Jake, you get wise. You get to church

Well now we know what your immortal soul is worth. At least on EBay. $504 to be exact.

Of course there is a little more to the story than that.

A few weeks back a guy named Hemant Mehta who is an acknowledged atheist put on EBay this offer. For every ten dollars bid he would attend an hour of church services. His point was that he might come across the truth in one of the services and be lead to a higher understanding of the higher power.

Both atheists and evangelists bid but a funny thing happened at the end of the on line auction. A man named Jim Henderson, a former preacher who left the days of collar and bible because he became disenchanted with his fellow preacher’s obsession with increasing the size and bankroll of their churches won the auction. Henderson runs a website http://offthemap.com/people/jim-henderson-team/ whose mission is to help Christians be normal.

What Henderson asked Mehta to do is to attend 10-15 services of his choosing and then write about them on the website. It’s pretty interesting stuff-here’s a sample.

Salem Baptist Church is a large concert-venue-type auditorium on the South side of Chicago.

When we walked in for the 10:00 am service, the choir was singing (It was massive). The band was playing. I think there was a even a church Color Guard that was dancing with flags. This seemed like a nice way to begin Sunday. At the risk of sounding like a Richard Pryor bit, the White churches had bands with a few singers and instrumentalists, and it was welcoming to hear it, but this was more intense. So many singers. And they were loud.

Mehta goes on to talk about the preacher, the church bulletin and makes a number of comments about feeling out of place.

The Church visits haven’t converted Hemant yet but he did write this. “I admire churches for the communities they create. Church is not such a bad place to be.”

As Cab Calloway said to Jake Blues:
“Jake, you get wise. You get to church.”

-30-

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About James Rising

A recovering radio addict wrestles with the written word.
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