11) It is a small world. A very small world, indeed.
You might remember that in today's "Ten Things..." I dropped line about a person at an emergent church in Houston (pastored by Chris Seay) using a profane word during the announcement time, which I must clarify I was not able to attend due to an untimely death in my family.
Well, guess what... Chris Seay himself sent me this email, and he sounds none-to-happy. Just so I can keep things straight, here's what he had to say:
someone emailed this [the statement about the profanity] to me today and I wanted to help you clarify - That is not true and anyone there knew he was clarifying the fact he had not [used that profane word].
blessings,
Chris
To help you understand what's happened here... last Friday our little group gathered to debrief about the experience in Houston, and to catch me up on what I missed the Sunday after I left earlier to be with my wife's family.
To be honest, I was still in a fog from the funeral Wednesday, and simply heard part of the conversation regarding the experience at Pastor Seay's church Sunday night. Since I have been known to use a questionable word or term from time to time (resulting, once, in my having to apologize to a church for a statement I made in a Christmas Eve sermon..... but that's another story for another time), and worked with enough unchurched people who in church gatherings used profanity without any idea that it would offend anyone, the idea that a church would have someone use some sort of questionable language just didn't seem all that odd to me.
Well, apparently I have made what was a delicate situation worse, and that grieves my heart. So to make things perfectly clear, nobody used any profanity in any worship service.
My sincerest apologizes, Chris. Please too send my apologizes to the person who did announcements, and to anyone else offended by my comment.
God Bless,
Bryan
2 comments:
You know that your blog has reached the "big time" when you start getting "corrections" from important people. My new personal blogging goal is for my blog to be so provactie and far-reaching that church guru pastor guys send me emails!
I wrote a haiku about the situation.
I call it "Chris Seay and the F-bomb":
Hey there, watch your mouth
Potty words make Jesus cry
Church is SERIOUS!!!
This might be an excellent time to mention a bit of information told to me by my good friend, Ed England, Ph.D, Philosophy, Faculty member at The Ohio State University. According to Ed, the unmentionable word was simply the proper, old english word for the coital act. When the Normans conquered the English after the battle of Hastings, the new occupying powers made all of the proper words for things like "toilet" and other sensative words into the equivalent of an oath, or vulagarity. Quite literally, the Normans vulgarized, (Vularity: "A word or expression originated or used by illiterate persons", accoding to Webster's Collegiate). This etemological comment by Dr. Ed, was inteded to demystify the f word. My advice to you is to blame the Bloody Normans. Plus, this time no one can make it stick to you-you were never there. That must be like a dream come true for Aimee! Someone said something bad and you weren't even in the state. Faithful are the wounds of a friend.
Steven Paul
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