From a letter to the Church Times
Sir -
The story goes that when a church had to be rebuilt, an inventive member of the congregation offered to pay for the entire job if it was done to his design. On the new church's first Sunday, the congregation, as they arrived, were puzzled to see only one pew, at the back of the church. As soon as it was filled, however, it slid, on rails, right to the front, and a new one appeared at the back. Again, as this became full, it slid forward. And so on. So, by the time the service started, the congregation were, for the first time in living memory, all sitting at the front.
The vicar was delighted, and felt that the only way he could do justice to the situation was to preach his favourite sermon, an exegesis of some of the knottier passages from Habakkuk, incorporating fascinating anecdotes of the vicar's early life as a Boy Scout, a joke which sounded much funnier when Rabbi Lionel Blue told it on the radio the previous week, and selected material from some of that week's “why-oh-why” columns in the Daily Mail. After he had been preaching for precisely 12 ½ minutes, just at the point where he wassaying, “And secondly…….”, a bell rang, a trap door opened in the pulpit, and he disappeared into the crypt.