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Clocked IN
When we make the all-important decision to request that our names be placed on the rolls of a congregation, we face a major shift in our responsibilities and standing in that community. It would be helpful if someone prepared us for the enormity of what we are doing when we ask to be members!
Before, we were checking the church out to see what it had to offer us and our families. We were the newcomers, and we could be justified in thinking it was “all about us.”
But when we identify ourselves as members of the congregation, we become ministers of it. Now, we come to help feed as well as to be fed. We can no longer be consumers of religious life, but we must be suppliers as well.
When we arrive on Sunday morning, and at all church functions, we are “clocked in.”
That couple we don’t know standing hesitantly in the Narthex, or at the edge of the activity at coffee hour—whose job is it to greet them, introduce them around, begin to discover what their needs and interests are? It’s ours.
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2 comments:
from Archdeacon Faith Perrizo:
I was at a ministry conference last month in Ohio and one of the lay people leading the conference made a comment that stuck with me: Betty said, " I realized at some point that I was not a volunteer at church, but that being
a Christian is a vocation. That's different. Volunteers can pick and
choose what they do. Having a vocation as a Christian includes committment and following God's call."
In Christ,
Faith Perrizo
from the Rev. Sue Doohan:
Wrapping our minds around this realization and letting that shape our lives would lead to amazing changes in our congregations. Covey calls this keeping the main thing the main thing.
Sue
Rev. Sue Doohan
HEARTHSTONE MINISTRIES
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