congregation do on Sunday morning when the preacher doesn’t show up? The church I attend suggested an answer to that question recently.

Our pastor was on a mission trip out of the country, and our young youth leader (who is a senior in college) was scheduled to deliver the sermon in his absence. He called to announce that he had overslept, had just gotten up, and would miss the early service.

So there we were. No preacher. A retired minister and several official lay speakers were in attendance at the early service, but nobody was prepared to give an impromptu sermon.

What did we do? In the language of Christianity, the Holy Spirit visited us and urged several of us to go to the microphone and say things. We drew closer together as a church family. We learned about each other. By the time the organist got to the postlude, we all felt the thing had been worthwhile and were glad we had been there.

Yet, it was nothing you would call exciting. It was just regular ordinary people talking about daily living. A farmer told a story that led him to some observations about how we do, or don’t, give. A grandmother told us of her daughter in another state, surrounded by megachurches that did not appeal to her, and how a small congregation began to grow in her own town, and how it is prospering. One of the ushers gave a brief testimony of how his life had been changed when he accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior. And there were two stories about the answering of prayer. A young mother told a story of a friend praying for tomato soup and getting it under interesting circumstances (when she thought it was going to be a soup she didn’t like, instead); the story has added the expression “tomato soup prayer” to my vocabulary. And an aging data entry specialist (me) told her story of the time she had to drive home from work, a trip of over 50 miles, feeling ill, asking for help in getting home safely—and receiving it.

And there you have it. We had an excuse to just cut the service short and leave (unless we wanted to stay for Sunday school or the later service). That energy or force we call the Holy Spirit had other ways of handling the situation. (I personally think that when the Creator, the Source of All Things, makes his presence felt…that is what we call the Holy Spirit. I am not a Trinitarian—to me, the doctrine of the Trinity does not describe God but the various ways we experience God [or perhaps think we do].)

Be that as it may, the Creator is always ready to take an opportunity to help us grow, and that Sunday morning was a good example of how that works. It was good to have no sermon. I like good sermons, but there are other ways to learn also. We were blessed in other ways, instead. I was glad I was there.