Travel issues with various persons make it impossible to have Roy's service today or tomorrow. Sunday is not a good idea, either. So, we are on Monday at 10am. There will be a crowd.
Ministers get to meet good people and bad. We get to see good people at their worst and bad people at their worst. It is not a place for sissies.
An eccentric fellow who attended worship with us for awhile decided he did not much like me. This hardly makes him unique.
He and I were visiting on the phone one day. Well, I was visiting. He was ranting. He needed some kind of emotional affirmation I did not know how to give him.
OK, I knew how, I just do not suffer fools easily. He kept ratcheting up his voice, his tone, his anger. I kept yawning into the phone.
Finally, he could not take it any more.
"I am going to sit in the choir next Sunday morning behind you. I am going to have a gun under my robe. I am going to blow your brains out."
I believe I suggested he would not need a large caliber. He cursed me and hung up.
I laughed about it with Roy at coffee later that day.
He looked at me and smiled. He said, "Well, we have had trouble with that old boy before. Better let me take care of this one."
I did not find out until much later the "old boy" who had threatened me had a history of drug abuse, imbalance and violence.
Roy and another officer went out to his house. They strongly suggested he had made a terroristic threat. They strongly suggested there would be an officer or two in worship on Sunday morning and that he would be arrested if he carried a gun anywhere near the church.
You may have missed the day when they covered gun threats in seminary. You need a friend like Roy.
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