RICHMOND, VA – What First Baptist Church of Richmond Assistant Pastor Gregory Streeter offered as a colloquial sermon illustration to lend a little street cred to his Sunday morning sermon turned into an instant scandal and sent a ripple of astonishment through the congregation.

“What Jesus is saying here is illustrated perfectly on that familiar street, Wisteria Lane,” Streeter proclaimed from the pulpit. “Just look at Bree Van De Kamp. To anyone looking at her life from the outside, she certainly seems to have it all together. The cup and dish are very clean and tidy on the outside, but if you take a look inside you’ll find a heapin’ helping of the wickedness that has corrupted Bree and her neighbors.”

Horrified murmurs spread through the congregation like a piece of juicy gossip at a ladies tea.

“When I heard him say something about Wisteria Lane I did a Baptist double take,” said Earl Brantley, a longtime member of FBCR. “I had to look around to make sure I was in church and not watching E!”

But, to his chagrin, Brantley wasn’t watching Jules Asner dish about the latest antics of the women from Wisteria Lane. He was, in fact, listening to a very misguided sermon illustration by his church’s 24-year-old assistant pastor, and the fallout from Streeter’s comments came on faster than Teri Hatcher whipping off her top for the camera.

“Yeah, I definitely got some comments on that one as I was greeting people at the door,” a sheepish Streeter told THO. “Mostly it was middle aged women telling me I shouldn’t be watching that trash, but I did get a couple of thumbs up from some of the youth group guys.”

Ironically, Streeter claims to have never even seen an episode of Desperate Housewives.

“I guess you could say I was trying to be hip,” he said. “I’d heard of the show, so I Googled it to get enough information to fake like I’d seen it so I could fit it into my sermon about not putting on a façade. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

But few in attendance saw the logic in Streeter’s illustration.

“This is what you get when you let a kid preach a sermon,” said FBCR member Marie Halliday, 80. “Young people today have no idea what a desperate housewife is. Let them feed a family on 50 cents a week, and they’ll know what it’s like to be desperate. Not to mention how bad Nicolette Sheridan looks on that show. Suck your cheeks in a little more, honey. That looks nice.”

Streeter has made a promise to himself and others to be a little more careful about the pop culture references he makes in future sermons.

“Yeah, I’m definitely going to be a little more careful in my research next time [FBCR Senior] Pastor Jim [Ralston] goes to Promise Keepers,” Streeter said. “Some people have already turned me on to 7th Heaven and Joan of Arcadia, and one of the youth group kids was talking to me about some show on FX called Nip/Tuck, so I’ve already set the old TiVo to pick that one up.”