Effective Ministry

I got an email last week from a woman whose wedding I officiated almost ten years ago.  I hear from her or husband occasionally.  We have kept in touch, even though they moved to New York (where he lived) right after their wedding.

I had known the bride for a few years before she got married.  She was a regular at our Saturday night chapel service.  The service was small, and filled mostly with retired people, so I couldn't help noticing her when she first started attending.  One of her best friends from church was an eighty year old woman who still volunteered regularly in the church office.   She also participated in a couple of Bible studies and went to a community organizing meeting with me, once.

At some point this young man started attending the Saturday night service with her.  All of the widows who attended our chapel service had a front row seat for their courtship.  Of course, they got married in the chapel, right before the Saturday evening service.

They invited us to come and visit us in New York sometime.  My husband and I took them up on it.  We went to a jazz club, Central Park, The Cloisters of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and then, on Sunday, to church.

When their son was born, I sent them a piece of art with a scripture passage from Isaiah,  "I have called you by name... you are mine."

The email I got last week said they would be in Texas because they were adopting a little girl.  How far away was I?  Actually, as it turned out, I was pretty far away from where they were, but they wanted to get together, if possible.

So, on Thursday night, they drove all the way over to where I am to meet me at my church, with their new daughter.  We had a tour of our fellowship hall, sanctuary and pre-school.   In the sanctuary, they walked into our chancel and asked if I would say a prayer for their daughter.

We did.

We spent some time catching up after that.  They told me about their community and congregation, and asked questions about my move and the congregation I serve now.  They are now attending a large congregation of another denomination but they would be Lutheran again, in a heartbeat -- if they could find a place to worship nearer them.

What is it that you miss?  I asked.

The liturgy, they said.  They love the liturgy.

I asked about their daughter.  They said she was a miracle -- the agency calling and asking them if they could get on a plane the next day, the flight being available, that they were here, right now.   We talked some more about their lives,  taking our time.

We finally said goodbye, grateful for the conversation, grateful for the prayers.  They returned home with their new daughter.

They are not members of my church any more.  They haven't been for many years.  They have another pastor.  But once in awhile, we share these small fragments of each others' lives, and we are grateful for it.  I know I am.  I'm grateful to see how they are a blessing in the place where they live:  in their congregation, in their community.  I am grateful to know that they are growing in faith, and in love.

One of my friends says that this relationship is a sign of my effective ministry.  I will tell you honestly that I am not sure exactly what that means.  I keep thinking that effective ministry is about big and flashy things:  transformative community and social ministries, starting new organizations, things like that.  But I also know that effective ministry is about relationships.  It's about our relationship with God, and our relationships with one another, and how they change us.  From one degree of glory into another.  In ways that we often cannot see.

But for a moment, this week, the veil was pulled back, and I caught a glimpse of it.  It was the kingdom of heaven, while were were sitting on the steps of the chancel, surrounding a tiny girl with prayer.

A miracle.

"You're So Gracious"

My former congregation had a generous policy about funerals.  There were a lot of people who were connected with us, in some way or another, and we could usually find some way to work it out if someone wanted to have their funeral in our sanctuary.  But, we have always had two or more pastors, so it was relatively easy to work that into someone's schedule.  If it didn't work out for any of the pastors, on one or two occasions we authorized another pastor to come and lead the funeral service.

So it was that one Monday our receptionist got a phone call from a family that desperately wanted their mother's funeral in our sanctuary, even though she had transferred to another congregation many years ago.  They also wanted one of the former pastors at their current congregation to preside at the service.

That sounded like a slightly strange request, but it was a funeral, and I am sympathetic with grieving people.  We said that one of the pastors of our congregation (probably me) would work with them, along with the pastor that they wanted.

The family said that this makes sense.  "After all, it's your church," they said.

We set a time for the family to meet with both pastors.  I found out the name of the other pastor.  I did not know him, but I did know one thing about him:  he came from a faith tradition which does not ordain women as pastors.  I had his number and tried to get in touch with him.  Finally I left to make another home visit.

When I returned the pastor and the other family were waiting.  I sat down with them and took out note paper and a hymnal, so that we could write down hymns and scripture readings.   We talked about the policy of the church, and how we serve the lunch.

Then the other pastor said, "I am sorry to say this, but I am not allowed to serve in public worship with you.  This is the policy of my denomination.  My hands are tired."

I was sitting there with this pastor and a grieving family.  They knew what I had told them before.

I swallowed hard, and said, "All right then.  I will help you plan the service.  I will put you in touch with the musician from our congregation.  I will help your with the luncheon.  I will make sure that the building is prepared for you.  I will pray for you."

"You're so gracious," the family said.

"You're so gracious," the other pastor said.

Is that what it was?  I had a grieving family with nowhere else to go.  I could not pull the rug out from under them now.  The most important thing was the proclamation of the resurrection that would take place at this funeral.  I knew that it was not about me.  I am not the only one who can comfort and proclaim the good news of Jesus' life.

And yet, it sort of felt like it was about me.  "You are unacceptable." That's what they were saying.  And I stood there and I took it, knowing in my heart of hearts that I was not unacceptable, but feeling slimed nonetheless.

"You're so gracious," they said.

Sometimes, grace is hard.  Really hard.

On that Friday I was not allowed to enter the sanctuary of the church where I had been called as pastor.  Other people thought it was so wonderful that we showed hospitality to a grieving family.  I am glad that we showed this hospitality to a grieving family.

And yet….

Recently I met with a young woman who wants to have her wedding here.  She is not a member of my congregation.  She is from another faith tradition, one I am only slightly familiar with.  I told her the policy of our congregation is that if the wedding is here, I need to be involved in the ceremony with that.  "Are you sure your pastor is all right with that?" I asked.

She was sure her pastor was all right with that.

I called him.  He is not sure that he is all right with that.

Sometimes, being gracious is hard.   Really hard.

I Didn't Preach This Weekend

Since I had preached two weekends in a row, it felt odd not to preach this weekend, a little gulp in the rhythm,  a time to stretch my legs and think about something else for a little while.  Then I remembered that I actually preached at a funeral service on Friday and for a wedding on Saturday.  So you can't really say that I was off.

For some reason I have been reminiscing lately, thinking back on my ministry and my life.  There's something about a funeral and a wedding that does that, especially these.

The Friday funeral was for a man I didn't really know.  He was the son of members of my congregation who were also good friends of my parents.  He had lived far away for a long time, and I had only met him, briefly, for a long time.  Long long ago, back in the glory days of this congregation and in the glory days of mainline churches in general, he had been active in youth and singing groups.  It was very sudden this winter when he became ill and died.

I didn't really know him, but I knew his parents.  I used to visit them in their apartment and give them communion.  I would find out how they were doing and they would ask about my parents, especially my father.   When she was dying, I drove my mother out to see her in hospice care one time.  I remember how at ease she was with her dying.  When she got into hospice, she said, 'Now I can have communion every day!"  It was a foretaste of the feast to come.

But I didn't really know their youngest son.  He had grown up and moved away.  He lived out in the Southwest, where they ended up spending their winters.  I learned some things about him from his father, from his sister, and from old old friends who had come to the funeral.  Their words were about him:  how funny he was, how smart he was, what a good friend he was.  And their words went back to the glory days of this congregation, back when congregations were bursting at the seams with World War II veterans and their children.  I preached about the promises of God and how nothing can separate us from the love of God, even though we wander.  Someone sang a hymn which begins, "When at night I go to sleep fourteen angels watch do keep."

After the funeral on Friday afternoon, I rode back to the church in the car with his father and his sister.  Hie father asked us to avoid the highway and travel the scenic route, along parkways and around some of the lakes of our city.  It seemed fitting, somehow.

Then, I returned to the church for a wedding rehearsal.  I have known the man getting married since he was a little boy.  He and his parents joined our congregation when I was a teenager.  They directed the choir and played the organ while he and his brothers were growing up.  Their family seems like family to me.

His mother grew up in this congregation.  She was away for a long time, and now she returned.  I had her father's funeral here, several years ago.  She has returned and her son decided he wanted to have his wedding here.  The family of musicians provided all of the music.  I preached, talking about what it means to have a good foundation.  I remembered how one of my uncles built a house, and how they lived in their basement, with carpet-squared carpeting, for a long time.  It was a good foundation, but it was messy, and it took time.

So, I didn't preach this weekend, on Sunday anyway.

And here's what I am thinking:  the foundation is love.
It takes time, and it's messy.
And it doesn't solve everything.
Not even close.
But, riding in the car along the lakes, on the way home, I believed that it was true, anyway:
Nothing can separate us from the love of God.
Nothing can separate us.
In the end.
The foundation is love.

A Beautiful Summer Morning Outdoors with Coffee and Conversation

A couple of weeks ago I had an appointment to meet a young woman whose wedding I officiated at a few years ago.  She and her husband are not members of my congregation; I got to know them through her grandmother, who I knew quite well as a devout and active member.  ("She talked about Jesus all the time," someone said about her at her funeral.)

I had enjoyed getting to know this young couple during our pre-marital sessions.  I remembered their wedding on a September evening in a nearby park.  I remembered how fun it was.  Occasionally, I would still run into them because of our church and family connections.  But lately, she had been emailing me regarding baptism for their two young children.

We have a policy that we baptize people at one of our church services (although I have been known to bend this rule for extenuating circumstances).  We also, generally speaking, baptize the children of members of the congregation.  There have been times when complete strangers call us on the phone and ask if we will just baptize their child.  They have never been to our church before, and they they don't intend to become regular attenders.  They just wonder if we will "do a baptism."

In these instances, it is not so difficult to say "no."

But this was different.  I had a relationship with this couple.  I wanted to know what they were thinking about; I wanted to know about their faith, their questions, their convictions, their doubts.  So one summer morning we set up an appointment to have coffee.

We got caught up with each other's lives.  I learned a little about their two young boys, the ones who would be baptized.  We talked about the importance of growing up in a faith community, the connection between baptism and the people who will help the baptized grow in their faith.

She talked about how hard it was to find a church, although they had visited several.  They just hadn't found the right one yet.  She confessed that the church she liked the best so far was the church her mother went to.  But that church only had baby dedications, not baptisms, and they felt they wanted more for their children.

So we talked a little bit about the difference between baptism and dedication, me being careful to speak with the utmost respect about the practice of baby dedication, even though it is not my tradition.  I also recommended some churches of our denomination in her neighborhood that I thought they might like.  Then I asked (because I was curious):

"Just what is it about your mother's church that your like so well?"

As it turns out, there were two practices that attracted her to this faith community.  At worship, there was a time for people to get up and tell stories about their faith.  These were genuine, warm and truthful moments for her.  She wanted to belong to a community where people shared their faith.

The other practice that attracted her was service.  This congregation gave her opportunities to serve.

*****

It was not the choir, not the dynamic preaching, not even the warm personality of the senior pastor.  It was not the theology (liberal or conservative), not the architecture, not the amazing array of educational programs.

It was the ability to share faith, and the commitment to service. 

Now I know that this was an isolated conversation, just one anecdote.  But something rings true about it for me, as a mainline Christian in a denomination that I am convinced still has a lot to offer.  We don't even know how much most of the time.  We take beautiful liturgy for granted.  We don't often plumb the depths of our own theology, all of the wideness of grace amid the persistent questions.  

I am convinced that mainline Christians have a lot to offer the world.  But I am also convinced that we have some things to learn.  For example, we have to get over our reticence in speaking about our faith.  Whether we know it or not, we do have a faith story, that we have many faith stories, and we need to learn to tell them, too.  This is something we need to learn from our evangelical brothers and sisters, from the richness of their traditions.  

We need to learn to testify.  We need to learn to testify to the goodness of God in our lives.  

We don't have to hand out tracts, and we don't have to accost people on street corners.  We just have to learn to say, "Here's where I saw God last week."

He was in a stranger that I met; he was in the streak of sunlight that fell across the page of a book I was reading;  He was in a conversation I had, a conversation with coffee on a summer morning.

Some Snapshots from My Week

Sunday afternoon

We were done with Sunday worship and had taken a nap.  My husband and I decided to take a short jaunt over to a nearby antique mall to see what they had to offer.  While on the road, my cell phone rang.  It was a woman from our congregation, letting me now that her husband of 54 years had just died.  He had suffered from a rare degenerative disease for the past few years.  He died on his birthday.

Monday

This is my day off, but I made a little time to meet with the woman whose husband had just died.  We planned his memorial service for the next Monday.  His family told me he loved to try to figure things out (he had been an electrical engineer).  They also told me that he donated his body to the University, so that they could study his condition and perhaps, someday, cure people who had his disease.

Tuesday

I had a memorial service for a woman I knew from a monthly communion service I used to do at a local high-rise.  Her daughter told me that her mom "talked about me all the time."  She also told me that her mother was 100% Lutheran and 100% Norwegian.  She wrote a wonderful remembrance for her mother that called to mind her childhood in rural Minnesota.  She was poor, but didn't seem to mind.  After the short service, we had lefse, kringla, sandbakkels and krumkaka.

We also got news that a woman I had visited on Saturday died early on Tuesday morning.  The other pastor went to visit with the family.  They wanted a funeral service on Friday morning.

Wednesday

I visited another older gentleman in the hospital.  He had just gotten news about his cancer.  We had a wonderful visit, though he cried, a little.  He was grateful for his family.  We prayed together.

In the afternoon, I sat in with the other pastor while he planned the Friday service.  They had a first wanted me to do the service for them, but I was preaching, planning another funeral and presiding at a wedding on Saturday.

Later we had a wonderful meeting with our Stewardship planning group.  There is so much creativity, commitment and energy in this group.  What did I contribute?  I remembered the rationale for making out pledges on Commitment Sunday, not before:  because we wanted to make our gifts together in community, in worship and in prayer.

Thursday

I wrote the sermon for my Saturday wedding.

In the evening, there was a visitation for the woman who had died on Tuesday.  Toward the end of the evening, I gathered everyone together for some scripture readings and prayers.  I invited people to share some memories and stories.  At the close, we sang two choruses of this old song, "All Night, All Day, Angels watching over me, my Lord, All Night, All Day, Angels watching over me."

Friday

I worked on bulletin proof-reading with our secretary, and went away to try to write my Sunday sermon.  I got some done, but not as much as I had hoped.   For some reason, I was having trouble putting it all together.

Saturday

The wedding at at 3:00.  The bride cried.  Our small chapel service was at 5:00, the "first run" of the weekend.  After the service I went out and bought some yarn for the children's message.  (and hoped that the idea would work)

Sunday

I preached.  Christian Community, rooted in baptism. So close to an election, remember that we are not united by politics, but by God's grace.  We sang "A Mighty Fortress", and "Shout to the Lord."  I thought about how mighty our God is, mighty and vulnerable, dying on a cross.

A tattooed young woman came up to me before the service and said, "thank you for visiting my grandfather in the hospital."  She had tears in her eyes.  I saw a two-year-old dressed up in her Halloween costume.  She was a bumble-bee.

Afterwards, we had our annual Sunday School Fundraiser:  a spaghetti dinner.  A little later I was getting ready to go home, laden with left-over spaghetti for my husband's lunch.  Two little girls (about 4 years old) walked up to me gravely and presented me with:  my glasses, which I had left on a table in the Fellowship Hall.  "Are these yours, Pastor?"  they said.

I am tired.  It's a privilege to know people, to receive ministry from grave four-year-olds who find what I have lost, to be present when tears of joy or grief are shed, to sing and remember and hear stories.

Some days I am lost.  And it is the four year olds who find me, and help me to see again.