Toolbox For Faith

My wife and I asked for a table for two. The host invited us to follow him and led us to the middle of the restaurant. As we walked I looked ahead and saw what appeared to be a full section. There was one table open, but it had about two inches between it and the tables on either side which were filled with people. Based on my observation, I assumed our host was taking us to another section. When we reached that empty table, however, the host stopped, grabbed the edge of the table, pulled it out into the middle of the aisle, so my wife could sit down and then pushed it back in so I could sit down. From my perspective as a resident of southwest Virginia, the section was full. To him, as a resident of New York City, the section was only full when every possible seat was occupied.

Somewhere along the line, I learned that there was a difference between the maximum seating capacity of a sanctuary and the maximum comfortable seating capacity of a sanctuary. Quite simply, if your sanctuary is 80% full, then you have reached your maximum comfortable seating capacity and the chances of continued growth in that service are significantly reduced. I have also learned that in rural areas, where people are used to having more space, you may reach your comfortable seating capacity when 60% of the sanctuary is full. Once a sanctuary feels full, then regular worshipers are less likely to invite someone else to church and new worshipers are more likely to feel uncomfortable when the arrive.

At St. Michael, I have been operating on the assumption that our sanctuary would be full at 80% of capacity, but based on my experience in New York, I am beginning to wonder if our community might be just rural enough that we are reaching our comfortable seating capacity at our 11 AM service even though the building is only filled to 70% of capacity. I need to look at this more closely over the next few months to see if this theory is true, but my experience in New York has reminded me that just because a seat is unoccupied doesn’t mean there are comfortable seats left in a sanctuary.

After reading my last post on our vacation church-going experience, two people asked the same question—what can we do at our church to make sure that we are a welcoming congregation. I have three starting points you can consider.

First, change the culture of welcoming by doing an exercise at the beginning of the service that we have been calling “100 seconds of Fun” at the church where I was interim. After I welcomed everyone, I asked the congregation to move about for 100 seconds welcoming as many people as possible. We chose 100 seconds in honor of the 100th Anniversary of the congregation. Two weeks ago, a guest told me on the way out that our congregation was the friendliest she had ever attended.

Second, change the culture of welcoming by using your church’s governing body to be a greeting force. Take the group into the sanctuary and tell them to sit where they normally sit and then have them divide the congregation into areas in which they will be responsible for welcoming everyone in that area and introducing the guests to as many people as possible.

Third, change the culture of welcoming by having an Art Lee type person at the door who welcomes everyone and finds out information about the guests. Art was a member at one of my congregations who took the responsibility of being in the narthex before and after services. He gave me the names of all guests when I exited at the end of the service and then talked to each guest when they came out, introducing them to all around. Art was a natural who shared a warm welcome that became contagious and spread.

Try one, two or three and see if they can help change the culture of welcoming at your congregation.

Sydney, age 5 is a great older sister for Jorja, age 2. Sydney taught us all a huge lesson last week.

We have open communion where everyone, even the children, receive communion. We leave it to the parents to decide when a child should start receiving the bread and wine.

Last Sunday, we were distributing communion by intinction and I gave Sydney her wafer. Jorja was right behind her and I gave her a blessing since she has not started receiving the bread and wine. Sydney waited with her wafer until I had blessed Jorja and instead of dipping her wafer in the wine, Sydney broke it in half and gave one half to Jorja. She did not want Jorja to be left out.

My mind immediately went back to the Gospel for the day in which Simon, the Pharisee, was critical of the woman who was washing Jesus’ feet with her tears and putting ointment on his feet. Simon would have left her out but not Jesus. Sydney was looking out for her sister. It was a powerful sermon as she lived the Gospel in a wonderful way.

This coming Sunday, May 9, our congregation is doing something that I have not done in 39 years of ministry. We are having a Children’s Sunday. The service will begin with a power point presentation during the prelude featuring pictures of all of our children along with pictures of the same children at their baptism. Our children are participating in a variety of different ways from the handmade paper banners that we are using in the narthex to giving special gifts for all the women on Mother’s Day. We will finish the service by going into the yard to plant a dogwood tree with families shoveling dirt around the base.

As we were preparing for the service, the passage from Matthew, Mark and Luke about Jesus allowing the children to come to him and forbidding the disciples from shooing them away figured prominently in our planning. Jesus put his hands on them and prayed over them. Following the example of Christ, we have written a Blessing of the Children which we are using. You can find it at Blessing of the Children.  Have fun using it. If you have any questions, email me.

I started celebrating Christmas in July as a camper at Lutheridge years ago and when I became a pastor, I decided to share this celebration with my congregation. Each year on the Sunday closest to July 25, we sing Christmas Carols, read the Christmas Story, and share in the joy of Christ’s birth. It is a wonderful way to focus on the Incarnation without having all the stress and pressure that families feel in December. If you would like to see a sample bulletin for our Christmas in July Service, click here..

In recent years, we have added a mission project to the celebration and given “gifts” to others. This year, we will invite people to bring food items as their “Christmas Gift.”

Some sermons and Sunday School lessons stick with people for a lifetime, while others are forgotten almost as the words are spoken. Chip and Dan Heath in their book, “Made to Stick,” explore the reasons why some ideas are sticky and others are not. The book offers a model for how you can make your ideas (read sermons and teaching) more engaging and more memorable. I have tried using a few of their six principles in my writing and speaking and they work. The six principles are known as the SUCCESs model: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional and Stories. The book is wonderful and their website contains lots of free helpful resources.

For pastors and their spouses, the week or two after Easter is a wonderful time to take time off for re-creation after all the Lenten, Holy Week and Easter services. We waited a week before heading off for a few days to Williamsburg. One of our favorite adventures while there was a musical and historical presentation at one museum about hymns.

What intrigued me most was the observation that the hymns were not originally written for a specific tune but most could be sung to a variety of tunes. That is why in so many of the older hymnals, no music was included but only words. We sang “Amazing Grace” to one of the original tunes to which it was paired because the one with which we are all familiar was composed over 50 years after the words were penned by John Newton.

The other interesting observation was how the hymn composers of the pre-colonial era used familiar tunes when they did set the words to a specific melody. The story was shared of how John Wesley and his Method Club members were meeting in a room over a tavern when three sailors decided to interrupt the meeting by singing a bawdy sailing song. The next night, Wesley’s group was meeting again when the sailors came by and to the amazement of the sailors, they heard the same tune that they had been singing the night before set to Christian words that Wesley had written after the meeting the evening before. Wesley ended up composing over 6000 hymns.

Afterwards, I kept thinking of how much fun we had learning things that we didn’t know.

Logan is a five year old member who enjoys coming to church and especially enjoys giving the pastor a big high five. At our congregation, we have open communion and Logan takes communion.

About six weeks ago when Logan came forward for communion, he did something different that mortified his mother. After I gave him the wafer saying, “The body of Christ given for you,” Logan reached up, gave me a high five and said, “Yeah!” I loved it but tried not to laugh as I moved to the next person, his mother, and saw her eyes squeezed shut as she clinched her hands. I knew what she was thinking—Am I going to survive this child?

Mom and Logan had a long talk after the service with him promising not to give me a high five during communion but, of course, being a typical five year old, he forgot. The next Sunday as he came to receive the bread, I was anxious to see what would happen. As soon as he received the bread, he gave me another high five but must have remembered the conversation with his mother so he gave me a very reserved “Yeah!” His mother, right behind him, nearly collapsed.

Now, I get a high five before and after worship but that was the last high five he has given me after receiving the bread. But we have reached an understanding. Now he looks ups and smiles when he receives the bread.. I know the smile indicates that I will get my communion high five and “Yeah” after the service.

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.