'Anybody’s welcome': Florida pastor invites alligator to church; offers business card

A pastor at Victory Church in Lehigh Acres, Florida, US welcomed an alligator into the congregation after it wandered to the front gates nearby his church. While the reptile had crawled out of a nearby storm drain, the pastor was kind enough to let it cleanse its sins saying that ‘anybody’s invited’ to worship the Lord. “He came to our church. I don’t know what his spiritual condition is,” lead pastor Daniel Gregory at Lehigh’s Victory church said in the footage. He was also caught offering the animal his business card. The services are held between 9 am and 11 am Sunday mornings, he informed his ‘unusual’ visitor. 

“I need to invite this gator to church,” the pastor can be heard saying, labelling the reptile as “one of the daycare workers” that came for a visit, although it “turns out to be a gator”.  “Want to check us out?” he goes on to add, as he walks up close to the creature.

Gregory also uploaded the photographs of the gator on his Facebook handle with the caption “When a Gator shows up to your church but isn’t ready to accept the Lord.” Several onlookers can be seen standing clueless about the gator’s next move as the pastor gets "personal with the big guy". “He’s coming to church, get ready,” said Gregory in a video that emerged online. 

The predator, however, seemed to have denied to avail the church service or the pastor’s offer to baptize him as he scurried back into the storm drain.

'Definitely not advisable,' warns Florida's conservation commission

Adam Brown of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission told Fox10 that while the footage is pleasing in its viewing aspects, it is definitely not advisable to approach close to a wandering alligator, as he also warned that the residents must “not to take that chance”. The pastor, though, admitted in televised remarks that it may not have been “the best idea” to get near the wild animal in that fashion. FWC Nuisance Alligator Hotline at 866-FWC-GATOR rolled out the digits cautioning people if there’s an alligator in the vicinity it is advisable that one should like to have it removed instantly by the wildlife experts.