Our pastor has a short series of sermons leading up to Thanksgiving. He’s titled it “Thank You Notes”, and modeled it after Jimmy Fallon’s such notes on The Tonight Show.

Now, I must say right off I’m not a fan of that show; never have been going all the way back to Johnny Carson.  I’ve never liked any of the late night entertainment shows. I guess by that time of night, if my work for the day and evening is finished, the bed and sleep seem more entertaining than TV.

Why not DVR it, you ask? I don’t have one of these. I guess the price has come down, and I could now probably afford one, but I don’t see any point in spending money on a device that will allow me to watch more TV when I have little enough time for the TV I now watch. Why try to expand my TV watching?

But I prate. Back to the sermon series. I’ve seen Fallon a couple of times, and am familiar with his thank you notes sketches.  I found them moderately funny, but not something to lose sleep over. I would say the thank you notes “written” by Pastor Mark, complete with desk, stool, hand gestures, piano playing while he wrote, and a nearby sidekick, were significantly funnier than Fallon’s. Or perhaps it’s that Mark’s subjects were more local and hence of greater interest to me than are Fallon’s subjects, and thus are funnier to me because they are more about where I am  in the world.

Today he tied gratefulness to stewardship. He proposed three levels of stewardship as being equivalent to a good, better, and great approach to life. Those are my words, not his.

Well done, Pastor Mark. You’ve exceeded Fallon at his own game, and brought us an engaging sermon series on a subject that can easily be difficult due to the commonness of the theme.