Carpet is Very Very Important to Church

I worked in a fairly large mainline denominational church as the youth pastor (sorry - I mean youth director b/c I was not ordained so I really couldn't serve any "pastoral" purpose) and we decided to throw this coffee house and invite some local bands and have some people read their poetry, etc. Blah, Blah, Blah. The cool thing was that it was totally the students' idea. I just went along for the ride.

So, they trick the place out (isn't that what the kids are saying these days or was that the 80's) and work their tails off all day. They go to garage sales to get retro furniture, candles, etc. Blah, Blah, Blah. They invite all their friends.

Well, Saturday night rolls around and the youth center is packed - 250+ kids show up and a good, clean time was had by all. The cool thing is that 90% of these kids never stepped foot into a church before.

I arrive Monday morning to the church (still sleepy from the long weekend) and I get called into the administrator's office at the behest of the pastor, at the behest of the trustees. Also, sitting there is my immediate supervisor. I quickly realized that this was not an impromptu award ceremony for me due to the fact that more new people visited the church Saturday night than did all year.

Rather, it was a tongue lashing about the coffee and the wax that got spilled on the new carpet and the garage sale furniture piled in the corner of the youth center. I have to admit - I was mad. "You mean to tell me that you prefer clean carpet over hundreds of high school students hanging around the church." To my dismay, I realized that clean carpet wins every time.

Needless to say, I learned a valuable lesson that day. You can never underestimate the value of new carpet in the Kingdom of God. Many a soul has been won as a result of it. I have tried to keep this mantra close to my heart. In fact, I think I will go write it on the inside cover of my Bible. Is that allowed?

Anyway, I feel really stupid because I just learned the other day that you can actually clean carpet. This picture proves it. I wish I would of known that back then but what did I know I was just a youth pastor (I'm sorry. I mean youth director).