I Don’t Understand Why Ushers Can’t Be Trained Assassins

I just got off the phone with Chris Bennett, who leads our ushering team, and I’m not too happy.

All I wanted was for our ushers to be thoroughly trained in hand-to-hand combat and Brazilian jujitsu, in case of emergency. And maybe to be used in occasional sermon illustrations. And possibly to have a mixed martial arts ministry within the church.

But Chris said he didn’t think that it was really “practical” to ask all our ushers to attend combat training, especially since some of them are women in their upper sixties.

I was like, “Practical? How can guarding my life not be practical? I just read in the paper about a convenience store robbery that happened in New York City. Do you want that kind of stuff happening in Ridge View Bible Church? Do you want my blood on your head?”

Chris said he didn’t think that kind of thing would happen here, and that technically there had never been any robbery of any sort in Ridge View, and that the last real crime had occurred five years ago.

I said, “Chris, there’s a well known saying: ‘assumptions killed the cat’. Are you going to be able to live with yourself if I get mugged while preaching?”

He said he would.

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