In December of 2019, our friend Lynn went into the church building where she is pastor and walked into a neighbor who had broken in and was usong the church's nursery as a place to make crystal meth! While this is an entire story unto itself, the detils of the case can easily be found on line. What you might not find as easily is the impact this had on the church building and the congregation. The manufacture of meth creates dangerous chemicals into the environment. Consequentially, the building had to be shut down immediately. The congregation continued to meet in the building of another local church, but a huge clean up had to happen, and it took months. In fact, the Methodist congregation was back in their home building two Sundays before all churches were required to shut down for the covid-19 pandemic.
This was the congregation I was blessed to minister to on Sunday morning at their first live service since March. It was outdoors, which is sometihng I'm getting more and more used to in recent weeks. I can't really explain it, but it was one of those services in which everyone knew God was present and moving. There was laughter, some tears, and a Gosple message of grace and hope. I take no credit; in fact, I never even performed the routine I planned to build much of the service around. God was on the move.
After the show, I gave Pastor Lynn a copy of my latest book, "My Best Days". She told me that they had to burn all the books that were in the church library because of the contamination from the meth lab. This would be their first book. I quickly pulled out my other two, "A Piece of Bosco" and "Between Eden and Eternity" and donated these as well. this point, the Buxton, Maine Methodist Church has three books, and they are all ones I've written! Who needs Luther, Wesley and Augustine when you can stock your shelves with the Supreme Court Jester!
As it turns out, I work with Pastor Lynn at my summer job in our local grocery store. We happened to be on break at the same time today, and we talked about the service. I'd like to say revival broke out in th break room and th eentire staff commited their lives to Jesus, but that didn't happen of course. But a few people overheard one of th youngest and one of the pldest people on staff talking about how fun and meaningful church was on Sunday, and maybe God will choose to use that for someone who overheard our conversation.