Did “uptight Christians” react negatively to a Butte pastor’s joke that he was going to shorten the church service in order to catch the San Francisco 49ers game? That’s the word from one seminary student, which you can catch below, along with a response from Butte Pastor Tim Christensen.
In the meantime, the viral YouTube video that I covered here is continuing to get national attention. Apparently the pastor was featured in a Thursday taping of the Queen Latifah Show, and Jimmy Fallon featured the pastor on his late night talk show.
Fallon joked that “Tebow prayed more than that when he was actually playing football.”
Here’s the video:
So, did “uptight Christians” react negatively to a Butte pastor’s joke that he was going to shorten the church service in order to catch the San Francisco 49ers game?
Here’s the word (lower case w) from rEvangelicalBlog.com:
These days I am always absolutely stunned at what makes the news. What causes a stir in the Christian blog-o-sphere. I mean, who would have ever thought that joke told by a Lutheran Pastor in a small, unknown church in Montana would cause such a stir!? As I sat back and watched my friends and well-known Christian leaders alike chime in on Facebook and Twitter, only one thought came to mind. Man, we’re really, really uptight. And we take this church stuff way, way too seriously. Now, understand that this is coming from a Pastoral Ministry major who plans to spend his life serving as a minister in a local congregation. I love the Church. I love the liturgy. I think our services are incredibly valuable and necessary for a healthy and vibrant spiritual life. I too would have once been offended and caught off guard by this Pastors joke. “How can he make so lightly of the Lord’s day? I thought this was supposed to be the gathering of the worshippers of God, not some comedy club.” And I realize some of my friends had some more astute and complex reasons for not liking this pastors game-day prank. But at the end of the day, we’ve got to be willing to laugh a little, to breathe a bit, to realize that all of these rituals and regulations, while important and significant to our faith, are not the end all. Christianity has far more to do with how we live when we walk out of the parish doors than it does with how the liturgy if performed inside the church walls.
The pastor also responded to the blog post, which you can read by clicking here.