Pictures withheld to protect the squeamish.
I Love pastoring in the country. Some of the greatest mysteries in life come from pastoring in rural chuches. Today I received a call from our youth minister at church. He said the cleaning crew had discovered some poo in the church sanctuary.
Yes, poo – feces, poop, crap, doo-doo. My mind quickly assumed the worst, had someone vandalized our church? Was there some terrible, ill-mannered, disturbed prankster at work? Was it Satanists desecrating our beautiful place of sacred worship? I told the YM I’d be right over.
When I arrived, the YM was gone, but the cleaning crew was cleaning up the last of five small piles of animal poo that had been “deposited” around the sanctuary. A portion of carpet near an internal door had been shredded, as if chewed and pulle upon. An antique chair was drooping it’s underside uphostery, indicating it too had been chewed and pulled. We did not have a malicious vandal, we had a “guest.”
A quick search of the premises did not reveal any more evidence or any current presence of our “guest.” It was probably a good thing, too. One of our cleaning personell said if she was suprised by our guest, she’d probably “lose her religion” in fright. I agreed that I too did not want be scared by an animal large enough to leave behind the sizable “deposits” that indicated it’s earlier presence. After checking around a bit more, I left for some pressing work.
The mystery has remained throughout the day. It is possible somebody let in their little dog for the night, but as there were people in the church for services Wednesday evening and the poo was found Friday afternoon, this left little time for the church to be unattened. A further possibility is the presence of an animal who can enter and exit the church through an unknown hole. This has its possibilities.
I’m voting for the woodchuck that scared me last Sunday on the church steps.
This exerience certainly ranks as one of the more endearing puzzles of rural church work. More on the mystery poo when I know more…
Onward and Upward 