{"id":546,"date":"2007-03-16T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-16T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2007\/03\/lamb-umc-loses-turkey-of-a-member.html"},"modified":"2007-03-16T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-03-16T08:00:00","slug":"lamb-umc-loses-turkey-of-a-member","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/03\/lamb-umc-loses-turkey-of-a-member.html","title":{"rendered":"Lamb UMC loses Turkey of a Member"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well what can we say?   United Methodists will admit almost anyone into membership, so desperate are we in an age of declining church attendance. <\/p>\n<p>And in Wales Township in Michigan at  Lamb UMC there was a brief eulogy recently for  a critter the pastor called a model member of his congregation&#8212; a wild turkey!  If he was a model member,  I am wondering what the slackers looked like.   This turkey regularly attended services  for over a year and greeted people as they went into the church week after week.  He was there when they came out as well, strutting his stuff.<\/p>\n<p>But one day, someone, apparently annoyed with the noise and fuss of the bird ran over him&#8211; hence the need for a eulogy.  When people would come out of the church, seems he annoyed some folks and caused them to leave in haste and in a huff.  <\/p>\n<p>Here is the story, so you can decide if there has been fowl play here&#8212;  http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/17631469\/.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well what can we say? United Methodists will admit almost anyone into membership, so desperate are we in an age of declining church attendance. And in Wales Township in Michigan at Lamb UMC there was a brief eulogy recently for a critter the pastor called a model member of his congregation&#8212; a wild turkey! If&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Lamb UMC loses Turkey of a Member - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/03\/lamb-umc-loses-turkey-of-a-member.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lamb UMC loses Turkey of a Member - The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Well what can we say? United Methodists will admit almost anyone into membership, so desperate are we in an age of declining church attendance. And in Wales Township in Michigan at Lamb UMC there was a brief eulogy recently for a critter the pastor called a model member of his congregation&#8212; a wild turkey! If&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/03\/lamb-umc-loses-turkey-of-a-member.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-03-16T08:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ben Witherington\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Lamb UMC loses Turkey of a Member - The Bible and Culture","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/03\/lamb-umc-loses-turkey-of-a-member.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Lamb UMC loses Turkey of a Member - The Bible and Culture","og_description":"Well what can we say? United Methodists will admit almost anyone into membership, so desperate are we in an age of declining church attendance. And in Wales Township in Michigan at Lamb UMC there was a brief eulogy recently for a critter the pastor called a model member of his congregation&#8212; a wild turkey! If&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/03\/lamb-umc-loses-turkey-of-a-member.html","og_site_name":"The Bible and Culture","article_published_time":"2007-03-16T08:00:00+00:00","author":"Ben Witherington","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/03\/lamb-umc-loses-turkey-of-a-member.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/03\/lamb-umc-loses-turkey-of-a-member.html","name":"Lamb UMC loses Turkey of a Member - The Bible and Culture","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-03-16T08:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2007-03-16T08:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/d1fd6c7893819eabc624db38ecfd8426"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/03\/lamb-umc-loses-turkey-of-a-member.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/03\/lamb-umc-loses-turkey-of-a-member.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/03\/lamb-umc-loses-turkey-of-a-member.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Lamb UMC loses Turkey of a Member"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/","name":"The Bible and Culture","description":"All Things Biblical and Christian","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/d1fd6c7893819eabc624db38ecfd8426","name":"Ben Witherington","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/75e\/75ec11e1916a2008bc4cc638a0a0de2fx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/75e\/75ec11e1916a2008bc4cc638a0a0de2fx96.jpg","caption":"Ben Witherington"},"description":"Bible scholar Ben Witherington is Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary and on the doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University in Scotland. A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&amp;E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}