What's Lacrosse?

A few Sundays ago I was asked to substitute teach for our Sunday school class. Now, I typically enjoy teaching, but in my church there's always the possibility of something crazy happening. For example, the other day my friend was teaching about choices and consequences and decided to illustrate this lesson through a childhood experience. He said that he decided, as a young boy, in order to go for a really fast ride to tie his dog to his big wheel. However, as soon as he told his dog to go the big wheel took off and he crashed his head on the sidewalk. Good story - choice / consequence illustrated. Now, as he started to continue with his lesson a very nice lady raised her hand and said, "Now, I don't support animal cruelty and I'm not sure your dog should have been put through that." Um, I guess point not communicated. And then to make matters even better, ten minutes later, on a completely different topic, the same lady raised her hand and admitted, "Okay, I've once been mean to animals, but again, I don't support it."

I'm not going to lie I absolutely love these moments at my church. I mean, there's nothing more fun than watching the teacher spin a crazy comment into a faith promoting statement. Oh, you saw a cat at the store scratch a man's eyes out...now, I think we all can apply that trials are difficult and we must pray more often for help. Pure genius.

Now, as much as I love watching this awkward dance go on I got admit I was a little scared what curve ball would be thrown at me. So, there I sat, opening my lesson with a story from college about when I was playing lacrosse and just as I was bearing my testimony about how prayer helped me overcome a difficult time someone shouted from the back, "What's lacrosse?!" For a second I ignored the comment and tried to continue my heart warming testimony when someone answered her question by saying, "It's like ice hockey" and then before I could offer my rebuttal someone said, "No, it's more brutal and more like soccer." Ice hockey? Soccer? And then someone said, "Draw the stick on the board!" I then proceeded to draw the stick, give a brief overview of lacrosse, which apparently didn't suffice because more questions came. Finally, I found myself pantomiming someone playing lacrosse and wondering where in the world this lesson was going.

Eventually the lesson got back on track, but I give high marks to my church. I really thought I was in safe territory with no stories about animals, homeless people or questionable doctrine. Well done. Well done.