Judge Dogood Thrown out of Church

Judge Dogood Thrown out of Church

Dogood was toted and thrown out of the building. The building was a church. As he rolled off, he nearly knocked down an usher who was walking in with the offering baskets.

Dogood had been invited by a group of pastors of a big church to talk to them about creativity and imagination for religious leaders.

“Do not play that game of telling us to imagine.” They requested him. “Give us specific strategies to boost our creativity and imagination.”

As he was preparing to talk about one of his passions, he kept getting a message about God’s glory. At first, he didn’t see how creativity and imagination were connected to God’s glory, but he saw the connection.  

When he asked them to be creative in their introduction and even encouraged them to share something they had imagined, they sat stiff. The air was heavy with stiffness and severity.

He shared two jokes.  

He paused, fiddled with his tablet and notes as he did not want to speak out his thoughts: These guys don’t have a sense of humour…what if I asked them to remove their clerical collars? Could the collars be choking their sense of humour…Perhaps they are yet to encounter the joy of salvation…. they are so used to hearing themselves speak…

Dogood took it as a challenge to be more creative and imaginative. He asked them to draw a cow, “If you are left-handed please raise up your hands.”  A couple of hands shot up in the air. “Please, draw a cow using your right hand, and for all the others, use your left hand. I promise not to look at your drawings.”

“As we start, we must remember that whatever we imagine or create must be for God’s glory. Now, nothing opens the imaginations and world of possibilities like the question ‘what if?’”

“We are going to jog our imaginations by answering the question ‘what if?’ Each one of you is going to answer and no one should say what if we didn’t have to draw a cow. But first let us the miracles of Peter and the shadow, and Paul and handkerchiefs. Do you think Paul and Peter knew about those miracles? I do not think so!

“Imagine, and work with me here, imagine – what if such miracles happened in our churches? Miracles that speak for themselves, miracles that do not need to be televised live. You, as a pastor, cannot speak about them because you do not know and you cannot tell when it happened. What if –“

Dogood was not allowed to finish his presentation because a pair of beefy arms grabbed him to escort him from the pulpit. Two elders volunteered to usher him out under the supervision of the bishop.

As the beefy arms dangled Dogood along the aisle on the way out, he made attempts to have a conversation with them.

“Guys, are you sure you are elders for real? The way you are professionally manhandling me is evidence you have been practising or you have done this before. Are you bouncers?”

On realising his carriers were not in a talking mood, Dogood took time to reflect on the best practices of being thrown out by bouncers. However, he did not have sufficient data for such a comparative study; this was his first time for a close brush with bouncers.

His minders responded by tossing him out like a bag of garbage.

Image by Hadassah Wanini