The Top 10 Oddest Things I've Done To Others In Ministry Or Had Done To Me In Ministry (that I will admit to)

10. The first church I ever served on staff at no longer exists. Therefore, for all practical purposes, I never served there.

09. The pastor of the second church I ever served on staff at literally used a "Sharpie" to cross my name from their church history because they got mad when I resigned and went to another church. Therefore, for all practical purposes, I never served there either. (Although they ordained me.)

08. A deacon yelled at me in a deacon's meeting once because I would not let his son go on a youth trip as an adult chaperone because he had just taught some of our teenagers to play drinking games. The pastor defended me by purchasing a "Sharpie." (See #9)

07. A teenage boy decided to "get clean" and gave me his marijuana cache to get rid of for him. I dumped it out my office window. In a few weeks I noticed an odd crop growing on the church lawn. I slid a "Sharpie" under the pastor's door knowing that he might want it. (See #9)

06. I did a funeral once where the entire middle row of the congregation were bikers drinking from long neck bottles of beer ... in unison.

05. While pulling a cross from Marion to Springfield, Illinois, a guy named Chuck stopped and said he wanted to contribute to our cause. (Revival!) He had just been laid-off from his job and was on the way home to tell his wife. We reluctantly accepted the last dollar he had in his wallet and promised to put it in the offering plate. We called it "Chuck's Buck." Every night in youth rallies one of our team took the dollar, held it up, and told the story of Chuck's sacrifice. On the day they gave me the dollar I forgot ... and spent it on Chiclets. I replaced it with another dollar and didn't tell anybody for a year.

04. I raided a boys luggage and sent all of his underwear to our pastor's office by UPS because he raided other people's luggage and put their underwear on the ceiling fans of a church we were sleeping in on a mission trip to Iowa.

03. I tricked my Sr. Pastor into believing that a black velvet picture of "The Lord's Supper" had been given to him by the widow of a man he had buried, that the deceased man had painted it for him, and that she would be by later in the week to see how it looked on his office wall. (It hung over his desk for a week.)

02. I crazy-glued my Sr.Pastor's pens to his desk. All of them.

01. I dated a girl from my first youth group. Then I married her. Then we had kids. Then we had grand kids. Now we don't even want a dog.