SOME THOUGHTS ON PARBUCKLING

     

           I was entranced watching the work around the Costa Concordia (cruise ship) off the coast of Sicily.  Lots of things about it make really good illustrations about all sorts of topics, even if they are not going to make it into a sermon ever.  But it can make it into a blog!

           Many months ago, the Concordia wreck got stabilized, and then the divers and engineers started to figure out what they had to work with.  Then they spent a long time developing plans, testing scenarios, getting things thought out.  Another long period of time was building the equipment needed and getting it in place.  Finally, only last week, 20 months after the ship scraped bottom and capsized, did they get to the first big salvage effort.  Now that they have it upright, they had a lot to do for the next stage of effort.

            We are doing a kind of parbuckling at Christ Church right now: working on goals, beginning an assessment and evaluation process with our committees and consistory and very soon we will have a search committee which will prepare a church profile and then seek candidates for the pastorate here. While there is much work going on, a lot of is is not very obvious. 

            As with the Costa Concordia we are working on the parbuckling, refloating, refitting, and resailing of Christ Church. (I know the Costa Concordia, will decidedly not cruise again. But, Christ Church certainly is and will – analogies only stretch so far….)

            In terms of my gimmicky parallel, Christ Church and the people who love it want it not just upright and salvaged, but sailing the seas of the gospel. We will continue to work on our plans of action to meet our transitional goals and to undertake the pastoral search. As with the Costa Concordia, when we carefully do each part and do it well, things will go as we planned (and hopefully as God has planned) and we will find the sailing to be exciting and good.

Blessings – Laura Lee

*Note - most of these ideas were taken from a colleague/friend - David Ashby - I just shaped them a bit!

ONE SIZE FITS ALL....MAYBE NOT

Whenever I see ‘one size fits all’ on a piece of clothing, I have to laugh. It always means I am too fat or too short – or both! And, it reminds me of a time at St. Michael’s Hospital in Newark when one of the sisters asked me to go pray with a patient who wanted a ‘real minister’. When I went in the room and offered to pray with her, she said again that she wanted a real minister. And, when I inquired what she meant – she said, “Short, fat and bald!” I told her she was lucky to get two out of three and we prayed.

The truth is, ministers – real ministers – come in all sizes and shapes, theologies, gifts and skills. We range from white-haired men & women who maintain traditional churches and theologies to the edgy ‘new church’ pastors who have many tattoos and piercings and theology to match – and everything in between. There are some things, I hope we all share: a heartfelt commitment to our calling to serve the church of Jesus Christ; theological curiosity; kindness and passion and skills for the mission, vision and goals of the church they are serving.

Beyond this, there is huge variety and as much as most pastors I know want to please the people they serve, we are all just one person (one size) and we can never perfectly fit or fulfill everyone’s personal expectations of a pastor. We may not say something in prayer that you wish we had said, we may spend more time doing some things than you think we should...... It seems that no matter how hard we try, we have always disappointed somebody - or even lots of people – and we wish it weren’t so.

In an address at the General Assembly of the Unitarian/Universalists a couple of years ago, “From iChurch to Beloved Community”, Fredric J. Muir talked about the decline of mainline churches. In this speech, he said that as long as we expect our pastors to fully meet our personal expectations and if we keep expecting them to ‘make us happy’, they and we, as congregations, as doomed to failure. But, if we expect our pastors to zealously support the mission of the church and if we zealously support the mission of the church – we will all be happy because we will be doing God’s will.

Now, this is much easier said than done, pastors want to fit all sizes and you want us to keep trying to do that. But, if we strive to do what Dr. Muir suggests, we will ask questions rather than make accusations, we will be gracious and give our pastors room to be themselves and most importantly, we will trust that our pastors want what’s good for the church and trust that they do care for each person in church – we just may express it imperfectly…..because one size really doesn’t fit all. We just all work to come as close as we can.

Blessings – Laura Lee