He Makes A Good Point…

As most of my readers know, I work at a church as a youth minister. Since my church is not particularly large (about 200 members), we have a pretty small staff—the preaching minister, a (part-time) secretary, and myself.

This means that while my primary focus is working with the teens, it is by no means the only thing I do—I preach once a month, I’m in charge of the church website, I do a variety of special projects, and I also work each week on the church bulletin.

For the bulletin, I only have to write one page (for the teens), but I do layout and editing for six of the eight pages. Occasionally, this task proves to be a great source of humor.

Today, I was proofreading an article which dealt with the importance of being an active member of the church, rather than someone who just showed up for worship and never got involved.

The author made the point that work is actually good for us—it keeps our minds and bodies active and also gives us incentive in life. In fact, as the author pointed out:

“Statistics indicate that the mortality rate increases following retirement.”

Seriously? You mean, people tend to die at a quicker rate following retirement? I always assumed that had something to do with the fact that people retire when they’re, well, older, and older people tend to die at a quicker rate than younger people do.

Really, I understand the point the guy was trying to make, but what a laughable statement.

Even better is the fact that I’ve read this quote before, because we’ve used this article already. A better editor might point this out and choose something else, but I thought it was just too good to pass up.