I’ve help to select a new urinal.
 
I’ve moved church tables that weigh more than a pregnant elephant.
 
I’ve stayed up late into the night mere hours before before the Easter sunrise service making a ridiculous craft project because the butterflies we were going to release died.
 
Ministry is chock full off odd tasks and today just hit a new high (low?)  for me.  I’m currently in the process of fighting off a Pokémon invasion.  This task, I might add, was in no way covered during my study at Andover Newton Theological School.
 
Pokémon Go is in full swing and the church I serve is home to several virtual critters and even some of the game accessories.  According to the kid on the ten-speed I just chased down as he was trying to get out of the parking lot, we have Pokéballs in the stone altar.  Which, I guess is a good thing for players but not a good thing for the old altar as people keep climbing it to take selfies.
 
Normally I’d be all over this as a great thing for the church.  We can set up a water station! We can run a power cord out there for people to charge their phones! We can offer to take pictures of them with their captured Squirtle!
 
Here’s my problem –
 
We have a daycare here at the church and the yard where these Pokémon are running amok is the area where the kids play.  It isn’t safe for us to have strangers roaming onto the churchyard.  
 
My ministerial task today was, I kid you not, to go to the police to ask for assistance dealing with marauding Pokémon and their devotees.  They didn’t laugh.  Apparently I’m not the only one with a Pokémon problem.   The app developers have been contacted asking them to remove our church as a site but it may take some time since they are being barraged with removal requests.
 
So, into the ridiculousness that is my ministry we’ll throw a Pokéball and I will try not to sound like the grumpy old neighbor shouting, “Get off my lawn you kids! And take your Charmander with you!”