I just spent a week without (and greatly appreciating!) my office manager and assistant. She took a well deserved vacation with her husband, and will be back tomorrow. (God is good — all the time!)
That meant that I couldn’t just ignore the phone when it rang last week. If you called, that was my voice who answered, “Shepherd of the Coast Lutheran Church — this is Pastor Douthwaite.” Here are some of the responses I heard last week:
“Oh. <long pause> Nicole must not be there.”
In a thick Indian accent: “Thank you very much.” Click <hang up>
“Call this number immediately, or you will face arrest and imprisonment by the IRS for tax evasion…”
“Oh, hi Pastor. Are you going to be in the office today?” <seriously?>
“Do you have chronic back pain…?”
“Congratulations, you have just won…” Click. <I hung up.>
“Oh, hi. You’re just the person I need to talk to.”
“Hi, I’m from the Best-Ever-Media company. We’d like to send you a 37 volume DVD series to inspire your youth to more vibrant faith…” Click. <I hung up.>
“I sent you an email. Did you get it?”
“Stay on the line for important information about…” Click. <I hung up.>
“Hi. I scheduled a meeting, but don’t know if any space is available.”
“I saw you have a food pantry today.” Me: “No, I’m sorry, that’s the church next door.”
I never know what the voice on the other end is going to say. However, it just amazes me that 90% of the phone calls we receive are irrelevant to our ministry. So for a couple of hundred bucks a month, we maintain phone lines for no good reason at all!
I cut off our landline about five years ago. Neither my wife or I were making any outgoing calls. All of the inbound calls were telemarketers, surveys, robocalls and wrong numbers. The provider representative I talked with couldn’t understand why I wanted to disconnect.
I wonder if God gets any prayers like this…
Waite for it... 