Sin poses a great danger to the church. In fact, sin can destroy the church.
My older brother Wayne is a long-time member of First Baptist Church in Hornbeck, Louisiana. He said that one time many years ago, their pastor had a creative brainstorm. Whenever a pastor has one of these, as with all storms, it poses a danger to the church. The pastor’s idea was that for their new year’s worship service they would have a new beginning. They would ask the Lord to forgive them of their sins and take them all away. With this clean slate, they would begin the new year.
To symbolize this new beginning, the pastor placed a large, empty flowerpot on the communion table. In the bottom of the pot, he put a lighted candle. Then, during the service, he encouraged the members to write down on slips of paper the sins that they had committed during the past year. They then asked the Lord to forgive them of their sins, and, to symbolize the fact that these sins had been completely removed, he invited them to come forward and drop the slips of paper into the flowerpot, where they would be consumed by the flame.
This seemed like a very meaningful thing to do, and the members were almost all moved by their pastor’s exhortation to participate in this part of the service. As they looked back over the past year, they listed many sins on many slips of paper. Then, at the appropriate time, they began coming forward to drop those slips into the flowerpot. It was at this point that it became obvious that not all was going to go according to plan. For one thing, they had committed too many sins during the past year. This led to too many slips of paper being dropped into the flowerpot. As the members continued coming by the communion table to cast their sins into the fire, what was once a small flickering flame turned into a roaring blaze that began leaping to the top of the pot.
Another miscalculation was the nature of the pot. It was not designed to withstand a roaring fire and began cracking in the intense heat that was being generated by the combined sins of the flock.
The final miscalculation was the use of the candle. No problem as long as the only fire was its wick that was burning. But now under the intense heat of the larger fire, the entire candle began melting and wax began running through the sides of the cracked pot onto the communion table. This was the final straw for some of the more practical-minded deacons. They grabbed the communion table and, like Old Testament scapegoats, began bearing the sins of the congregation away into the wilderness outside the door.
Wayne said that it was a close call. Just a few more minutes and sin would have completely destroyed First Baptist Church of Hornbeck.
That’s not the only church to face such a danger. Sin is always a deadly threat. We must never take it lightly.
