R asked last night, “So how many parts of the story are there?” I think there’s just one more piece I want to share, as I reflect upon how this transition has come to pass. Call it the end of the beginning.
Before I get to the substance of the post, I did want to record the reaction of the girls when we told them the news: So you will be in charge of the whole church? Does that mean people have to do whatever you want? You should make them have cake every Sunday!!!! (I’m afraid Sunday’s scrumptious reception did nothing to dissuade them of the notion that I have such unbridled power.)
Anyone who’s been in a church during an interim period knows there’s a lot of work that gets deferred. A good interim pastor helps a church address the most important things, but still, you hear the phrase, “We’ll deal with that when the new pastor comes.” Some churches say it a lot.
So I expect that the first several weeks… months?… will be the spiritual equivalent of opening closets and surveying the metric tons of stuff crammed inside. I expect it to seem fairly overwhelming at times. I glimpsed this in a physical way on Sunday, as Tiny Church’s very lovely and well kept but aging building has lots of nooks and crannies filled with random stuff that may or may not have any real purpose. The pile of old computer monitors in the corner of the fellowship hall. (R will be taking those to the computer recycling center.) The three file cabinets in the pastor’s study, crammed full of stuff, very little of which I expect to be useful. And what’s up with the ancient radio on one of the shelves?
So I’ve been practicing what we in ministry circles call the non-anxious presence. I hope to let these things unfold without getting sucked into the weighty angst that can come with emptying out the congregational closets.
I had an experience of practicing this recently that could only be a gift of the Spirit.
On the way to church the other day, I was listening to a podcast of Speaking of Faith, a fascinating interview with a young naturalist named James Prosek. As I was pulling into the parking lot, I heard this:
Mr. Prosek: …Currently I’m working on a book about eels. And I think what attracted me to the eel is that it’s a creature that inspires fear and awe and reverence in people, like the snake. For some reason, we have a reaction to this minimalist creature. And it’s kind of bodiless and nameless. It doesn’t really fit into any of the categories that we want it to fit into. Nature really is chaotic. The real myth is the one that the Natural History Museum promotes in its collections and in its family trees and genealogies is that …
Ms. Tippett: That it’s ordered.
Mr. Prosek: Yeah, that it’s ordered.
I got out of the car and started walking up the long sidewalk to the church, and there, stretched across the entire width of the walkway, was a black snake.
I know these snakes are harmless—we had one living under our house awhile back, and they’re quite beneficial. But like many people, I have a visceral fear of snakes. This time, emboldened by what I’d just heard, I stopped in my tracks and just gazed at the thing. It was really quite beautiful, thin and silky. It stopped too, then after a moment resumed its strange slithering across the sidewalk.
When I went inside I saw our janitor, who was watching from inside the foyer. He said, “In Africa we are afraid of snakes.” I said, “We’re afraid here too. But those are harmless.”
It seems to me that a non-anxious presence requires looking at a situation not just calmly and with detachment, but also with curiosity, and even reverence. I’ll do my best to remember that in the months to come.
And maybe the snake is Tiny Church’s totem…
Image: snake totem, from this Etsy website
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Asides
» There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places. -Wendell Berry
» “The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.” -Barbara Kingsolver
» It’s National Procrastination Week (who comes up with these things?), and in honor of people like me who like to celebrate NPW all year long, here’s a good article.
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I like this.
What I found with St Stoic’s Random Stuff is that while much of it is Stuff, very little of it was Random in the way I think of random. Proceed with extreme caution in disposing, as I’m sure you will. (More caution than I practiced in a church that hadn’t cleaned the nooks and crannies in about 40 years…)
The totem here is the dragon, for many complicated reasons, most of them good.
Thank you cheesehead. This is a huge thing to remember.
One of things I’m trying to be non-anxious about (heh) is how to balance ‘throwing things out’ that everyone agrees needs to go, with the exception of one or two people. I know how to do that in a church of 700, but have no experience doing it in a church a tenth that size.
My weekly schedule might be a tempering force. As challenging as I think part-time ministry can be, one benefit is that it makes it much harder to take on too much too fast.
I value your experience in this! Must read more about dragon totems…
do we choose totems or do totems choose us? i don’t know the answer. whatcha think?
Good Presbyterians should lean towards the latter, eh? “You did not choose me, but I chose you…”
“I know how to do that in a church of 700, but have no experience doing it in a church a tenth that size.”
In all seriousness, speaking as the voice of experience at least on the physical side, put everything that you think needs to be gotten rid of out on a table or fellowship hall some Sunday (or several Sundays if it is an ongoing process). Explain that things have to be gotten rid of (for whatever reason - fire hazard, general clutter, outdatedness in terms of hymnals or books, etc.), but you recognize that some of these things might be important to some members, and you want to give them a chance to take anything that might be important to them home. If there is anything of value after that, see if an even smaller, even less well-off church can use any of it, and anything remaining - toss. This allows those one or two people to take home that hideous banner they helped make in 1974 and that hasn’t been hung since 1976 or to find the hymnal their grandfather donated and take them home
Our congregation is approaching the end of our intentional interim ministry and getting ready to put together a call team (It’s taken us a year to get to that point). One of the first things our interim did was to help us clean out the physical clutter, and there was a ton of it. We are down to one office and a few supply closets (all of which fall under faith formation - the committee I chair) to be cleaned out. Now the spiritual clutter of traditions and rituals that lost their meaning a long time ago, but we keep doing because, “That’s the way we’ve always done it”…well, we’ll deal with that when the new pastor comes.
Sheryl, great idea. Thank you!
I’d be interested an even deeper level of call … your original call to the ministry.
You may find the file cabinets more interesting than you expect. Take your time with them and see whether your journeys of discovery with the congregation don’t in some way relate to what has been saved, too, just as the classes we scheduled at random in seminary often turned out to be intimately related in surprising ways.
Small Church needed a spring cleaning in the physical sense and we got to it, but not too quickly. I think a year-and-a-half went by, and after that much time, we were all ready for it.
Heh, all these great comments are reminding me of “trust in the slow work of God”…!
They’re also making me realize how much my inclination toward tidiness, and a lack of sentimentality toward most “stuff,” could get me in trouble. I get a bit of a hoarder vibe when I think about some of the things lying around the church.
(Hasten to add: the church is quite tidy as a whole. It’s nothing that a good clean-up day or two wouldn’t fix, when it comes to that. And I expect some stuff to stick around that if it were up to me would be gone.)
I wonder how different the process will be in a much smaller church.
My very limited experience, and YMMV: At Saint Middle School we do not have a physical church, since we unload a small U-Haul with well-outfitted carts (one for altar guild, one for music team, one for welcome table, one for Sunday School, one for hospitality) and set up church and tear down every Sunday at the public school where we meet. We have a small office and storage closet in the Mother Ship.
You’d think we wouldn’t have this problem of accumulated stuff and encrusted history.
Yet even in this small place, this congregation which is only six years old, it happens. And even though there are founders here, some stuff is an utter mystery. I could call the past vicar and ask about it, but somehow it seems right to work through this with them myself, as part of their transition away from her to someone new.
I think the instinct to go slow but steady is a sound thing, and as with all changes, some decluttering may even be a relief. Blessings…
If you get rid of the stack of LPs found in the balcony/library with the top one “The Kingston Trio” please think of me!
I’ve cleaned out a lot of churches. Don’t do it too fast. Instead of trashing things immediately, they go on tables for a Sunday, maybe even 2 Sundays, so people can look it over. Have somebody who is deep in the church help you. You will do a great job of this. In about 2 years the place will have your fingerprints all over it. But it does take that long, and that’s good. BTW, I love snakes. They like to lay around in the sun with a full belly. I can relate.
I’m just catching up on your news and wanted to say a hearty “congratulations” and that I wish you many blessings in this new stage of the journey.
Completely focusing on your “preamble” - our church does not have a Narthex, so there is a group of 12 to 18 folks who gather at the local Wendy’s after church. Every Sunday, rain or shine, snow or sleet. They are a community within themselves.
But more pointedly, they have cake, and a lot of it! Three out of four Sunday’s in a month there is a cake to celebrate something - Anniversary’s, Birthday’s, new homes and my favorite, “Because it’s Sunday” cake.
So you might need to create something that satisfies everyone!! :o)