I once worked for a massive corporation in a sea of cubicles. One summer we got a memo from the corporate office about food and drinks at our desk. Apparently, we were worried about a fruit fly infestation. So the new rule we were to follow was simple:
“Employees can only have water and hard candy at their desks.”
That seems easy, right? Pretty clear. But as soon as it got posted, questions started to pop up like weeds:
What is hard candy?
What about candies that start out hard but then end up chewy?
What about those strawberry candies that have jelly in the middle?
Do fruit flies not like hard candy?
Oh no, what do we do about nougat?
Within a week, the office was in a minor panic and the admin decided to step in. She said she would compose a memo to corporate asking for a more detailed definition of hard candy. We could suddenly envision a hard candy committee forming. We all felt foolish. We went back to our desks and surfed the Internet.
Sometimes the same thing happens at church. We turn “Whereever two or more are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” into, “Wherever two or more are gathered, so shall a committee be formed with a logo designed by someone’s artistic son and an official sounding title.”
A church I know has a banner committee. I think they get together and talk about banners. How flat they are, how long they are, how to roll them up. This is what I imagine anyway, because no one has ever asked me to be on a committee. Although, I might start a council of sarcasm. Our motto would be, “Creating mottos is such an effective use of time.”
