Jack Pelham

America, the Dutiful—
The country of my dreams!—
Where politics are beautiful
And all is what it seems.

Just what did you expect, America,
When you gave the vote to both
The righteous and the unrighteous alike?

No one I know is white. Nor are any of them black. And all of them are “people of color”.

How interesting that our culture is so content with labels that don’t really fit the reality.

Here at First Fruitless, under the fearless leadership of Pastor Less, we take our calling seriously, as we take a firm stand on faithful attendance to all our functions. We know that this causes some ripples in the local community, as most other churches are quite lax about attendance. And to be honest, we take quite a beating over this, with many potential members each year getting angry over our no-absence policy, as if it were a sin to expect the best from our members!

But God is faithful, and we’re sticking to our guns, knowing that our unflinching commitment to full attendance brings great glory to God, and helps us let our little light shine. And really, it’s not as hard as you might think to achieve a remarkable set of statistics on attendance. We’ve learned over the years that our attendance stats get better when we:

• take a hard stand on attendance,
• run off the people who don’t take it seriously, so that they’re not hurting our percentage of all-the-time-attendees, and
• dial back other competing drains on our members’ time, such as Bible study, deep conversations, and counseling.

We find that our members learn to take pride in having a well-attended church. Take Elizabeth Ernyew’s statement, for example:

“I used to go to other churches, where they didn’t really have much to be proud about. But when I first started coming to First Fruitless, that started changing real fast. I saw how the members were always talking about their high attendance rate, and it just spoke to my heart, too. So now I’m here every time the doors are open. It’s so good to have a church you can be proud of!”

Bett ERNYEW, Member

And listen to what Don Key told us recently:

“As Christians, we know we should expect persecution, right? And I sure get it when I put church over the non-church activities in my life! Like when I missed the annual board meeting down at the Lodge because it was the annual spring cleaning day at FF. I could tell they were upset about it, whispering behind my back, but I didn’t let it get me down, and I didn’t give in. In fact, whenever they schedule anything on days when we have conflicting church events, I don’t say a word about it, because the board should already know when I have church. After all, we keep our monthly calendar on the website. And really, they’re probably scheduling these meetings one purpose for when they know I have church anyway, just to be disrespectful. So I don’t dignify their little game by replying. I just go to church and let them figure out why I’m not at the meeting if they didn’t know already. And that’s how I take part in the fight against the devil.”

Don Key, Member

And it’s not just the adults at First Fruitless who have really captured the spirit of faithful attendance! Even our kids have it, like first-grader Willy Grow:

“It’s good to go to church all the time so God won’t send us to Hell.”

Willey Grow, Member

So join us starting this Sunday, as we pass out annual attendance drive checklist calendar! It’s a perfect time to start, and you will be entered in the annual attendance contest. The grand prize this year is a 2-day cruise vacation! (Don’t worry about missing church, because we already thought of that! The prize is for a Monday-Tuesday cruise, so you can still make it church Sunday night and Wednesday night. ) The drawing for the cruise will be from all those who have perfect attendance at the end of the 2023/2024 season. And in the unlikely event that nobody has perfect attendance, the cruise will be awarded to Pastor Less, in honor of the awesome work he does here to build God’s kingdom.

So be sure to be at First Fruitless this coming Sunday, when we’ll pass out free bumper stickers to all who enter this year. We just got them back from the print shop, and they’re beautiful! They say:

Be ye perfect in attendance, even as your heavenly father is perfect. Matthew 5:48. First Fruitless Church

Oh, and they have a picture of Pastor Less on the right side. Sorry, we couldn’t get that graphic from the printer in time to post it here on the website, but it’s really nice, and you’re going to love them!

See you Sunday!

In Him,
Pastor Less

If you want to understand
What a human soul is really like,
Then step back and observe
How it manages its beliefs.

I have seen the camps adopt a truth
The others reject, and still
Bring ruin upon themselves,
Either by way of not embracing it fully,
Or of not letting go of some other thing
They have yet got wrong.

Some are so full of themselves
And of the culture of the camp
That they could read the whole Bible,
Stem to stern, and never perceive
That the camp and God have
Different ideas about what is evil.

Others perceive it somewhat,
In glimpses now and then, but will not
Come out from them and be separate,
Finding the staying preferable
To any wholesale reform, and
Hoping it is not unforgivable.

But others still have managed
To slip the bonds of camp,
To discover all the better
For themselves what God thinks—
Where there are no guards to quash
Such investigation, and no one
To please but God alone.

And having found the truths
The camp obscures,
Why would they ever go back,
Except to preach an unwelcome truth,
Or to try to escape it once again?

The reason the camps keep the truth
At arm’s length is that
Is that it pleases them neither
To please God, nor to admit
That they do not.

Woe to those who call evil good
    and good evil,
who put darkness for light
    and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
    and sweet for bitter!

Isaiah 5:20. NIV.

The one presumes to be a member of the organization
Without doing what the members
Are all supposed to do.

And you’re not supposed to notice—
Not supposed to call them out on it.
And when you do, here comes the other.

INTERVIEWER: “So, Freddy, you had 84 years to live down on the Earth. What did you spend your time doing?”

FREDDY: “Oh, it was great! I spent most of my time defending the status quo and encouraging people to feel positive about how things were.”

Why will a people languish
While regarding as holy a text
They will not take to heart?—
A text they will neither study
Nor implement as it deserves?—
A text they will not learn themselves,
Even as they insist that others should do?