Work-Life Balance

Well, I had my second non-working day of the last month today.  On the other day, it snowed and sleeted.  It was hard to get away.  I took the final mark-up for the bulletin by the office early.  Okay, I walked the dogs by the office and just popped in for a second. Then we began preparing to go away for the day.  As we were leaving, I got a call from the church office saying that the printer was not working; no printer, no bulletins.  No, I said to myself, I told my wife we would get away and so we did.

We drove down to Philadelphia and went to the King Tut exhibit: a long ride and a lot of green for very few relics. I had not realized that Tut’s predecessor was a monotheist. Could he have been Joseph’s pharaoh?  Interesting question, but it seems a little like work. It was great to get away.

Passover Seder

We are having a “Christian Family Seder” on Saturday night.  We did this last year.  The food was great, and it was well attended.  (Or so I am told.) Last year, I got food poisoning the night before and didn’t make it to the seder.

We like to have a family diner for our church community and guests every season. It is sometimes difficult to find the appropriate entertainment  for the occasion. This is particulary difficult during Lent when celebration ativities seem inappropriate.

We will serve a combination of of authentic food, some middle-eastern recipes, and conventional desserts. One of my Jewish friends has loaned us the proper plates. Our haggadah, the words, have only minor changes from what our Jewish brothers and sisters will be using.  The gospels suggest that the Last Supper was a Passover seder, so what could be more appropriate than to share a meal like our Lord shared with his disciples in this Holy time? 

Basketball Children’s Message

I do not always do the children’s message.  In fact, I do not do it more that once a month.  One of the high shool teens does it, another elder does it, and my wife frequently does it.  But today I had the children’s message.

Perhaps it is from all of my sermon preparation over the NCAA tournament, but today the theme was basketball.

I blew up several beach balls (less trouble if they bounce off, and they will bounce off.) I made a large basket with my arms  and let the children shoot the balls through the basket from several feet away.  Easy enough.  Then I made the basket smaller, and the balls no longer went through my arms. I went back to the bigger basket, but moved further away. Again fewer balls went through.  I moved up the steps of the chancel making the basket further away and higher. Again the children had less success. Finally I moved closer with my basket spread wide.

The basket is like God’s loving arms.  God’s love is big love, and God’s love is always near.  Life is hard when God seems small and far away.

It is not a bad message for adults either.

Diversity University

We have an extraordinarily diverse Presbytery. While most churches tend toward monchrome, there are many rainbow churches as well. In our system, we provide for a body to be our conscience for representation. The committee has not been active for years. We seem to have a great and diverse group, but the membership is totally new.

Tonight we talked about the barriers to expression that 1st generation Americans find even when their views are welcome. It is hard, because we think that we are doing everthing that we can do to be open. So how do you make people comfortable contributing when they aren’t sure that they understand everything that is happening.

The really wonderful thing about the committee on representation is the recognition that these folks are the future, and their views are the views we must hear if we are to be a part of the future.

Wedding Bells

We had a wedding rehearsal tonight. When I first got here I learned that I could do lots of weddings if my view of the purpose of the church wedding service was that it serves the motivations of the wedding planner and catering hall.  We are close to some fabulous catering halls, and we could be part of that whole circuit if we chose to be.  We do not, and we are not. 

So I have been here for nearly three years, and this is the first wedding here. Ah well, it is an exciting time. I do not know when the last wedding was done here, but the lighting features built into the electrical system to alert the groom of the bride’s readiness no longer work.  The pedals on the organ that produce a proper wedding march no longer work.  The fellow who repairs the organ says we need a new one.  I choose hymns based on the hospital disposal warning: no sharps.

 But the bride and groom are ready, the church is ready, and it will be a lovely wedding

Caring for Each Other

I was driving to the Presbytery office this morning in the snow. The wipers were going, and the radio was tuned to a channel that would update the traffic and weather.  My cell phone was ringing, but I did not hear it until the call had gone to voice mail.  I pulled off the road to check the call. (Before you put me on the list of the sanctified for stopping to use my cell, I pulled off at a Dunkin Donuts.)

An elder had called because he had been notified that one of our members had not responded to that web of morning calls that goes on at scheduled times  to make sure that each has been blessed with another day.  I said that it was okay, she had gone off to visit her sister.  Some time later, the elder called and said no, her car was at her apartment building. (Our elders also serve the deacon role.)  Eventually, the Superintendent went and checked, and yes she was there. She had not gone on the trip and had been in the shower or something. But someone went out in the snow and drove over to her apartment to make sure that she was okay even when it was expected that she was away.

If we could just bottle this kind of love of neighbor, it would be amazing. And we would not be a small church if we spread that love out to a few more people.

Will it snow?

Because my church is so small, I have a part-time job at the Presbytery office.  We have a big meeting scheduled for Saturday, and snow is expected. Lots of snow. 

When I worked in the secular world, snow was something that could make you late for work, but seldom caused work to be cancelled. When I was a chaplain, I went into the hospital when several feet of snow was falling. 

My Dad was a school superintendent, and it was his job to determine whether there would be school. Now I have that responsibility for the Presbytery. Odd,because I never thought that they were related. He was, of course, concerned with the children’s safety weighed against the inconvenience of parents. I am concerned with the safety of those considerably older.  I am concerned about the 11th comandment for the senior set: thou shall not fall down. Snow is peril. 

I have, in fact, cancelled church twice, and not because I could not get there. Of course, few would come, if we had a service, but that is not why we did not have worship. I cancelled it because I was afraid that the only people who would try to come would be the ones who should stay home.  This seems to be something that we do in small churches that would be unthinkable under tall steeples.

Still, it is odd that people will go to work, but not church, in the snow. 

Bored Meetings

Well, I tried.  The agenda for our board (Session in Presby-speak) meeting was for a meeting that lasted one hour and thirty minutes (7:30-9 pm).  Yet I did not leave the church until after 10, counting post meeting conversations.  Actually the agenda plan worked well, because there is no telling how long we would have been if we discussed everything on the agenda in the same time it took to talk about what was not there.

I should say that we spent all of that time on important stuff, very important stuff.  The problem is that when you are on the edge of extinction, everything is critical, and we can not seem to get everything done. 

We did take time, as sheduled, for breakout sessions to ”vision” personnel and marketing ourselves.  These are areas that we do not seem to address.  The approach was eye-opening into what we should and could be doing if we could stop talking about the clutter. Yes, I know that personnel sounds like clutter, but it starts seeming more important when you are running a deficit and personnel is 60% of your budget.  We do not even have a committee, and somebody really ought to ask where 60% of the money goes.  

May God bless the Session members who were there. They did some heavy lifting tonight. 

What if Nobody Comes?

One of the great fears in small church programs, particularly Pastor-planned programs, is that no one will come.  Few things are more depressing than preparing for an event that no one attends. We came very close to that tonight.  We had three people. To make matters worse, it was a two church event. So two of the three were clergy. At least when it is only your church, you can simply scratch that idea and consider it a lesson learned.

During Lent, we have joint special programs with the local Methodist church. We have an Ash Wednesday service at their place and a Maundy Thursday service at ours.  In between, we flip back and forth weekly for our Lenten study program. Last year, we read A Purpose Driven Life.  This year we are studying The Spirituality of Fund-Raising by Henri Nouwen. The Methodist minister has taken the lead in this, and she has prepared wonderful lessons.

Tonight she broke off from what she had planned, and we discussed possible joint missional opportunities.  Both of these churches have long histories and long histories together.  There have been merger talks since 1925. Our paths seem intertwined, and we will continue to work together.  She is right to begin to focus on joint mission. I think it is a good step in our relationship, and in any relationship that serves the Lord.

The New Sunday School Curriculum Has Arrived!

We use One Room Sunday School from Abingdon Press, and the teachers and children love it.  The curriculum allows us to teach children from kindergarten to middle school in a single classroom.  For quite a while, we used web resources and the Rotation Workshop model.  The idea was that we could conserve money through less expensive lesson plans, and certainly there was a lot out there. But we were over-working our teachers for only a few children and were ill prepared to handle children coming in ages that were not anticipated.  We also needed more teachers scheduled than we could recruit.

One Room Sunday School has lesson plans for everyone and is manageable by single prepared teacher.  We get great participation form our high school and college aged young people, and this is an areas where they love to help.  Frequently, we have only two young children in the Sunday School and two in the nursery.  That is the bad news, but the good news is that they are almost always here.   Their parents are wonderfully supportive and faithful in attendance, and they are a reason for hope.  At the very least, when we have visitors they find that they are not alone.