Faith Works 1-25-20

Faith Works 1-25-20

Jeff Gill

 

When home and church are the same set of rooms

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Preaching is, if you'll allow me to say this in a hard working community, work.

 

I know, the joke is we work one hour a week; well, we have two services on Sunday mornings at my church, so I work at least two hours a week. What I mean, though, is that the simple physical act of preaching a sermon is physically more than just standing around talking.

 

Our choir director is stepping back to the organist part of her worship responsibilities, and to help her celebrate this transition, the choir asked to do an "anthemfest" where I didn't preach, but they would sing a bunch (it ended up being eight) of their favorite choral anthems.

 

It was a hit with everyone, and I believe the word was preached, and I heard from a number of choir members that just doing three anthems in a row left them physically spent, so we spaced out the service so they only did that many at a time. A couple said "I see why you are worn out at least a bit after the service is over!" which I appreciated. There really is a spiritual as well as physical transfer of energy in delivering a strong message and speaking of matters of the spirit in front of a group.

 

The most rewarding and challenging pastoral experience I have each month is trying to create a worship experience in an assisted living facility. The dozen residents who come are so incredibly attentive to what's sung, what's said, and hungry for the contact and interest Pastor Karen (our associate minister) & I bring when we come.

So we delight in that ministry, we really do -- and yet we worship at a busy intersection, if you will, with other residents crying out at intervals walking back and forth through the middle of our group, another group of residents just a few feet away talking to each other as only the hard of hearing can, and even a wall between us the staff cleaning up from lunch and shouting at each other . . . bless 'em, often coming out the door in mid-holler, always looking startled and abashedly apologizing and backing through the door, and I feel bad that they feel bad for just doing their jobs. The PA often has an announcement of some sort, and the front door has a buzzer and staff bustling through to code them in or code them out, and usually the visitors come in chatting and often talk right through the middle of the 14 or 15 of us gathered together, singing, praying, me preaching.

I've done chapel services in prisons, jails, swim meets, and Scout camps -- they're all easier to manage and deliver at than being a regular Sunday afternoon service provider in a care facility, and that's at any assisted living center I've ever done it at. You can talk to staff in advance (if you can catch them) but they forget that it's going on, or they have what they have to do; there are arguments for different locations but the centrally located spot is usually best for residents, while aurally the hardest to make work. Each place I learn how to turn off or down the ubiquitous TVs (and put them back in service before I go), and where the controls are for the overhead piped-in music (whether I'm supposed to turn it off or not). But the ambient situation is always tricky, and your audience is always hard of hearing.

Yet we can't stop doing this. It's important. We've cut back from two a month to just doing this one, and the requests still come in a few a month to add them, as activity directors plead and our members and friends move to facilities where the word goes out to "ask your pastor if they'd just consider doing only..." I cannot imagine doing none -- I've done at least one a month like this somewhere for over thirty years now. What I worry about is how new assisted living and care facilities are popping up, and the need for those rooms and beds are real, but the number of churches and clergy who will bring a message and a prayer to them continues to shrink. Of all the community losses a decline in church presence creates, this could be the most subtle, the least widely noticed, but I think it could also be one of the most tragic.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he'd be happy to tell you who to contact, but any care facility would probably be happy to hear from you! Tell him about your worship experiences in a different sort of space at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.