We are looking for a few courageous folk who are willing to assist on Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings with our audio/visual work, which are necessary for our in-person worship as well as our online attendees. Some of the skills are very easy to learn and others can be learned over time. If you are willing to explore some of these roles, please contact Office Manager Sue-Ann Wichman here.
Not long ago, I was talking to a presbytery executive who seemed kind of dispirited. When I asked how she was doing, she responded that she felt that she spent too many hours every day dealing with matters that seem to have nothing to the Reign of God. She’s a person who dreams big, so I can imagine how frustrating it would be.
Here’s my witty wisdom on the matter: So much of what it takes for the church to be the church has nothing to do with the church being the church. After Jesus and the disciples ate the last supper together, Judas went away to conspire, Jesus and the eleven others went to the Mount of Olives to pray, and we all know the drama of Judas’ betrayal, Jesus’ arrest, and the disciples’ abandonment. But guess what: Someone had to clean up the dishes. Seriously, someone was always cleaning up the dishes, returning the donkey, filling the wineskins, finding some firebrands for the nocturnal forays into the garden, making arrangements for overnight accommodations (for 13, most of the time!), and so on. Someone real does the work of “house elves” – those are imaginary creatures from the Harry Potter books, who do all of the mundane tasks out of sight and out of mind. In fact, there are moments in the gospels when Jesus instructs some of the disciples to go and make arrangements, reminding us that, even for Jesus, things did not just magically appear. Real life is about someone cleaning the crumbs off the counter, remembering to take the garbage to the curb, and putting more air in the tires when the weather gets cold – along with all the exciting stuff that gets into novels.
The mundane. None of it is sexy but all of it is necessary.
And that’s true of church life. So, the presbytery executive has to meet with a committee trying to sell some church property, and a financial secretary trying to balance a spreadsheet, and a pastor who may fill a vacancy that someone abruptly quit, and so on. In a well-oiled machine, one might imagine that all the mundane stuff is delegated to others. That’s what the Apostles did in Acts 6, when they invented the role of “deacon” out of necessity. But machines are not always well-oiled, and the vicissitudes of life continually get in the way. So, everybody – Jesus, Apostles, presbytery executives, and the rest of us – find ourselves attending to the mundane even if we struggle to see what it has to do with the Reign of God. In the end, even the mundane to do with the Reign of God.
Someone stops by and brings doughnut holes to the church on Sunday mornings. That is a part of the Sunday routine that most of us never think about, but we love the genuine connections that take place when we gather on the patio and visit with one another following worship. The experience of fellowship feels like the Reign of God is present, but if that is true then stopping to get the doughnut holes is a Reign of God thing also. Someone arranges to have the choir robes cleaned on occasion. Someone makes sure that scattered hymnals are put in their proper place between Sunday and Saturday worship. If you’ve walked on it, someone swept or vacuumed it. If you drink it, someone prepared it. The mundane is everywhere and is always important.
So, let me invite you to circle back up to the top of today’s message and ask yourself if you might be someone who can take on the task of assisting with the audio/visual portion of our worship services. Are you someone who might serve on a commission, host a “Life Together” event after Saturday worship, greet people as they enter worship, and so on? There are many mundane tasks that go into participating in the Reign of God, but there are no unimportant ones. So, give it some thought. If God is calling us to do it, then let’s do it well.
Thanks for all of you “house elves” out there. We appreciate your faithfulness,
Mark of St. Mark
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