Today I invited our new pastor to come and have Easter dinner with me and my family. He's new in town and doesn't have any family here so it seemed like a nice thing to do and since I chaired the search committee that hired him he knows me pretty well. I'm not sure yet but I think he'll come even though I warned him that he would be surrounded by Methodists and one Lutheran. However, after I issued the invitation I started remembering the other times I have entetained pastors at my house. My track record isn't very good.
The first time was when I invited our pastor and his wife from the first church my husband and I attended after we were married. It was jsut the four of us. My dear mother-in-law was keeping the kids overnight. The dinner tasted fine and we had a very good time with enjoyable conversation. Unfortunately when we went into the livingroom after dinner it was to discover that our dog had chewed a four-inch hole in the front of the pastor's wife's sweater which she had casually tossed on the couch when they came into the house. And this wasn't just any old sweater. This was the very expensive, irreplacable sweater they had bought on a trip to Scotland.
The next time (many years later) I was hosting a fundraising dinner for our theater and invited our new co-pastors as special (non-paying) guests. As I carried the platter of really delicious swiss steak to the table I was informed that they were both vegetarians. They were able to eat the asparagus and potatoes.
The most recent time wasn't so bad. I invited our Korean pastor and his wife as special guests to yet another fund raising dinner, again as special non-paying guests, and everything acrually went pretty well once I convinced the wife that she could not help serve and clean up and must sit at the main table with all the other guests and not at the smal table with the servers.
But, hey, what could possibly go wrong this Sunday? Stay tuned.....
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