Sorting and cleaning
19/04/23 01:45
Volunteers and professionals engaged in Faith Formation in the church have learned to be efficient about spending. Faith Formation is currently the most popular term in our church for what once was called Christian Education. The belief is that the new title is a bit more comprehensive. Instead of narrowly defining educational programs in terms of Sunday School, a wider program of support for families, intergenerational educational events, and lifelong learning is envisioned. In most congregations the new name is mostly cosmetic - a different way of talking about activities that have been a part of church life for generations.
Over the years, those programs have had to accomplish a lot with a small amount of resources. As far back as I can remember, professional educators in the church have been paid less than those hired to be preachers and pastors. In addition, the amount of money for programs has been very small. I have been at numerous church meetings where financial planners have spent hours trimming dollars from budgets, almost always cutting already underfunded programs while retaining more expensive items such as building maintenance and professional salaries for senior staff.
This has occurred at all levels of the church. When I was a child, the United Church of Christ produced curricula for church schools using a staff of professional writers and editors. By the time I was an adult, curricula was produced with free-lance writers and editors. Today the church does not produce any curricula resources and the few supplemental resources produced for faith formation are created by volunteers. The fact that resources are developed by volunteers does not necessarily mean that they are lower in quality, however. There are a lot of talented and creative people who are willing to give their time and talent to the church.
One result of a century of diminishing financial support for Christian Education and Faith Formation ministries in the church is that creative teachers and professional educators have learned to produce programs using materials that others might consider to be garbage. Crafts using items that are normally discarded are common. Puppets are crafted from popsicle sticks and the round discs that top frozen orange juice cans. The cardboard cores of toilet tissue and paper towels are repurposed for children’s crafts and art activities. Small bits of paper are kept to be used in collage making. Shoe boxes are labeled for use as supply storage bins.
Saving all of those items that are normally discarded, however, has meant that church buildings have a large amount of what appears to be garbage to some eyes collected in closets and cabinets and supply rooms. And people are a bit funny when it comes to recycled items and church faith formation spaces. In every congregation that I have served over the past 45 years people have brought items to the church that might have once been solicited, but are no longer used. I’ve found bags of egg cartons that were brought to the church and left even when no one had asked for them. A church school supply closet or a Faith Formation office are places where people bring all kinds of unsolicited donations, many of which have no financial value and look like so much garbage to untrained eyes.
Part of our job as Interim Ministers of Faith Formation in our current setting has been sorting out decades of accumulation. We cleaned one closet that had dated resources that were more than 50 years old. We hauled multiple boxes of 3-ring binders to a second hand store. We have composted packaged snacks that had long since passed their “best used by” dates. And we have only begun to scratch the surface of the accumulation.
Today we have scheduled a cleaning day. Volunteers from the church will help us sort out a supply room called the creative classroom. It once was a place for arts and craft activities for elementary school children. As the number of children involved in church programs declined and the church shifted its thinking around children’s programming, a dedicated classroom for arts activities is no longer needed. Children’s and intergenerational programming is mostly done in the fellowship and other spaces adjacent to the sanctuary. Each week we bring a lot of supplies to those spaces and then spend a lot of time cleaning those spaces for other uses during the week. We’ve learned to organize resources for educational activities in boxes and bins and other portable storage devices. As a result, the creative classroom no longer functions as a classroom, but rather as a supply storage area. And like supply storage areas in all churches, it has filled up with supplies, many of which were once deemed necessary, but now are no longer used in current programming.
And we, being educators, are not quick to throw anything into the trash. We are constantly thinking of how an item might be repurposed to support a program that runs on donations and leftovers rather than a budget with many dollars to spend. We are masters at recycling and reusing and repurposing items that others might quickly discard. So tackling the chaos in the creative classroom will involve a lot of careful sorting. We don’t want to dispose of items that we will someday regret having lost.
And Susan and I, being interim ministers, don’t want to dishonor the legacy of previous church educators. But we also do not want to pass on all of the tasks of cleaning and organizing to future volunteers in the church. We are keenly aware that although we are supported as professionals, the future of faith formation activities in the church will be led by volunteers. Decades of reading church budgets has taught us not to expect increases in funding for educational programs.
Having less money isn’t always a bad thing. Excellent programs and creative projects abound in the church despite a lack of funding. Congregations invest in programs for children and youth in other ways than providing cash funding. Making all of these programs work, however, requires a lot of sorting and cleaning. And it involves a few trips to the recycling center to drop off items for other uses.
Today will be a cleaning day. And it won’t be the last one.
Over the years, those programs have had to accomplish a lot with a small amount of resources. As far back as I can remember, professional educators in the church have been paid less than those hired to be preachers and pastors. In addition, the amount of money for programs has been very small. I have been at numerous church meetings where financial planners have spent hours trimming dollars from budgets, almost always cutting already underfunded programs while retaining more expensive items such as building maintenance and professional salaries for senior staff.
This has occurred at all levels of the church. When I was a child, the United Church of Christ produced curricula for church schools using a staff of professional writers and editors. By the time I was an adult, curricula was produced with free-lance writers and editors. Today the church does not produce any curricula resources and the few supplemental resources produced for faith formation are created by volunteers. The fact that resources are developed by volunteers does not necessarily mean that they are lower in quality, however. There are a lot of talented and creative people who are willing to give their time and talent to the church.
One result of a century of diminishing financial support for Christian Education and Faith Formation ministries in the church is that creative teachers and professional educators have learned to produce programs using materials that others might consider to be garbage. Crafts using items that are normally discarded are common. Puppets are crafted from popsicle sticks and the round discs that top frozen orange juice cans. The cardboard cores of toilet tissue and paper towels are repurposed for children’s crafts and art activities. Small bits of paper are kept to be used in collage making. Shoe boxes are labeled for use as supply storage bins.
Saving all of those items that are normally discarded, however, has meant that church buildings have a large amount of what appears to be garbage to some eyes collected in closets and cabinets and supply rooms. And people are a bit funny when it comes to recycled items and church faith formation spaces. In every congregation that I have served over the past 45 years people have brought items to the church that might have once been solicited, but are no longer used. I’ve found bags of egg cartons that were brought to the church and left even when no one had asked for them. A church school supply closet or a Faith Formation office are places where people bring all kinds of unsolicited donations, many of which have no financial value and look like so much garbage to untrained eyes.
Part of our job as Interim Ministers of Faith Formation in our current setting has been sorting out decades of accumulation. We cleaned one closet that had dated resources that were more than 50 years old. We hauled multiple boxes of 3-ring binders to a second hand store. We have composted packaged snacks that had long since passed their “best used by” dates. And we have only begun to scratch the surface of the accumulation.
Today we have scheduled a cleaning day. Volunteers from the church will help us sort out a supply room called the creative classroom. It once was a place for arts and craft activities for elementary school children. As the number of children involved in church programs declined and the church shifted its thinking around children’s programming, a dedicated classroom for arts activities is no longer needed. Children’s and intergenerational programming is mostly done in the fellowship and other spaces adjacent to the sanctuary. Each week we bring a lot of supplies to those spaces and then spend a lot of time cleaning those spaces for other uses during the week. We’ve learned to organize resources for educational activities in boxes and bins and other portable storage devices. As a result, the creative classroom no longer functions as a classroom, but rather as a supply storage area. And like supply storage areas in all churches, it has filled up with supplies, many of which were once deemed necessary, but now are no longer used in current programming.
And we, being educators, are not quick to throw anything into the trash. We are constantly thinking of how an item might be repurposed to support a program that runs on donations and leftovers rather than a budget with many dollars to spend. We are masters at recycling and reusing and repurposing items that others might quickly discard. So tackling the chaos in the creative classroom will involve a lot of careful sorting. We don’t want to dispose of items that we will someday regret having lost.
And Susan and I, being interim ministers, don’t want to dishonor the legacy of previous church educators. But we also do not want to pass on all of the tasks of cleaning and organizing to future volunteers in the church. We are keenly aware that although we are supported as professionals, the future of faith formation activities in the church will be led by volunteers. Decades of reading church budgets has taught us not to expect increases in funding for educational programs.
Having less money isn’t always a bad thing. Excellent programs and creative projects abound in the church despite a lack of funding. Congregations invest in programs for children and youth in other ways than providing cash funding. Making all of these programs work, however, requires a lot of sorting and cleaning. And it involves a few trips to the recycling center to drop off items for other uses.
Today will be a cleaning day. And it won’t be the last one.
