Learning to serve
03/06/15 05:25
From the early days of my career as a minister, I have tried to encourage the congregations that I serve to be the church for those who need a church. We don’t require that people be members in order to have their funeral at our church. We don’t require membership for weddings. Sometimes this means that we are able to reach out and connect with people who don’t have a church - occasionally a wedding or funeral becomes the point of entrance into the community for those who have been seeking community but didn’t know how to get started. Sometimes we simply provide a service that is needed. Our sanctuary is over twice the size of the largest chapel in a funeral home in our city, so we can provide space that is not available in a secular institution.The members of our congregation are gracious and generous and often provide funeral lunches and other services to families that might not otherwise be able to obtain them.
Our culture, however, is shifting. And the requests that we get are different and varied. We have decided that a church is much more than just a hall to rent and that we care deeply about the services that are held in our facility. As such, we decline when someone wants to bring in their “own” minister to conduct a service in our church. It isn’t that our ministers won’t work with pastors of other denominations. Rather, we have learned the hard way that we need to maintain control of worship in our setting. It isn’t appropriate for our church to become associated with unprofessional and uneducated behavior of pastors. We have invested a lot of our resources in expensive items such as a sound system and musical instruments that need to be treated with care and respect. The classrooms and nursery in our church require that children be appropriately supervised and we have safe church policies that protect children and teens from abuse and bullying. Not all congregations have such policies. The list of really poor behavior that we have witnessed is enough to make us very reluctant to have someone that we don’t know and who hasn’t been properly vetted in charge of anything associated with our church.
What we have discovered is that there are a number of church and para-church organizations in our community that don’t provide full services to their members. There are actually churches in our town that don’t provide weddings and funerals. There are other congregations that don’t have adequate space for services. I realize that God never judges churches by their size or by the amount of building they possess, but it does seem to me that families should take into consideration the full range of services they need from their congregation when choosing a church.
Still, we seek to serve. And we don’t want to be punitive towards others for the choices they have made. And we don’t want to condemn others simply because they are different from us.
The result is a dilemma that seems to be coming up more frequently than was the case in the past. Do we allow others to use our building? When we do, what rules or guidelines do we impose? What costs do we ask them to share? It seems that every time we write a policy, we find that there are exceptions or adaptations that are needed.
Once again, I’m in the midst of drawing up revisions to both our wedding and funeral policies. Simple things, such as families not paying costs they agreed to pay create problems for everyone. We have real costs associated with providing for the security of our building, cleaning, and care of our equipment. When we have to pay staff, but are not reimbursed, we have to evaluate our priorities in terms of other spending.
We have discovered that people who don’t spend much time in a church and then suddenly discover the need for a church often don’t know how to behave in a church. I suppose hotels and other venues that rent their space witness such inappropriate and destructive behavior all of the time, but it surprises us in the church when unsupervised children take out all of the toys in a room and put nothing away. We don’t quite know what to say when parents don’t step in and provide limits for their own children.
Most upsetting to me, however, is when uniformed theology with questionable references to scripture is touted as the absolute truth from our pulpit. We have worked hard to share the good news of Jesus Christ, the love of God and the power of forgiveness in our community for more than a century and a quarter. When someone describes an angry and vengeful god as if they somehow possessed the truth, or proof-texts a single bible verse without any understanding of its context or relationship to the whole of scripture, it frustrates me. Coming from a long tradition of educated clergy, we expect sermons and other proclamations to be informed by the history of the church. I am well aware that there is a big difference between faith and academic accomplishment, but to claim that ignorance is the truth is not only presumptuous, it can cause harm to people who are struggling with their faith.
So we continue to struggle. We sincerely desire to practice hospitality and to serve our community. We really believe the slogan we recite in worship: “No matter who you are, or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.” We welcome a diverse community with many different ideas and interpretations. We enjoy engaging in conversation and learning more about the depth and breadth of faith. Still, it throws us when we are abused and advantage is taken of us.
We haven’t yet discovered the perfect balance point. There is much that we still need to learn. And the challenges of serving this community continue to require that we develop flexibility and resilience. After all, we’ve been in this community for a long time and we intend to continue to serve for many years yet to come.
Our culture, however, is shifting. And the requests that we get are different and varied. We have decided that a church is much more than just a hall to rent and that we care deeply about the services that are held in our facility. As such, we decline when someone wants to bring in their “own” minister to conduct a service in our church. It isn’t that our ministers won’t work with pastors of other denominations. Rather, we have learned the hard way that we need to maintain control of worship in our setting. It isn’t appropriate for our church to become associated with unprofessional and uneducated behavior of pastors. We have invested a lot of our resources in expensive items such as a sound system and musical instruments that need to be treated with care and respect. The classrooms and nursery in our church require that children be appropriately supervised and we have safe church policies that protect children and teens from abuse and bullying. Not all congregations have such policies. The list of really poor behavior that we have witnessed is enough to make us very reluctant to have someone that we don’t know and who hasn’t been properly vetted in charge of anything associated with our church.
What we have discovered is that there are a number of church and para-church organizations in our community that don’t provide full services to their members. There are actually churches in our town that don’t provide weddings and funerals. There are other congregations that don’t have adequate space for services. I realize that God never judges churches by their size or by the amount of building they possess, but it does seem to me that families should take into consideration the full range of services they need from their congregation when choosing a church.
Still, we seek to serve. And we don’t want to be punitive towards others for the choices they have made. And we don’t want to condemn others simply because they are different from us.
The result is a dilemma that seems to be coming up more frequently than was the case in the past. Do we allow others to use our building? When we do, what rules or guidelines do we impose? What costs do we ask them to share? It seems that every time we write a policy, we find that there are exceptions or adaptations that are needed.
Once again, I’m in the midst of drawing up revisions to both our wedding and funeral policies. Simple things, such as families not paying costs they agreed to pay create problems for everyone. We have real costs associated with providing for the security of our building, cleaning, and care of our equipment. When we have to pay staff, but are not reimbursed, we have to evaluate our priorities in terms of other spending.
We have discovered that people who don’t spend much time in a church and then suddenly discover the need for a church often don’t know how to behave in a church. I suppose hotels and other venues that rent their space witness such inappropriate and destructive behavior all of the time, but it surprises us in the church when unsupervised children take out all of the toys in a room and put nothing away. We don’t quite know what to say when parents don’t step in and provide limits for their own children.
Most upsetting to me, however, is when uniformed theology with questionable references to scripture is touted as the absolute truth from our pulpit. We have worked hard to share the good news of Jesus Christ, the love of God and the power of forgiveness in our community for more than a century and a quarter. When someone describes an angry and vengeful god as if they somehow possessed the truth, or proof-texts a single bible verse without any understanding of its context or relationship to the whole of scripture, it frustrates me. Coming from a long tradition of educated clergy, we expect sermons and other proclamations to be informed by the history of the church. I am well aware that there is a big difference between faith and academic accomplishment, but to claim that ignorance is the truth is not only presumptuous, it can cause harm to people who are struggling with their faith.
So we continue to struggle. We sincerely desire to practice hospitality and to serve our community. We really believe the slogan we recite in worship: “No matter who you are, or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.” We welcome a diverse community with many different ideas and interpretations. We enjoy engaging in conversation and learning more about the depth and breadth of faith. Still, it throws us when we are abused and advantage is taken of us.
We haven’t yet discovered the perfect balance point. There is much that we still need to learn. And the challenges of serving this community continue to require that we develop flexibility and resilience. After all, we’ve been in this community for a long time and we intend to continue to serve for many years yet to come.