Never A Good Sermon

The subtitle for this would be "bad sermons part two, or the sequel".  I was reminded tonight of one of my favorite bad sermons preached by a pastor we nicknamed Cab. Cab stands for "crash and burn" because no matter when or what topic he spoke on, he crashed and burned in front of his audience. Now I know what most of you cynical people are thinking because I am one of you. This poor guy was bad EVERY time? The answer is yes, he was, but allow me to explain. The stage...Rwanda Africa. The audience...a few thousand conference attendees eager to hear an American preacher. The star...Cab, an American preacher from the south U.S. who probably was great in front of American congregations. A bit of background info...this is a renewal conference for several thousand people in northern Rwanda. Rwandan preachers are very animated and excitable when they preach. Lots of yelling and excitement! I was there as one of the worship leaders for the conference, and had a front row seat on the stage for all of the events. Ok so now back to our hero. All the English speaking people had a rwandan translator and it was exciting to watch the translator take the words of the Americans and make them sound really exciting and dynamic. I don't speak kinyarwandan so I can't be sure if they translated everything verbatim, but you sure could tell when they stumbled on a word they did not know the meaning of.  So Cab begins his sermon with the story of the Captain of a naval vessel. Rwanda is a land-locked country and does not have a navy, so the translator immediately has to explain the Navy and figure out that a vessel is a boat, not an object used to carry perfume as they would think. "So the captain sees a blip on his radar screen"....hmm. He didn't see anything wrong with that as he begins to mime what appears to be windshield wipers, trying to explain a "radar blip" to a crowd of people that have no electricity at home. Not really sure what the translator is telling the crowd at this point, but as the story goes on, the captain "radios" the blip to tell them to change course. Explain radio, not the same as the object they get their news from; explain what change course means and why they need to do that. (story falling apart pretty fast now) The blip radios back and tells the captain he should change his course. Back and forth this goes, but in translator time it is in slow motion, very slow.  Finally the punchline...the captain says "change your course immediately, we are a Naval Vessel!" The reply comes back, "no sir, you need to change your course, we are a lighthouse" Cab immediately smiles having delivered a great story, as the crowd roars in laughter...no wait, that was his fantasy. Despite the big smile of Cab, his audience stares deadpan at him. The translator stares at him in bewilderment and asks "what happened?" Cab replies laughing, it was a lighthouse! Ignorance is funny sometimes. Perhaps the people of the small country of Rwanda, with no oceans or large bodies of water near fog may not know what a lighthouse is. Nah, thinks Cab as he begins to mime a police siren trying to explain the lighthouse. Now as I said I don't understand Kinyarwandan, but some words that are particular to English do not get translated and we all understand those. The translator turns to the crowd, and with a semi-puzzeled look on his face says some words I didn't catch then says clearly "it's the Whitehouse!" Great illustration Cab, now they think the Americans hate windshield wipers.