Funny or embarrassing incidents at church

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  • [quote author=MinaGHATS link=topic=7964.msg102899#msg102899 date=1241997757]
    ofcourse it was...i'm not that bad of a person...... i don't know how it happened tho... must have been to absorbed by my thoughts :-\


    i like your profile pic. Abouna Anastasi and abouna Karas
  • thanks... i took this pictures this new years eve...
  • Thread. Becoming. Too. Serious. Argh!

    So, during a liturgy one time, one of our deacons misplaced the cloth that allows us to hold the bottom of the censer for abouna. In all my simplicity I thought it was just a pretty cloth with no purpose. Abouna started to rush through because we were running late and told me to get the shorya; I couldn't find the cloth so I decided hey I'll just use my hands to hold it up. Abouna decided to go really slow during the remembrance of the dead after the commemoration of the saints, so for a few minutes, everyone around me and I'm sure some of the congregation saw me make a plethora of different faces as I suffered quietly while the skin on my hand slowly but surely burned off.
  • [quote author=ophadece link=topic=7964.msg102891#msg102891 date=1241990999]
    Hi SuperMAN(BAM),
    I strongly disagree with what you wrote "Chirst arose Himself - truly He arose Himself"; don't take Coptic language literally, because your translation made it very dogmatically incorrect. The right translation, for all people to share with me in this please, is "Christ has risen", not "Christ was risen", not "Christ is risen", not anything else please.
    [coptic]oujai qen `P[C[/coptic]



    I strongly agree with this. Good work!
  • Alright Guys i got a lot of these

    one story is also bout a deacon who forgot to say shere pistavros and instead he said to sayedna Meya Meya ya sayedna meaning 100% lol

    i myself when i was a child, because my father taught me how to read arabic , used to go up during pascha and read.  So one time i accidently pronounced a word wrong and i actually cursed in arabic during pascha week lol. EVeryone in the church cracked up histerically and i had no clue what was happening

    Another deacon in the church on good friday was reading a passage about Herod and instead of saying herod sat on the throne of the city, he accidently said herod sat on the seat of childbirth, in Arabic both words are verryyyy similar lol

    One time in Egypt a deacon said el Exbress instead of el ebraxis and the priest answered him from inside and said ew3a lahsn ye doosak meaning watch out so it doesnt run u over.
    loving this topic

  • [quote author=SilentOne link=topic=7964.msg102905#msg102905 date=1242003039]
    Thread. Becoming. Too. Serious. Argh!

    So, during a liturgy one time, one of our deacons misplaced the cloth that allows us to hold the bottom of the censer for abouna. In all my simplicity I thought it was just a pretty cloth with no purpose. Abouna started to rush through because we were running late and told me to get the shorya; I couldn't find the cloth so I decided hey I'll just use my hands to hold it up. Abouna decided to go really slow during the remembrance of the dead after the commemoration of the saints, so for a few minutes, everyone around me and I'm sure some of the congregation saw me make a plethora of different faces as I suffered quietly while the skin on my hand slowly but surely burned off.


    well it dafintly depends on the shoria. in my church we normally have the greek ones that don't get too hot from the bottom. also some people feel strongly about that cloth. they say we are not supposed to "touch" the shoria during the service becasue Christ is in there.

    ANYWAYS, since this is about the shoria; this happen just last couple of weeks during good friday. we had 4 priests. so we needed for shorias for the metanias and the procession. so the smart deacons decided to have all 4 heavy greek shoria's as i said above all on one stand, which is a strong stand. but the distribution of the weight was done wrong......so after couple of minutes someones just touches the stand and the whole stand fell with the 4 shorias that were prepared with coal in them to be used :D
  • anther thing with pascha: this is being told by my church deacons for long, but not sure when or who started. it was an old guy saying thok te to goom and instead you hear him saying "go daddy do..."
  • [quote author=minagir link=topic=7964.msg102909#msg102909 date=1242006975]

    also some people feel strongly about that cloth. they say we are not supposed to "touch" the shoria during the service becasue Christ is in there.



    I also feel the same way, yet back then we were being rushed and I was not well-informed about the significance of everything, so I avoided the cloth all together. I make sure to inform everyone now about these things. Similarly, during another liturgy the cloth got misplaced, and I instead replaced it with one of the communion cloths (the thin ones not the double layered ones). It burned right through -__-º.
  • Our Lord indeed arose Himself from the dead...

    about the rising I would have appreciated it as a private message, instead of sidetracking on here... I will go ahead and start a new topic for it... so that we can discuss it better!

    in this topic... the abouna that i mentioned earlier, his brother may God rest his soul, he only died a few days ago, and everyone was mentioning some of the stories... and here is a Pascha one!

    so he was young, about 5 or 6... he went to the pascha, and he never learned hymns except from what he heard... so to him he heard it different... instead of Pasoteer en aghathos... he heard it baso te** el aragoz... he didn't know what he was saying, didn't even know it was wrong... until my grandpa heard him, and taught him the right way! when I heard this story, I was like... hmm I have the right place for that!

    Truly The Christ arose Himself!
  • We once had a deacon that said: 'ayoha el gamoos qefo', instead of 'ayoha el geloos qefo'
    :p
  • ok once we had a priest instead of giving a sermon he questioned all the decons.. so he calls on a young deacon and asks him to give him any verse .... the deacon (pretty young kid) goes "From the bible?" abouna looks at him and goes "la min el qoraan"

  • I got a couple o fstories myself, personally, i heard them all, none of the ones being mentioned here have been attended or seen by me.... lets start with the funniest:

    On a Feast Fundraising diner, the food was under-cooked, and the following day in Mass, everybody had food poisoning... including the Priests... so, being in a big Church, the priests had at their disposal a toilet very close to the Altar... so a Priest goes to the washroom, totally oblivious to the fact that He was wearing a wireless mic... and right in the middle of the Mass you hear: BLOOM... "YA ALLAH"...

    Another Story: a deacon instead of saying : Pray for the Hugomens, Priests, Deacons,... etc...  He sais: Pray for the HUMUNGOUS PRIESTS, Deacons.. etc... and the Priest, with His Lefayef (covering His hands, acts as if He is coughing, but he actually is laughing sooo hard...)

    Last Story: In a really early Mass after a long day before... in a Monastery, during the Apostles fast, The Priest is saying the Fraction, and He sais : It[The Holy spirit] Came upon Them as tongues of Fire... and at that moment, a Deacon, who was really really tiered, put down his head by accident into the candel, and his hear instantaniously caught on fire...
  • These are hilarious.

    Here's one I've heard: In his sermon, Abouna was spelling Jesus, but accidentally said: "G-E-S-U-S".

    One time, Abouna was baptizing an older child (toddler I think) and after being dipped in the water, the kid grabbed onto Abouna's long beard, to which Abouna responded by saying in Arabic "I renounce you Satan" and he dipped the child even further into the water.

    Another time, A kid read the Pauline, and apparently no one was listening (not on Sunday), because his brother then went up and read the same reading and then the deacons said the Acts Response and the Catholic Epistle was not read that day!

    That's all I can think of at this moment.

    Great topic by the way...
  • In a procession, in my younger days, I was holding a candle and it (accidently) lit the hair of the kid in front of me.  I kept smacking him back and forth in the area to put out the fire.  I was scolded for beating up the kid when in fact I was trying to put out the fire.
  • Another time, also in my youthful days, His Grace, the Thrice Blessed of Memory, Anba Youannis of El-Gharbiya, came to our church and wanted to sit as he handed out the eulogion bread to the people at the end of the Liturgy.  I presented him with one of the throne chairs that we have for the bishops, he refused it and wanted a chair that was put to the side. I tried to explain to him that we use that chair to just place things on it because of its characteristics, but he would not listen.  He grabbed it and brought it over himself.  When he sat in it, I realized that the coating for the leather of the chair had stuck to his tunic (tonia) relative to his sweat and the entire top to bottom of the tonia was ruined.  He did not realize it, but I ran for the hills because I knew anger was about to hit.  I believe our abouna offered to have seven tonias made for him.  If anyone remembers Anba Youannis, one can realize how angry he was.  I tried to tell him but he would not listen.  Sometimes you have to listen to the deacon.
  • We had a child (chanter) say in arabic the response 'unto the east look' by saying:  "wa illa shark ondhoroo" instead of "wa eela shark ondhoroo".  That is to say 'look every where but the east'.
  • What about the dingbats at the Silver Anniversary Dinner, that was celebrated for His Holiness in New Jersey, who came in rushing to put up the banner over the dias table, with the word "jubilee" spelled "gubilee"?
  • How about when the deacons bow to the ground and static cling holds the tonia to the body in the funniest ways?
  • We had a priest from Egypt visiting, and he was poorly attempting to do the Liturgy in English, and he kept pronouncing Holy Sprite instedad of the Holy Spirit.
  • We had a Sunday School teacher give a sermon in the liturgy, who had a bit of an accent and a lisp.  He would say the word "sin" and "thin", yet he was not thin.  One of the kids said why does he keep talking about 'thin' when he is so fat.
  • I had gotten a pectoral cross as a present for a priest at our church as a gift from my trip to Egypt.  I bought this very ornate cross from the Mahaba Bookstore in Shoubra.  Needless to say the workmanship from Egypt is sometimes suspect, and in this case it was.  As I was giving it to him, he was humble about not wearing something so ornate, so I made the comment, please wear it...if you have to bear a cross, why not have it as a beautiful one.  So he accepted.  As I was placing it on him, it fell apart.  I was so embarassed.  I told him I would have it fixed, and I did, but I have been too embarassed to bring it back to him.
  • How about the little kid at our church, who thought that abouna was trying to hit his father, bopped abouna.  The priest was doing the tapping/crossing blessing with the water at the end of the liturgy for the servants of the altar and it was misinterpreted by the little kid, so he wanted to protect and defend his father.
  • I was trying to teach a little boy about the Resurrection re-enactment and that Our Lord is Risen.  As I was carrying him (the child) around for the procession, he said to me:  "If everyone here is to celebrate him rising from the dead, then why did He go up there when everybody is down here (as he points to the Crucifix Icon as it sits atop the iconostasis).  I was humbled by a child.  When of the few times I smile as I process around the church.
  • Pst, ilovesaintmark, you can post numerous stories in one reply, just thought I'd put that out there  ;) haha.

    One time at our church we were about to begin the prayer for the gospel and we had a fairly new deacon. Abouna said eshlil and the deacon said pray for the gospel. There was about a 10 second pause before abouna said irini pasi and we just continued haha.
  • From experiences at my church altar service is beginning to be taken too lightly. There are about 8 deacons in the altar every sunday. Five of them are below 11 years old. They all want to say a response and do things and the truth is they are not ready and  do not know how to serve in the altar. These funny incidents are amusing and I can sight thousands of them, but the fact is they should not be happening. Only those who are qualified should do their appropriate tasks. If someone can read let him read, serve with Abouna in the altar, etc. But the reward for serving in the altar is no longer a reward and is given to anyone. In other orthodox churches from what I have heard the deacons all seem to be over the age of 35 and all are very skilled.
  • [quote author=LondonCopt link=topic=7964.msg102844#msg102844 date=1241898443]
    Haha I LOVE this topic! I once asked a bishop if God has a sense of humour, and according to His Grace, He does!

    I'll share another one. I was once leading the liturgy in our church, so I had the microphone right in front of me. My stomach wasn't quite right that Sunday, so after taking Communion I was feeling particularly bloated. So I went to sing Pi Oik, but instead of the words coming out of my mouth all that was heard was the biggest belch ever coming through the microphone system  :-\ The cymbals stopped and silence fell upon the church...don't think I've ever been so embarassed in my life!

    Matthew


    WOW thats a great emabresment :P
  • i have to include this story:

    it was me when i started becoming a deacon back in egypt. 10-year-old who was still learning. it's in the middle of liturgy and i learned how to say "sallo min aglel-engil al-moqqdas." it's time for me to say it at one liturgy and i was responding to the second priest of the church. he's done and it took me like 1-2 seconds to get to say the response, new at it ba2aa. So the priest himself would just responded instead of me.
    wait, that's not the funny part........from that time and on every time i respond to that priest in this response he DOES NOT give me that second to say the response.
  • ok abouna asked me to help him out with a mass for the Eritreans so i was in the altar and me and my black friend were jokin around and foldin the clothes, so my friend said " you should be studtyin 4 ur exam" and i'm like "what do u know ur black" i didn't realize the mike was infront of me and all the Eritreans heard
  • This is few years back.  I was in the quire before I was a deacon.  And this was on a Sunday at the liturgy in my Ethiopian Orthodox Church.  I was standing next to the volume controller of the microphones (it is kind of big).  And it was time for everyone to bow down (or neel all the way down).  And I was kind of bored and no one was looking at me since all bowed down.  So I pressed the 'play' button on the sound controller.  Then all of a sudden, the voice of a white lady started to play on the speakers while the main priest was saying stuff through his microphone.  I felt real bad.  Then the guy in charge of controlling the volume kind of rebuked me.  That was all.  :)
  • Once there was a man and his mother were at church. The mother got stung by a scorpion and she was yelling for help. Her son (about 40 years old) took his shoes off and hit her for yelling and screaming in church.
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