‘Please arrange your deaths accordingly’

(A column from publisher emeritus Bill Cooke from June 25, 2015) Neighbor Grover sez if you divide the radius of a pumpkin by its diameter, you get pumpkin Pi.

My thanks to Bob and Betty Harper of our town for providing me another gem for your collection of religious humor.

This is a notice posted on a church bulletin board, and published in the North Carolina Christian Advocate on Aug. 14, 1958. Enjoy.

NOTICE: Some members of this church have neglected to bring their tithes and offerings regularly to God, but have put it off until the last of the fiscal year. Therefore, our church schedule will have to be revised—as follows:

1. The pastor will save all his sermons and preach 52 on the last Sunday of the fiscal year. Be prepared to stay 23 hours.

2. The pastor will not make any hospital visits or perform any marriages, funerals or baptisms until the last week. Please arrange your weddings, illnesses and deaths accordingly.

3. The choir will not sing until the last Sunday and then it will sing 52 anthems.

4. The janitor will not clean the church until the last week, but will then do it 52 times so the building will be spotless on that last Sunday of the fiscal year.

5. Sunday School teachers are asked to write their own lessons, since we cannot afford to buy the quarterlies until the end of the fiscal year.

6. The church and classrooms will not be heated or lighted except during the last week of the fiscal year.

7. There will be no church bulletins until that last Sunday. On that day there will be 52 bulletins to inform you of what is going to happen in the past year.

8. There will be no work done for repair and upkeep until the last week. Meanwhile, pay no attention to bumps in the parking lot and driveway, and peeling paint.

9. Missionaries will make no effort to win souls except during the last week of the fiscal year.

10. Retired ministers and widows and orphans will learn to do without food until the last week of the fiscal year. Then we’ll stuff them with enough to last them until the end of the next fiscal year.

11. Seminaries, colleges and mission schools will hold classes only during the last week of June. (Some adjustment will be necessary here, as all the students will then be home for summer vacation. But, surely God will understand.