So, you want to start your own, profitable schism and make the big bucks? It’s fun! It’s profitable! The hours are short! It’s not really work, it’s just simple bloviating! Here’s a short introduction to the beginning courses that Schism Seminary offers the future Pastor Bobs. Did you know that The best Pastor Bobs begin by memorizing just three words!
The young, ambitious Pastor Bob must memorize The Vital Sentence. He must be able to use The Vital Sentence effectively with every person, donor, and potential contributor. The Vital Sentence: “Jesus needs you.”
How do you get to be a Pastor Bob with your own giant mega-church, personal Lockheed Mission Jet, and a couple of three acre mansions? You begin by rehearsing “Jesus needs you.”
What’s hard about that? Protestant Theology is complicated. The successful Pastor Bobs have to have a high enough IQ to be able to put emphasis on different words in The Vital Sentence. “Jesus needs you!” Then, “Jesus needs you!” and “Jesus needs you!”
If your IQ is high enough to do that, you go to Lesson Two. That’s where Protestant Theology gets real complicated. We add syllables! “Jeee-sus ne-eeds y-y-yyou!” Say a few variations out loud. Do this for several days. Work “Jesus needs you.” in every possible variation into every conversation. Sometimes, whisper. Sometimes, shout. Sometimes, imagine that you are using actual exclamation marks! Watch those who hear you. When you properly match pronunciation to the person, they will stop moving away. When you’re ready for your own church, people will move closer, not farther.
See how easy it is to be a Pastor Bob! Future Catholic priests waste ten years in Catholic Seminaries. They pray all the time. They study two thousand years of boring Church History. They go over a couple of thousand years of Old Testament stuff, too. They learn about boring old Church Fathers and complicated stuff about the “Hypostatic Union”, “Transubstantiation”, and real hard words like “deuterocanonical”. Don’t waste time on stuff like that. You learn all you need to know in ten minutes or ten hours or ten days! No holding you back! You’re nearly ready for prime time!
Once you’ve memorized a few dozen ways to say “Jesus needs you!”, ranging in volume from a pulpit-pounding thunder to sincere whisper, you get to go to Lesson Three. You can be a Pastor Bob!
Lesson Three is hard, but you can do it! Lesson Three consists of removing the period following “Jesus needs you.” that we spent so much time learning about in Lesson One. “Jesus needs you.” is no longer a stand-alone sentence. In Lesson Three, it becomes four words and no period! It becomes “Jesus needs you to . . . . ” I know, I know, it’s hard, it’s very hard, but it’s something that every successful Pastor Bob must learn. In Lesson Three, we learn the best ways to add “give me some money.” onto “Jesus needs you to . . .”.
It’s hard, but you can understand. “Jesus needs you to . . . ” You are at the frontier of Protestant Theology. What does Jesus need you to do?
The obvious answer is the right one. “Jesus needs you to give me some money.” In Lesson Three, we learn the vital variations that make that request acceptable. “Jesus needs you to help support our cause.” Isn’t that better than bluntly blurting out “Jesus needs you to give me some money.”?
After you’ve mastered a few such basic additions to “Jesus needs you to”, and maybe invented some of your own, consider this brilliant innovation: “Jesus needs you to contribute from the blessings He has given you so that others may be blessed.” Wow! You compliment the person and make them feel guilty. And, you do it in one sentence! You are so smart! You are almost a real Pastor Bob!
As we near the end of Lesson Three, we learn to make actual absurdity become reasonable. How? We drip sincerity all over it. This is always effective with a certain sort of person: “Jesus needs you to help us because it’s better to teach a man to fish than to just give him a fish.” For some unknown reason, that line, ridiculous as it is when thinking about putting it into practice, is a proven fund-raiser for nearly any cause you can invent. Really, how many people can be helped by learning how to fish? Are you going to buy them a rod, reel, net, boat, and a fishing license, too? Of course you are!
One donor can be told “Jesus needs you to contribute so we can buy this starving man a fishing reel.” Say to another, “Jesus needs you to buy a fishing rod for the poor man.” Children may be told, “Jesus needs you to use some of your allowance to buy him a fishhook or send him a worm.”
Equipping one person with all that and a boat, outboard motor, life preservers, gasoline, and the necessary permits can help you raise enough money to buy your own Lockheed Mission Jet so you can fly to Coastal Angola and watch your intrepid angler bringing home a few smelly fish on the increasingly rare occasions he’s sober enough to do so. “He really needs us to buy some land and build him a dock!”, you realize, as you invent a new concluding phrase to “Jesus needs you to”.
We’ve finished Lesson Number One and Number Two and Number Three. You are almost ready to be ordained! Now, don’t you agree that Jesus needs you to send our deposit to Schism Seminary to show your appreciation for this free introduction and to reserve your place in this year’s Schism Seminary Ninety Day Wonder Class?
