Cafe Worker Burns Down Church In Slow Cooker Debacle

Los Angeles, CA — The historic Thirty-First Baptist Church burned down on Sunday afternoon after a cafe volunteer inadvertently turned a slow cooker into a highly pressurized death machine. No one was hurt in the fire, but sources say that this is not the first incident related to a volunteer worker mishap.

As some members of Thirty-First Baptist Church make sense of what happened on Sunday, others are calling for an end to the free snack program that lead to the untimely demise of the church’s former location. Started in 2002, the free snack program launched as a way to thank everyone who served on Sunday mornings at the church.

“The only reason I became a volunteer was to be a part of the exclusive snack club,” a volunteer who declined to give us his name said. “One morning I tried to sneak into the cafe before anyone noticed, but as soon as I turned around Ol’ Ms. Agnus caught me and told me to go find myself a switch,” the man elaborated.

The unfortunate incident this past Sunday happened when a new volunteer read an ingredient list incorrectly and added a few ingredients that they should not have. Unfortunately, we can not elaborate further due to a gag order placed on us by the FBI.

We can reveal that this was in fact not the first time an incident like this had occurred at Thirty-First Baptist Church. We sat down with Rev. Dr. Mississippi Thisisustian to learn more about the troubling history of the snack program.

“When I came to Thirty-First Baptist Church we were chronically short on volunteers. One Sunday I was the greeter, usher, entire worship team, preacher, and the custodian. Shortly after our church had a potluck and I learned something valuable — people LOVED Ms. Agnus’ slow cooker snacks,” Dr. Thisisustian said.

“So I did what any other self respecting Rev. Dr. would do… I bribed her with everything I could: a covered parking space, reserved pew, shorter sermons, until she finally agreed to let me have her recipes. The next Sunday we implemented the snack program for volunteers and instantly had 35 people sign up to volunteer. Everything was going great until we started recruiting volunteers to actually run the snack program,” the Rev. revealed.

“The truth is Ms. Agnus may have used a few, let’s just say, interesting ingredients in her snacks. We hosted training events but not everything showed up which resulted in some people not being properly trained on how to handle those ingredients. Mr. Mack lost his eyebrows in ‘07, Judith still can’t hear out of her left ear after the fire of 2011, and the list goes on,” Dr. Thisisustian said while shaking his head.

“When we open our doors back up the first thing we’re going to do is implement better training for these cafe volunteers. More noble men may have shut down the snack program, but I know I ain’t gonna go through a lack of volunteers again. We’ve signed up for TrainedUp to handle our training. Every volunteer will complete an online course before touching any of Ms. Agnus’ ingredients. We hope other churches will learn from our mistakes,” the Rev. said before answering a call that we can only assume was from the same FBI agent who contacted us about the gag order.

**This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.