In the town of Normal, Pennsylvania, there’s a little church at the corner of Wilson and Elm. One Sunday every year is designated Laity Sunday when the members of the congregation run the worship service. The clergy do not get the day off, however. Traditionally they make luncheon for the congregation as a gesture of gratitude.
This year, Del Winslow was in charge of Laity Sunday. Del had a personal agenda for the day. He wanted to have a tight, efficient service that ended in exactly one hour. Senior Pastor Henry O’Donnell’s services typically ran long by ten or fifteen minutes. Associate Pastor Michelle Tellum was only slightly better. Such overages annoyed Del greatly. In fact, he would have gotten up and walked out at the hour mark if he wasn’t a member of the choir. So Del wanted to demonstrate to pastors O’Donnell and Tellum how a properly run worship service should go.
Del convened a meeting of Laity Sunday volunteers two weeks in advance for the purposes of assigning parts of the service. Thad Wheeling was assigned the welcome and benediction. Church secretary Tammy Billings agreed to do the invocation and call to worship.
The trouble started when Del asked for volunteers for the pastoral prayer. Missy Moore, an enthusiastic, heavyset woman had been sitting quietly in back, but now her hand shot into the air. Del was not a fan of the way Missy tended to babble on endlessly in conversation. He dreaded what might happen if he gave her free reign at the microphone.
Del turned to his thirty-year-old daughter, Carrie. “Carrie, why don’t you do the prayer?”
Carrie seemed startled. “I don’t know,” she said. “Do I have to make it up myself?”
“Well, yeah,” Del replied.
“I was hoping I could just read the scripture or something,” Carrie said.
“Come on, I know you’ll do great.”
“Okay,” Carrie muttered, not nearly so sure. In the back, Missy put her hand back in her lap with a frown. She had really wanted to do the prayer because she felt moved to express her gratitude for her church family and thought a group prayer would be the perfect opportunity.
The choir did the hymns and anthem as normal on Laity Sunday, but Del needed someone for special music. Pastor Michelle’s boyfriend Ian Wells got that assignment. Michelle wanted Ian to participate but Ian wasn’t fond of public speaking. However he did play guitar in a jazz ensemble so special music was right up his alley.
Tammy’s husband Ralph volunteered to read the announcements. Missy again raised her hand to do the Offertory figuring she could use the Prayer of Dedication to express her gratitude, but Del assigned those jobs to Jill Boyer. Next Del called for a volunteer to read scripture. “Missy, how about you?” he asked.
Missy was startled. She hadn’t raised her hand this time. “What else is left?” she asked.
“Just the sermon,” Del said, “and I’m doing that.”
“Fine,” Missy grumbled.
Meanwhile, Pastor Michelle was also out to prove something. It always annoyed her that food at church events tended toward the cheap and unsophisticated. She fancied herself a bit of a foodie and wanted to demonstrate a more gourmet approach. Of course she also had to feed a hundred people without much help, so she needed to keep things simple. She settled on a spicy seared scallop salad.
Pastor O’Donnell was a little skeptical when she told him, but didn’t want to crush her enthusiasm. He was planning to make bagel pizzas for his contribution. Michelle smiled indulgently. They would probably make the kids happy, she figured.
Michelle wanted to get the scallops as fresh as she could so she arranged to buy them on the way to the church the morning of the service. However when she arrived the seafood store did not have as many fresh scallops as she wanted. Michelle began to panic. Fortunately Ian was with her to calm her down. He suggested they swing by the grocery store to pick up some frozen scallops. Michelle was disappointed by the compromise but didn’t see any other option.
The only downside was that Ian would miss the walk-through Del had scheduled prior to the service. It didn’t seem like a big deal to Ian, but at the church Del was annoyed. To make matters worse, Ralph had caught a bad cold a couple days before and coughed constantly through the rehearsal.
Del was just about to cut special music out of the program entirely when Ian and Michelle arrived. Michelle went to the kitchen to begin preparing her salad while Ian sauntered into the sanctuary.
Del wanted to give the tardy youngster a piece of his mind, but it was a mere five minutes until the service was scheduled to start and he wanted to begin on time even more. So he simply ordered Ian to get to his seat and then gave Thad his cue to welcome the congregation.
After the opening hymn Tammy delivered the Invocation and Call to Worship without a hitch. By the end of the second hymn the service was running two minutes ahead of schedule according to Del’s calculations. That’s when the first hiccup occurred.
Carrie stepped up to the lectern to deliver the pastoral prayer. She had written it out on a piece of paper, revising it through half a dozen drafts during the week. She pulled the paper out of her pocket with shaky hands, only to drop it. It floated down over the railing and into the third pew. Del tapped his foot impatiently as Tammy scrambled down to retrieve the paper. Well, it was only a small delay. They could make up the time.
Carrie managed to get through the prayer without vomiting which she considered quite an achievement. Next came the special music. Ian got his guitar and pulled a microphone out to the center of the chancel. However when he tried to introduce the song he discovered the microphone wasn’t working. He verified that it was turned on then began tracing the cord to see that everything was plugged in. Organist Walter Tibble came over to help. “Just get a different microphone,” Del finally snapped, a little louder than he intended. “This is why we rehearsed,” he muttered under his breath.
Ian’s song was wonderful but Del didn’t hear it. He was busy editing his sermon to make up for the lost time. Then came the announcements. Ralph stepped up to the microphone and began to speak. No sound came out.
At first Del thought Ralph was using the broken microphone. But when Ralph coughed and it was amplified over the speakers it became clear the microphone was not the problem. Ralph had lost his voice. Del strode out and took over. He didn’t have time for any more delays.
Then real disaster struck. As Del was moving back to his spot, he tripped on the microphone cord. His glasses fell off and by an unfortunate coincidence Del’s left knee landed right on top of them. He heard the lenses crunch and began to feel sick to his stomach. Without his glasses he wouldn’t be able to read his notes for the sermon.
Fortunately Jill managed the offertory without any problems but when Missy went to the lectern to do the scripture reading, she started by saying, “before I begin, I’d like to take a moment to express my gratitude for this church…”
Del felt his blood begin to boil. He coughed pointedly but Missy ignored him. She went on for ten minutes determined to deliver the message she would have done had she been given the opportunity to lead a prayer. By the time she got around to reading the scripture, the service had been going for fifty-eight minutes.
Del gave up. He had rehearsed his sermon several times and could deliver it without his notes, but he couldn’t edit it on the fly. So he just did it the way he had originally planned. Halfway through he was interrupted when the smoke alarm went off in the kitchen. Michelle had left one batch of scallops in the frying pan a little longer than she should have.
It took ten minutes for someone to ascertain that the church was not on fire. Del finished up his sermon, the congregation sang the final hymn, and Thad delivered the benediction. The service had run a total of twenty-nine minutes over, considerably more than was common when the clergy were in charge.
The congregation moved to the Social Hall for the luncheon. Tammy Billings was first in line. She examined Michelle’s scallop salad closely. “What is it,” she asked.
Michelle described the ingredients and manner of preparation proudly. Tammy forced a smile. “Sounds very fancy,” she said. She took a small helping just to be polite, then grabbed one of O’Donnell’s bagel pizzas. “Where’s the coffee?” she asked.
Michelle and O’Donnell looked at each other. They’d both completely forgotten to make coffee. They scrambled to go set it up.
By the time the luncheon was finished the bagel pizzas were completely gone but half the scallop salad remained. And the coffee had finally finished brewing but by then nobody wanted it anymore. As Ian helped Michelle pack up the leftovers he observed that she could have gotten away without the frozen scallops after all. Ian wasn’t always the smartest boyfriend.
The following week the pastors were running the service again and Tammy was back in charge of coffee hour. And everything went much more smoothly.
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