Priest's Revenge Backfires
Wednesday, October 3, 2007 at 01:25PM 
Remember the Seinfeld episode in which Jerry decides to heckle a woman while she's at work because the same woman had heckled him on stage the night before? The moral is "how would hecklers like it, if they got heckled?"
Here is a case of a priest who played someone's phone message complaining about his sermon to the entire congregation. "How would you like it if I turned the tables and complained about your complaint?"
The man in question (Angel Llavona) didn't like it one bit. Llavona had complained about his priest's sermon, leaving a message on the priest's answering machine. "Father Rios, this is Angel Llavona. I attended mass on Sunday and I have seen poor homilies, but yesterday broke all records." The priest was a tad miffed, so the next Sunday he played Llavona's phone message to the assembled congregation (which just happened to include Mr. Llavona). Rios then asked the congregation, "what should we do? Should we send him (Mr. Llavona) to Hell or to another Parish?"
Not surprisingly, Mr. Llavona is suing the priest and the diocese for emotional distress from embarrassment and humiliation. (Click here: Priest's response to criticism leads to lawsuit :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Metro & Tri-State).
The moral to the story here is "don't publicly humiliate those who complain about your preaching." Or at least make sure they are not in the congregation when you do!
All kidding aside, this is one of the reasons why we in the Reformed tradition have elder visits (the elders come and visit church members), so that if the preaching is not meeting the needs of the congregation it can be discussed privately and dealt with by those elders who are responsible for overseeing the work of their pastor.
