Toolbox For Faith

Like many other congregations, St. Michael orders palm crosses or branches each year for use on Palm Sunday/Sunday of the Passion. Certainly these worship supplies can be ordered from local florists or large supply houses, but you might consider ordering from ecopalms.org or African Palms USA. Ecopalms is an ecumenical partnership that focuses on providing palm branches in a way that is sustainable and helpful to the local economy. African Palms USA is a ministry sponsored by St. John’s Church, Olney, Maryland that produces palm crosses in Africa and then uses the proceeds for African ministries. I have ordered from African Palms USA several times and this year, after seeing a flyer from Lutheran World Relief, will be trying ecopalms.org for the first time.

I had a wonderful fourth Sunday in Advent children’s message that involved our children lighting the four candles on the Advent Wreath. When I went to invite the children forward to sit on the steps of the chancel with me, I suddenly had a horrible, sinking feeling. I had forgotten! I had forgotten that on the third Sunday at the church I am serving, they have children’s church and none of the children were in church. It was an excellent mistake.

As I looked around pondering what to do next, I noticed the top of the head of Jonathan, age two, in the back of the church. For some reason, he had stayed with his mother and father rather than going to Children’s Church. Abandoning all my plans, I asked Jonathan to come forward and help me light the candles while the congregation sang all four verses of the hymn we sing while lighting the wreath.. Jonathan and his mother came to the wreath. I took the acolyte’s stick, lit it from the altar candles and picked up Jonathan. Together, we lit all four candles.

When lighting the candles, his eyes were wide, wide open with one of the biggest smiles I have ever seen. When I put him down, he was jumping up and down, up and down. When he finally stopped, he gave me a high five and got his mother’s hand and danced up the aisle, pausing occasionally to wave at me. As he walked, he told everyone next to the aisle, “I lighted the candles, I lighted the candles.” I could see the smiles on the faces of all in the congregation. This was a powerful moment.

What a great lesson! God helps us at all times of life, even when we completely goof. God provided a little child to save me. That’s what Christmas is all about—a small child shall save us.

I always look forward to attending other churches and learning from the experience. For over three years in the congregation I served in Illinois, four council members and I would attend another congregation once a quarter and take the pastor out for lunch and learn from his or her expertise. That was a fantastic experience where I learned many excellent lessons.

That was not the case in my latest episode of sitting in the pew. We were on vacation and went to a nearby Lutheran congregation. The experience painfully taught me some great lessons about what not to do. So that your congregation does not make the same mistakes, I have made a list of “make sures.”

1. Make sure that you have friendly, smiling ushers who speak to the people arriving. The usher gave my wife a bulletin but did not speak. He only spoke to me after I said, “Good morning” but never smiled.

2. Make sure that the announcements are done in an excellent manner with planning, enthusiasm and complete information. The pastor started the announcements by looking around and finally said, “I guess you are wondering what I am doing. I am looking for…” but never said why that was important. He never welcomed guests so my assumption was that he did not expect guests. He rambled on and on. A member made an announcement about a Crop Walk and she had it written out, definitely had practiced it and did an excellent job of explaining the program. The pastor could have learned much from her.

3. Make sure that your choir director selects music that is appropriate for the choir. This church had 22 people in the choir but the director had selected a very difficult piece. The anthem had a section where they were unaccompanied during which the harmony resembled, in my wife’s words, “fingernails on a blackboard.” I really felt my wife was being generous. Ironically, I do not feel that the choir was that bad but the selection was much too difficult for their abilities as it would have been for the vast majority of church choirs.

4. Make sure that choir members realize that they are on view for everyone in the congregation to see. I tried to concentrate on the sermon but my thoughts wandered as the pastor rambled so I noticed the choir. Two choir members took a short nap during the sermon, one gazed at the congregation and never the pastor, another looked like she was checking phone messages and no one smiled.

5. Make sure that your ushers do not skip people when taking up an offering. O.K, I admit that should be a given but not in this congregation. I had my contribution ready when the usher came to our pew. I was the third person down but he did not want to let go of the offering plate and motioned to the other end of the pew. Sure enough, an usher came to that side of the pew but never slowed down for my offering even though my arm was extended. The woman who had spoken about the Crop Walk said that she would be in the narthex following the service so I thought I would give it to her but she was not there when I exited the church.

6. Make sure that everyone speaks to guests so they feel welcome. After the service, the woman in front of us turned around and stared—probably because I have great fun in singing hymns—but never said a word even after I smiled and said, “Good morning.” On the way out, the pastor shook our hands and welcomed us. One member who was one of my wife’s former teachers spoke to us but that was it. We definitely did not feel welcomed.

We Christians have the greatest cause in the world and I feel that demands excellence. Make it happen in your congregation. This experience has made me more determined than ever to do a better job in my interim congregation. I am going to “make sure” excellence happens.

At times Lutheran worship can be a little difficult to understand for people who come from a non-liturgical background. From robes to Lutheran aerobics (stand up, sit down, kneel, repeat) to the hymnals, a word of explanation can be helpful for new worshipers. My father put together an introduction to worship for the congregation he is currently serving to help a new group of worshipers. I liked the approach and adapted it for use at St. Michael. The modified version is currently posted on the “Worshiping at St. Michael” page on our website. Here is his original document and my modification to fit the practices at St. Michael. If you find the document to be helpful, please feel free to adapt it and use it in your congregation.

Understanding Worship at Mt Calvary

Understanding Worship at St. Michael

Each year, St. Michael does a Blessing of the Backpacks the week before school starts. We gather all the teachers and students together before worship, offer prayer for them and for the year ahead and then give them something to place on their backpack or bag as a reminder of God’s presence. In addition, we usually offer a prayer of thanksgiving for the school supplies we have collected. The blessing is brief, but powerful. Here are the prayers I typically use Blessing of the Backpacks 2011. We usually order the backpack tags from Oriental Trading Company. If you are looking for another example, here’s a post on the Lutheran Confessions blog: Backpack Blessing.

When my oldest son first started to play in a baseball league, the idea was just to have fun. Everyone got a chance to bat. They didn’t really keep track of outs and they didn’t keep score - officially. Even through there was no official score, my son and all of his friends knew exactly what the score of the game was and they were quick to declare a “winner” when the game was over.

My son and his team were not unique. As a nation, I am convinced that we keep score of just about everything, because we are a little obsessed with knowing who is winning and, just as importantly, who is losing. The numbers, as some people like to say, don’t lie and so we keep score. This week, however, I began to wonder why we feel compelled to keep score in church. You don’t see Jesus asking Peter to get a count of the crowd gathered to listen to the Sermon on the Mount, but each Sunday ushers, interested parishioners and pastors, invest time in counting how many people are in church. We record the numbers. We track them and analyze them, but why?. Why do we count how many people are in worship on Sunday mornings or how many members are on the rolls or how many persons we serve in mission?

I like to believe that we track these numbers so we can measure the progress and impact of our ministry, but sometimes I wonder how often we count simply so we can keep score, so we can create a leaderboard that shows statistics like: who is the largest and who is the smallest or who is growing the fastest and who is falling apart the quickest. Once the leaderboard is established then we can find our place and compare ourselves to others.

What would happen, do you think, if we stopped counting for a month or two? Would we find another place to direct that energy? Would we start to look for new ways to measure progress? Would our priorities and the ways we invest our time begin to change? I’d like to think all of these things would occur, but I have a feeling that in most cases we would secretly keep score, just like my son and his team did, so that when the experiment was over we could announce a winner.

When I mentioned the possibility of a third service to folks at St. Michael, most were cautiously supportive and genuinely curious about why I thought a third service might be helpful. When I explained that I thought there was an opportunity to reach a group of people in our community who aren’t able to attend worship on Sunday morning, most people agreed that, in theory, the idea made sense. At this point, I don’t know if the service will be on Sunday night, Tuesday night, Thursday night or some other evening. I don’t know if the service will be in the Sanctuary or at a second site. I don’t even know what the style or format of the service will be. I simply believe there is an opportunity that is worth pursuing. Now the question becomes, how do we move from a possibility to a new worshiping community.

Initially at least, I am planning to use an approach presented by Dr. Callahan at the Developing Key Leaders event held in Roanoke in September 2010. Dr. Callahan suggested that one approach is to find five people who would have fun beginning a new service. Gather those people in January and think about who, in the groups they are already a part of, might have fun begin a part of a new service. Between January and March, he suggests inviting the initial five to each find three more people who would be interested in being a part of a new service. In March, he suggests gathering those people for a one-time fun event. During the March event, work with the group to develop excellent ideas for the new service. He suggests repeating the process in May and July by encouraging each of the people from the March event to invite three more people to join the conversation. In August, reach out to the community through personal contacts, phone calls, notes, emails, text messages, etc and then launch the new service in September. I like the approach because it draws on the wisdom of the community and invites broad-based support. I’m sure we’ll modify it as we go, but initially this seems like a helpful way to get started.

Each year in the Christmas Eve bulletins, we do a bulletin insert which highlights ministries that might be of interest to new worshipers. This year we are focusing on three of our strengths: youth ministry, music ministry and helping ministries. The secondary purpose of the insert is to lift up and celebrate those strengths for the regular worshipers. If you would like to see an example of the insert, you can find it here.

Make sure you have a “guest helpful” bulletin

Attending different churches has taught me again how important it is to have a “guest helpful” bulletin.

One church was using what they described as a blended service with congregational responses from different worship material. Because of this, the bulletin really needed to help guide the people worshipping but it was anything but helpful. The Hymn of Praise that was used had WOV with a number beside it. I knew that WOV stood for “With One Voice,” one of the hymnals used in some Lutheran churches, and the number was for the page. But as I searched for the hymnal to find the music, I noticed it was not in the pews. The words were in the bulletin but even though I had sung it before, I did not know it well enough to sing it without the music. I kept thinking, “Why put WOV with a page number if the hymnal is not in the pew?”

Two other selections for the service music were in the hymnal in the hymn section but by the time I found them, we were on the last line both times. I kept thinking that a person new to a Lutheran service would have been completely lost! The irony is that, according the bulletin, the church had purchased the copyright to copy all of the service music used and could have downloaded everything—words and music–for their bulletin. Guests, even long time Lutherans, need help with a new and different service.

Think about your bulletin. How helpful is it to someone new to your worshipping community?