Toolbox For Faith

I just finished my part of the Easter Sunday bulletin, the last of four bulletins that we are doing during Holy Week. I had copies of the Easter bulletins for the last two years at the church where I am interim pastor and could not help but notice how vastly different the bulletins were because of the changes I made last year.

Two Easters ago, my church had an “everything but the kitchen sink” Easter service where every option, especially the longest and most formal, was selected. Some items that were included were not even in the hymnal or worship guides with which I am familiar. The result was a service that was not easy to follow and took much, much longer than usual. I do not have a time limit for our worship but I want the time we spend in worship to be meaningful. The “everything but the kitchen sink” approach was the way I learned to do Easter worship 39 years ago when I entered the ministry. The service included everything so that it would be a correct festival celebration to the glory of God. I was taught that Easter worship should be complex and involved. The same went for Christmas. I did it that way until about 20 years ago.

I changed my approach when I realized how many very marginal members and guests who were not familiar with our liturgy were at the service. I was concerned about reaching all people who worshipped together on Easter. The result was that I simplified our service to make it meaningful to everyone in our mission field who voted to come to Easter worship. I am convinced that simple does not indicate a lack of meaning. Simple can be powerful, moving and meaningful. I want us to have a wonderful service that reaches all people who attend. I want everyone to hear the Easter message without being overwhelmed with how complicated the service is to follow and/or overwhelmed by a service that continues forever and ever, amen.

Each year on Palm Sunday instead of a sermon, we read the story of the Passion as a congregation using a responsive reading with multiple readers. The response from the congregation is always very favorable. If you haven’t seen the booklets you can use for worship, you can get them from Augsburg Fortress. Here is the link for the Passion according to Luke.

In the Hands-On Holy Week service that I posted on Friday, I referenced a booklet for kids entitled, “Three Amazing Days”. The booklet is well done and focuses on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and an Easter Vigil. It is available in two formats: Pre-Reader and Young Reader. There is also a booklet that focuses on Lent and Easter. It too is available in Pre-Reader and Young Reader. The booklets were designed to support the current Lutheran hymnal, but they are very general and would probably support most liturgical hymnals.

It seems like every few years someone produces another article discussing the impending death of national denominational bodies. This morning, George Bullard posted a critique of national denominational bodies and offered a few suggestions for how they might be revitalized. You can read the article here.

Here’s a copy of a Holy Week for Youth Service. I use a series of props (nails, crown of thorn, etc.) for the kids to hold and look at during the service. It is very informal and has worked well. I have always done it with a group of 20 or less, but I imagine you could do something similar with a large group.

Journey to Jerusalem Youth and Family 2010

As part of the 100th Anniversary celebration at the church where I am interim pastor, we are having a special Children’s Sunday on Mother’s Day, May 9. These are some of the ideas that we have gathered as we do our planning. If anyone has any other creative suggestions, please let me know.

1. During the prelude, project pictures of our youth on a screen in the chancel. Ask parents for their baptismal pictures so that those could be projected with their present pictures.

2. We can have the children do art work that might be
• Used in advertizing the Sunday
• Used as a banner
• Used to decorate the sanctuary and narthex

3. Plant a tree at the conclusion of the service

4. Give the children stickers or ribbons

5. Have the different Sunday School classes write petitions for the prayer of the day

6. Incorporate a blessing of the children as part of the service

7. Have the children bake unleavened bread for use in communion.

8. Use hymns such as “Jesus Loves me” that are kid friendly. Involve the children in special music.

9. Collect items—such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, shampoo for example– for a specific children’s ministry

After last week, I have been rethinking the saying I have heard for years, “Location, location, location.” Two diverse incidents started me down the reanalysis road.

I went by a local antique store to pick up some special silver polish for my wife and had a great conversation with one of the owners. She told me that they do over 90% of their business over the internet. Then she added, “That’s the only way we can survive in this location.” “Location, location, location” for them was the internet.

A few days later, I was driving on the short cut from our house to civilization and the mall when I passed a church located in the back of a warehouse with a big new sign out front with giant letters advertizing Biker Church. The church has been there since we moved over a year ago but this was a different name. On several different occasions when they had Saturday events, I noticed all the motorcycles. Evidently, they decided to specialize. For them, “Location, location, location” was the biker grapevine because they are way off the main roads.

In a brochure to college students in the town where I am interim pastor, I wrote that the best way to find our church was by GPS. We then gave directions but I still feel that a GPS is still the best way to find us. That is why it is vital for us and many other churches who share our “off the traveled path” problem to look at our location in creative ways.

“Location, location, location” is still just as important but it is much more than a physical location. I am going to ask our key leaders to examine effective ways such as the internet and a specialized community grapevine so that we can creatively relocate for our church

Congregations are always looking for helpful ways to gather information about new worshipers. For a while everyone used the “Visitor Book” and then we all switched to the “Friendship Pad” at the end of the pew. At St. Michael we use a version of the “Welcome Sheet” that my father used in his ministry.

Each week, we place an insert in the bulletin that captures information from all worshipers. There is a spot for name, address and email address. There are places for prayer requests and communion information. There is also a box which is changed each week to gather information on short term ministry opportunities. You can see an example of the “Welcome Sheet” here. The “Welcome Sheet” allows everyone to have something to put in the bulletin and has proven to be a very useful tool for gathering information from both new and long-term worshipers.

I had been traveling for over an hour when I decided to stop and have a Sausage McMuffin at McDonalds. As I stood in line waiting to order, the three people behind me started talking and I could not help but overhear their comments. One man and woman were each wearing an NFL jersey from a team several states away which started the conversation. The other man was from an adjoining state and they talked.

The line was long but the woman behind the counter was almost running to make sure each person received their order as quickly as possible. The store must not have counted on having this many people stop at the same time.

The woman behind me then commented that the line was taking a long time. One of the men then answered, “What do you expect? This is South Carolina.”

That started me thinking about prejudice. For some reason, this man was blaming the slowness on being in South Carolina which showed a definite prejudice.

I learned many important lessons about prejudice as I lived through the civil rights days. My debate partner for several months was one of the first three Afro-American students at the university we attended. I heard his story and saw the hateful reaction of so many people just to having him on campus. The encounter changed forever my feelings about prejudice which can attack in many different ways, even in a McDonalds.

Over the years, I have come to believe that the opposite of prejudice is grace, God’s free gift to all of us. By God’s grace, we are all children of God. Prejudice denies grace because it assumes that some people are better than other people. By living in grace, we realize that all God’s children are important which counters any prejudices that can sneak into our lives.

Our 100th Anniversary event on Sunday evening which let people share the remarkable stories of the congregations was amazing, better than I anticipated and I anticipated a remarkable evening. That was probably the hardest I have laughed in years. I heard about people I had never met but now know in a way I will not forget. We had fun as the stories were shared in a number of different formats. Before the evening was half over, I realized that any church could benefit from an evening of storytelling. The emphasis on people is a superb way to understand a congregation.

I did miss on the numbers. We had between 90 and 100 attend which was great. I was a little too optimistic but the story was not numbers but the people who made and continue to make this church a mission field for God.

For years, my Worship Committee has discussed the balance we strike in our bulletin between hospitality and care of creation. On one hand, we would like to print the entire service in the bulletin so that new worshipers can follow along easily. On the other hand, we feel like printing the entire service in the bulletin uses entirely too much paper. Each time this conversation has come up, I have mentioned that I could envision a day when the hymnal and bulletin were replaced by electronic tablets that are loaded with everything you need for the service. The group would always laugh and talk about the amazing cost of doing something like that and then move on.

With the introduction of Apple’s I-pad and the growing popularity of e-readers and tablet computers, I have begun to think that my idea may not be that far off. I can easily imagine a time when we email our entire service to the congregation on Friday. People download the “e-bulletin” to their tablet computer and then use it to follow along with worship. I can also imagine someone showing up at worship and downloading the “e-bulletin” from the church’s wireless network right before service begins. I certainly don’t think this will happen next week or next year, but if textbooks, newspapers and magazines all migrate from paper to e-readers and people start carrying their tablet computers the way they carry their phone, then the “e-bulletin” won’t be far behind.