The Day

Today has been a little busy.

I met with the three adult children of a parishioner who died this past Monday.  They all live out of state and were trying to get up here before he died.  They didn't make it.

Today was the meeting with them and the general planning of the service, which will be held in the community room of the retirement village he lived at.  This allows all of his friends from the village to attend; and it has the added bonus that funeral "rules" are more lax than they would be if the service were to be held at the church.  Such as . . . the closing song is "Waltzing Matilda."

In meeting with the children, I also had a one-on-one with the son.  Apparently he and dad weren't on the best of terms, but he was here nonetheless.  He informed me that he was a "born again believer" and wanted to know if his dad had accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior.

Really?

I told him that I knew his dad was faithful in attendance, had been baptized and received Communion regularly.

"That's just church," he said.  "Did he make the commitment?"

And, in my best pastoral presence, I laid into him with both barrels.  In short, I informed him that there were plenty of places in Scripture where Jesus wasn't concerned with magic words and it wasn't our job to create a litmus test taking over God's job of determining who's in and who's out.

He settled down.

AND THEN . . .

I got a call from my Senior Warden. 

We went to the bank yesterday to make her a signatory on the church account because my previous S.W. has rotated off the vestry.  New signatories are needed every time old ones rotate off, and we have to make sure we've got someone to sign the checks so the bills can be paid.  Anyway . . . headed down to the bank with the appropriate paperwork and my S.W. in tow.

We got everything in order and I shot an e-mail to the two other signatories telling them to go sign the new signature card.

For reasons only the bank knows, my S.W. informed me that, when she was checking her balance this morning, the bank had deposited $14,000 into her account -- FROM THE CHURCH ACCOUNT.

Thankfully she's the honest sort and didn't immediately buy a ticket to the Antilles.