Pet Peeve of the Day

I must say, I'm rather enjoying sitting at home in jeans rather than in FMA in a skirt and hose. =) (Much better than last semester, when I slept through the opening services--in my pajamas, in bed, with a temperature of 102 degrees.)

I have heard reports on last night's service from a variety of sources, and apparently one of my great Religious Service Pet Peeves occurred--the Sermon Recap followed by a Reissue of the Invitation in Confusing Terms. Yes, it irritates me when the person responsible for inviting the guest preacher gets up after the invitation and repeats (and elaborates upon) the sermon in his own words, as though the preacher whom he invited didn't do a good enough job. And then he reopens the invitation, usually asking a litany of questions in an apparent attempt to trick the interrogatees into raising their hands.

All right, I'm probably making it sound worse than it really is, at least as far as motives are concerned. I'm sure that after hearing a good sermon, it's easy to get caught up in the emotion of the moment and, instead of closing the service, talking and trying to convince more people to go forward. (I don't believe that talking people into going forward is a good way to get results, unless you want people making "decisions" based purely on emotion and not on actual repentance--which seems like a great way to give people false assurance of salvation.) I'm sure that the person in question is honestly making an attempt to do good, although it doesn't seem to turn out that way.

As a side note, I just received a report on this evening's service: Apparently the guest preacher closed the service himself. Smart man. =)