Having a tower don't make it a church

I had a chance to visit with Dave, second cousin once removed, over the weekend. New visitors will have to read previous posts about Dave to understand some of this. Let’s just say that Dave is unique. He is going to marry a woman with two children – Dave calls them Yahoo and Google. She also has two German Shepherds (Nitro and Glycerin) – Dave calls them Bamm-Bamm and Fluffy.

Dave and his fiancée are taking pre-nuptial counseling at her church, which is where they are going to be married. As far as I know, Dave has no known or discernable religious beliefs. His parents are not Catholic but they sent him to Catholic school (which is fairly common). This produced the famous “Communion-host incident” of the second grade. Not being Catholic did not bother Dave, of course, he just went to Communion like everyone else. The only difference, instead of swallowing the wafer, he started saving them. Until some kid ratted him out, he had a stash of between 20 and 30. This was not looked upon favorably by those in charge. He also managed later to become an alter boy, mostly because he thought he would “look good in the outfit” (cassock and surplice), until someone remembered that he wasn’t, you know, Catholic.

Dave thinks the pre-nuptial counseling is going swell; my guess is that he is the only one. This is a very fundamentalist church. Explaining pre-milleniumism and post-milleniumism to Dave would be pretty much like trying to explain Newton's Third Law of Motion to a chipmunk -- and Dave and the Chipmunk would have exactly the same expression. This is also one of those congregations that believes that using the word “church” is wrong, so they refer neither to themselves or the building as a “church.” After being corrected a number of times for using “church,” Dave started calling the members the “prayers” and the building the “praying-place.” The preacher gave him a stern talking to, always a bad idea with Dave. Dave pointed out to the preacher, who had named his only son Kirk, that “kirk” is the Scottish word for “church.” That’s right, the preacher at the church where you cannot use the word church had in effect named his son Church, and Dave pointed that out to him.

And Dave thinks everything is going swell.