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10 Ways To Manage Mischief At A Christian Festival

10 Ways To Manage Mischief At A Christian Festival

Well with New Wine, Soul Survivor, and Keswick currently taking place, its fair to say we are well into the Summer Christian Festival season. With Festivals like Greenbelt, Momentum, and Creation Fest, there are still plenty to choose from.

As its the Summer Christian Festival Season, it is also time for the annual Church Sofa list of the best ways to create trouble at a Christian Festival… Consider this list in case you get bored or something…

  1. Is it raining? Throw mud on strangers eyes. Explain you’re curing their spiritual blindness.
  2. Arrange for the portable showers to be moved around the site. Take advantage of confusing everyone, by having no queue for your shower.
  3. Walk around the camp site with a sign offering free hugs. Run away from anyone who comes anywhere near you.
  4. Throw water on to people. Shout that its Holy Water – check if your victim if the water is burning.
  5. Late night choir practice.
  6. Walk around the camp site offering a free tent to anyone who has had problems with their tent in the rain. Dont tell people its just one tent, that is shared between anyone who takes you up on your offer. Obviously this should be a two person tent.
  7. Is your festival at a Holiday Camp like Butlins? Make the most of the worship time to sneak to the gambling machines without the guilt of being seen…. If on a camp site, get yourself to the showers.
  8. Walk around with a huge sign offering to judge people for free. I’m curious to see what will happen.
  9. Is the worship leader encouraging you to lift your hands in the air? Sit down instead.
  10. Start a rumor that The World Wide Message Tribe aren’t really coming back together.
  11. Campers near you have bar-b-qs, and other cooking equipment? “Borrow” any and all fire lighting equipment, and then challenge them to pray for fire from heaven.

Any that you would like to add?

For more ideas, please check out last years list, How to misbehave at a Christian Festival.

Disclaimer: Do any of these at your own risk, the Sofa takes no responsibility for any trouble that happens to you if you do this, but if you do end up in Christian Festival Jail, please let us know what that’s like.

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Church Sofa A – Z Guide To Church. Burning The Heathens

Everyone now and then, Churches get upset about things. Sometimes this is about things like homelessness, and food poverty, other times it could be things like worship song choices, Mark Driscoll, or women not allowed to preach. The list that causes it is long, but every now and then, people both on and off Twitter, go into what we call “Burning The Heathens” mode.

If you are involved in a Heathen Burning, we recommend to remember the following check list:

  1. Pitchfork (Sharpened)
  2. Axes
  3. Burning torches
  4. Bible Teaching from someone you agree with.
  5. Lack of patience.
  6. Lack of willingness to discuss.
  7. Don’t ask why
  8. Find fuel for the fire.
  9. Don’t check if this happening elsewhere.
  10. Acceptance.

The Church Sofa website does not support the idea of actually burning people. Thats not nice, and you would deserve the full force of the law on you if you were to do sometime like that – you nasty person!

This post may have been ripped off a previous post, but I think it kinda works here as well.

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Church Sofa A – Z Guide To Church. Bibles, Biscuits and Bishops

Our alphabetical guide to church life continues with…

Bible

aka “The Good Book”. Its generally thought that reading the Bible is a good thing. Reading things that help you read the bible is also considered a good thing. Lots of people try and read the Bible in a year. Last September we tried reading the Bible in a year. One of us got stuck around last November. The other is trapped around July.

Many people seem to agree that the Bible is a good thing to read. Actually reading it seems to be something else.

The thing is. With all the talk in churches of how good it is to read your Bible. What if people struggle to read?

Biscuits

Served with tea at the end of a church service. Or possibly during a housegroup.

Remember. Good Christians don’t take the last biscuit.

Bishops

Aka. The Boss. It was confirmed by the synod last year that while The Church of England is perfectly OK with women being a Church Minister / Vicar / Pastor… the idea of a woman being in charge was not really acceptable in these modern times.

The Boss sometimes visits churches to perform special things… like blessing a new church roof… or something. You can tell if he’s around due to the Church Warden using the following checklist.

1.Is the pastoral team wearing the correct liturgical uniform?
2.Do we have the correct amount of communion wine in stock?
3.Have “those” children been locked away in the crèche?
4.Has crèche been relocated into the basement?
5.Has the building been dusted? (In and out – yes including the tower)
6.New red carpet rolled out?
7.Crowd been taught correct responses?
8.Crowd now informed they are the “congregation”?
9.Do the “Sunday Morning Welcomer’s” look smart enough?
10.Does the communion wine have another alcohol in to ensure its elevated above the level of Ribena?

Any I’ve missed?

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Church Sofa A – Z Guide To Church – Agape

Picking up the collection of “A” words…

Agape: A fancy word for a type of Love, which you may have only heard about if you’ve sat through one of those talks on Love. Whilst checking my spelling for this, I was also reminded that Agape is also the name of a charity that is, “dedicated to addressing the spiritual needs of the UK by helping people to see, hear, understand and be forever changed by the person and claims of Jesus.

Check out www.agape.org.uk for further information of the agape organisation.

Alpha: A happiness course ran by Churches around the world, with the aim of increasing the size of peoples smiles.

Amen: Normally a signal of agreement to a request just uttered. Can also be heard shouted out across a congregation during a particularly exciting sermon.

Angel: I cant help but think that the whole subject of Angels is a bit of a weird one for the church. I guess PR wise, I cant help but wonder if we’re not really sure how to sell Angels. Are angels really just a heavenly choir, that worship leaders tweet about? Are they cute girlies in the Christmas play? Are they guys with a gentle Irish accent? What if Angels went to an Alpha course? Are they big beasties of light with multiple faces, and massive wings?

Some people would say, that they just turn up randomly to help out in times of need, just to disappear later.

Or are angels real people, like the marathon runners that finished the race in Boston, just to run to give blood at the hospital?

The firemen that were caught up with the explosion in Texes

I cant help but think that my angel was the Scottish registrar who took the time to reassure me that our daughter was doing well, two hours after she was transferred to Neonatal.

Whatever they are, I hope they do more then sing.

 

 

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Church Sofa A – Z Guide To Church – A

Welcome to the Church Sofa A – Z Guide to Church. Being the old traditionalists that we all are, we’re going to being with

A

Aardvark: I believe the famous struggler, Edmund Blackadder got as far as aardvark when he attempted to write the directory. Hopefully this blog series will get past aardvark.

Abba: Old Aramaic word that’s still mentioned today in churches. Simply means “Dad”.

Advanced Pre-Judgement: The art of planning well ahead of time to judge people in church when they may do or not do a particular action.

Advent: For 11 months of the year, we all tell our children (big and little) not to play with fire. During the month of December Churches around the country invite both big and little children up to the front (as long as they behave) to light an advent candle. Its not unusual for this candle (or collection of candles) to be surrounded by a lovely flower display, which takes roughly 2 seconds to catch fire under the most controlled conditions. If the church survives the Advent candle being lit during church services, then there is always the “Carols by Candlelight” service, which depending on your background, could mean anything from a random candle being lit somewhere nearby, to fire being passed from person to person.

Therefore Advent is about waiting for the Fire to happen. After all, it cant be about waiting and preparing for Christmas. We have supermarkets to help us with that.