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“I have prepared a place for you ... just not this pew.”
— The understood 11th Commandment
A curious conversation unfolded during a recent morning gathering at the coffee shop.
“Saw in the newspaper where one of those big megachurches is selling reserved seats for the Sunday sermon,” someone said. “That’s one way to stimulate conversation,” I thought.
A person near the coffee pot said, “It’s been done before, long time ago. But in this day and age? In the South?”
“The way I read it, that didn’t end well in the Bible,” said a local preacher, an occasional coffee-shop drop-in. “Jesus drove sellers, merchants and moneychangers from the temple.”
“I don’t know,” drawled another. “You shouldn’t have to pay anything to attend worship service. Offerings when the plate is passed, or a fundraiser — now that’s different.”
He added, “Seems to me you might be perceived as favoring the rich to get the better seats.”
Silence slipped by for about half a minute before a man chuckled.
“Well, it might solve one problem at our house. It’s a challenge to get the kids ready on time. We always get there about the second verse of the first hymn,” he said.
The speaker allowed as to how his family scrambled to find a seat.
“Now, I’m not saying we’re habitually late,” he said, “but the smokers on the front porch start snuffing out cigarettes and heading for the door when we pull in the parking lot.”
“Here’s an idea,” mused the preacher. “If we made the front seats free and the back seats the most expensive seats in the house, I could see this working.”
I was trying to determine if he was joking when someone asked, “So, what do you think, newspaper man?”
Taking a long draw on my coffee, I carefully submitted the biggest challenge as I saw it.
“It reminds me of a small East Texas congregation where I worshiped a few years ago,” I said. “One Sunday morning, some visitors came in, introduced themselves and took a vacant seat. Little did they know they had parked in a seat known to be Sister Claudie Mae’s undisputed and longclaimed spot. The end of the fifth pew, left side.”
Sister Claudie Mae was the sweetest, kindest little lady you could ever hope to meet. She had outlived two husbands and been present for every service longer than anyone alive could remember. Her “on-time” arrival coincided precisely with the minister stepping to the pulpit for welcoming remarks, announcements and to update the prayer list.
Sure enough, on that morning, Sister Claudie Mae walked in right on schedule. The preacher paused motionless in the pulpit, watching her walk slowly to the end of the fifth pew on the left side.
All eyes were on Sister Claudie Mae when she stopped, smiled and said sweetly to the visiting couple, “Good morning. I do believe you are visitors. Welcome, we are so glad to have you. And what is your name?”
“Thank you,” the man said. “We’re the Wilsons.”
“We are thrilled that you are visiting with us,” Sister Claudie Mae said. “And we genuinely hope you will come back. However, Mr. Wilson, you and your lovely wife are sitting in my pew, and if you will be so kind as to find another one, we can start our service.”
The startled couple scurried to the closest empty pew, allowing the good sister to sit in “her seat,” thereby ending any further discussion on the 11th Commandment of “thou shalt not sit in someone else’s pew.”
With that story, I suggested those who supported paid seating at church might wish to first determine who among them would break the news to the many Sister Claudie Maes in congregations everywhere.
“Who is going to tell these lovely ladies that they will have to pay every Sunday to sit in the seat they have called theirs since before many of you spent Sunday mornings in the nursery?” I said. The conver sat ion quickly moved to other stimulating topics such as local politics and the weather.
Meanwhile, I began to wonder about that morning when Sister Claudie Mae claimed her pew. Was the song leader’s opening hymn merely coincidence or quick thinking when the choir started singing “I Shall Not Be Moved”?
