Techno. Church

Christmas is here again, I really don’t know why we bother anymore.  The congregation has dwindled to Mrs Jones, Bob Miller and Old Silas and I think they only come to save on their heating bills at home!  What can we do?  Even if we could tempt some of the flock of 10 years ago back to the services, we haven’t even got any decent hymn books to offer them.  The covers are gone from about half of them and there’s pages galore missing from the other half.  The coffers are bare, so there’s nothing we can do to replace them.  The verger’s vestments are in tatters too!   Ah well nothing more to be done tonight, so I’ll sleep on it.  Tomorrow might bring some divine inspiration.

Well, at least our little Church is not totally forgotten, the Postman has just popped something through the letter box.  A parcel eh!  Ah well, I’ll just get the day sorted and I’ll open it when I’ve got two minutes later.

“Thank you for the tea Edna and would you mind passing me the parcel  I received earlier, I’ll open it now.”   I had to admit to a certain eager curiosity, and the brown paper was ripped off without ceremony.  Oh my goodness, it’s full of money, there must be hundreds of pounds here.  Where on earth could it have come from??  There’s a message too….

Dear Vicar Rias,

My mother apparently owed a great debt to the church.  Before she died, she made me solemnly promise to repay this debt, out of her estate.  I am unable to enlighten you as to why she owed this much money, as she would not divulge this information.  However, a promise is a promise, so the money is yours.  The only stipulation she made, was that it was to be spent in a manner that would benefit this church.

Yours sincerely,

A Benefactor.

After thinking all evening about a way to spend the money, and not coming up with any solutions, I did what I usually do and slept on it.  That night I had a dream and woke up knowing exactly what I was going to do. My first job was to go to the nearest branch of Currys and buy 50 Kindle Fires.  The next job was to visit a Carpenter friend of mine who owed me a favour and got him to come to the church with me, where he fitted the Kindles into the backs of the pews.  The next job on the list, I just had to spend time downloading hymn books on to each of my marvellous little gadgets.

When all this was done,  I felt quite proud of myself, as surely this would increase the congregation.  I pinned all my hopes on the young and old alike, being curious enough to attend the services.  Once there, it would be my job to make the sermons interesting enough, to make them want to keep on attending on a regular basis.

I put a notice on the board outside the Church, to let the people of the area know that this Sunday’s service was going to be special. Well it paid off big-time, I even had a couple of parishioners sharing the Kindles, as there was more than the 50 I had allowed for.  Everyone seemed to master the art of finding the hymns in the downloaded books without any problems, and they all went home with smiles on their faces.  They all complimented me on a lovely service as they shook my hand on the way out.

I realised that from now on, that part of my clearing up programme would have to include switching off all the Kindles.  This was when the bomb dropped …….. out of the 50, only 11 of them were actually showing the hymn books.   I found quite a variety of websites, ranging from Candy Crush Saga to Betfred, I even found 3 tuned in to porn sites!!!

Ah well…. they do say pride goes before a fall.  Anyone want to buy 50 nearly new Kindle Fires???