“What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen WITH YOUR OWN EYES happen in church?” Actor, comedian, and filmmaker Kevin Fredericks posed this question to his Twitter followers on Jan. 27, and the thousands of crazy church stories people shared are sometimes funny, sometimes appalling, and often cringeworthy.
“I was directing the Men’s Chorus and one of the Deacons was RIGHT in the mic,” said one man. “We got to his favorite part of the song, he took in a deep breath and when he belted out PRAISE… his dentures hit the microphone and there was a LOUD THUMP!! I.LOST.IT!!!!”
Crazy Church Stories From the Twitterverse
As might be expected, many people shared stories of awkward moments they experienced during a church service. “Small, rural church,” said one. “Just before the service started, a gopher ran in the front doors, down the aisle, and hid between the organ and the wall. A 5 year old yelled, ‘I’ll get it!’, pulled a hockey stick from I don’t know where, and did his best to kill the gopher with it.” He continued, “After a couple minutes of no one knowing what to do, his parents got the kid back to the pew, and the service started. The opening hymn, I kid you not, was ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. I thought I’d die laughing.”
One of the members of my church was getting baptized and as the baptism was starting some random guy stood in front of the church and told everyone that the guy getting baptized punched his sister in the face earlier in the day. The whole congregation was sitting there like pic.twitter.com/UPRCBhPv5c
— Níck Bartléy (@Bahtley97) January 28, 2022
A user named “Wyatt da Wise” said, “My brother (6) daring me (4) to run up and down the aisles screaming “diarrhea diarrhea diarrhea…” in the middle of catholic mass. My mother, mortified starts crying, my brother is laughing at the top of his lungs, I made it a good three minutes before my red faced Dad caught me.”
In the crazy church stories people shared, pastors were sometimes the source of the awkwardness. A user named “Bill Hangley Jr” wrote, “So they’re lining up at the altar to ask for prayers for families & friends: ‘Just lean in and tell me, we’ll pray together, you me & Jesus,’ says the pastor. They lean in and whisper about the secret drugs/affair/illness … & we all hear every word cuz he’s got the lapel mic on.”
User Austin T. Duncan shared a moment, not from his experience, but from a church service where a minister announced that another reverend could not be there because he had tested positive for AIDS—the minister had meant to say COVID-19.
Ordination service gone wrong. This is a gift to the Internet. I checked on Rourke, he’s OK. pic.twitter.com/6pe1td5gQw
— Austin T. Duncan (@austintduncan) January 27, 2022
Another user said, “We had a guest speaker pull up to the church, he had a reputation for wildin…this man started a praise break in amidst his own preaching, hopped on some folding chairs like a frog jumping on lillypads, and then actually legit jumped onto the deacons back and rode him around.”
Went to my wife’s grandmother’s church on Christmas a couple years ago. They had a temporary pastor who preached a CHRISTMAS SERMON cussing out the members about how he knew someone in the church was trying to kill him by loosening the lug nuts on his car and God don’t like ugly.
— Antoine Marshall (@Marshalllaw1906) January 28, 2022
One woman said, “Late to the game here but my childhood pastor went through a knighting phase. Late 90’s or early 2000’s. He knighted several men in a whole ceremony with a real, custom sword which he then gave them. Can’t remember if [they] were elders or deacons or random men in the church.”
