On Sunday, I got mad again. My pastor said the following in his sermon:
"It's really striking how often today the Holy Spirit is calling people to quit things especially when you find so few 'quit' verses in the Bible! And yet, God's program in America appears to be that he wants his people to take lots of time off, to quit serving folks once they have a child, to quit extending themselves. That usually means taking a year, two years, three years--taking a decade."
He also said:
"Are you a person who can be counted on by others, that when you say you're going to do something, it's money in the bank?"
What? You don't know me! Are you judging me? Are you telling me that I'm putting words in God's mouth? Are you labeling me a quitter without even giving me a chance to defend myself?
Because the thing is, I am trying really hard not to quit. But how can we keep volunteering for things and then backing out at the last minute--when our baby gets sick or just decides he doesn't like the nursery, when my husband loses the ability to hear due to an ear infection, or when the baby suddenly decides he needs to go to bed an hour earlier? Our word isn't very much like money in the bank unless that bank is a piggy with structural damage!
So what? We have to choose between being quitters or being unreliable?
As I was ranting and raving to my husband about pastors and sermons and quitters and blah, blah, blah, I told him that all I really wanted was a place where I can volunteer in a role that actually matches my gifts and that has some flexibility.
Suddenly, all my frustration landed on a single point. I want to be part of a community where people serve according to their gifts, their availability, their passions, their calling, etc. Not everyone is an eye. Not everyone is a nose. Some people work part-time or stay home. Others work seventy hours a week. Some people have babies, and some people want babies. Some people have grandkids who they spend a lot of time with, and some people desperately miss their grandkids who live far away. Some people love meeting new people, and some people love completing tasks. People are unique and not simply interchangeable.
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| Sometimes I feel like Charlie Chaplin. |
As much as I may want to blame my church for its machine-like appearance, however, it was the daily newsletter from WhatToExpect.com that stopped me in my tracks. A healthy community is made up of people who are willing to ask for help, and as the newsletter writer so astutely observed, it is easier to give help than to ask for it. I don't want to admit that I can't do something or that something is hard for me. I don't want people to think I'm unreliable.
The reality is that every cog is a little oddly-shaped. Every person has some quirk or difficulty they bring to their job. Every person who plays an instrument, hands me a bulletin, watches my kid in the nursery, and even just sits in the congregation is just as fragile as I am, one germ or crisis away from failing in their role.
Maybe my response to this sermon should not be to defend my ironclad reasons for quitting but to realize that I may need to ask for help sometimes, and that's okay. Maybe I need to take a step back and realize that when I only do things that I am totally confident will succeed, I miss out on a chance to demonstrate vulnerability and to receive help. As long as no one ever fails, failure seems terrifying, or at the very least potentially embarrassing. But if I want to be part of a community where it's okay to fail, maybe I need to start by being willing to fail myself.
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| This baby isn't afraid of failing! He's having the time of his life failing at crawling! |
4 comments:
bah! he is so cute i can't stand it!
PS You are pretty much always reliable with getting back to me when I have issues and questions of faith and theology or just need help in general. You are one of my most loyal friends, so I don't see you in the category of "quitter," though maybe you feel like that in other areas.
Thanks. :-)
Yeah, that's part of my frustration. Churches want cookie cutter volunteers who will show up on time and be greeter number 4 or musician number 2. When people's lives don't work very well with those specific roles, they quit volunteering for them, but that doesn't mean they quit serving. However, to pastoral staff who are trying to accomplish certain tasks every Sunday, the volunteer who decides to serve breakfast to homeless people every week or visit shut-ins or pray for the persecuted church is not very useful to them.
In general, I have a lot of issues with how we do church, and this is a big one. I think there are a lot of people with a wide variety of gifts who would love to serve in the church but just haven't figured out how to make their gifts fit with the church's needs. I think the church is losing out on a lot of ministry opportunities and losing a lot of people in the process. Some of those people get involved in other organizations where they can use their gifts, but a lot of them just kind of drift away.
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