A Volley from the Canon, Number 124: Not the Building

A VOLLEY FROM THE CANON, NUMBER 124 NOT THE BUILDING By now, we all have colorful, up-to-date parish or mission websites, chock-full of helpful information about our activities and ministries, enlivened by attractive photos of our church family happily and productively involved. Now, open the web-page and check it out. If the most prominent photo on the opening page, or any page, is the church building, get it changed. Sure, it’s a beautiful building. Certainly, you are all proud of it. But it isn’t the church, it’s merely the structure where the church presently meets for worship. It isn’t YOU! No one interested in a church wants to be a member of a building, even more so of a building maintenance society. People who want a church want an active, happy, energetic, involved, open-hearted, generous, mission-minded community. Show that on your web-site. There’s room for a small photograph of the church’s meeting place on an inner page, so that people can recognize it when they arrive. Preferably, show the door people actually enter through, too, not just the one for brides.

A Volley from the Canon, Number 123: Faith Sharing

A VOLLEY FROM THE CANON, NUMBER 123 FAITH-SHARING—IN THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH? (GASP) The liturgical tradition is the greatest—for worship. For hospitality, for building community, for deepening relationships in the congregation, not so much. Some of the Protestant traditions do some of their folksier, relational work during worship itself (to the detriment of worship, actually). We don’t have time and opportunity to do that, unless we create them. Another important activity that is not built into our liturgy is the opportunity for faith-sharing within the congregation. We need it. We particularly need to hear from our peers in the congregation about their experiences with stewardship in their own lives—their challenges, their struggles, their growth and their depth. A good stewardship program in a congregation will have these opportunities built in, and not just during the fall pledging season. An occasional five-minute time of sharing is well worth a shortened sermon several times during the year. There can be other gathering opportunities when faith sharing can be included, too, outside of worship. Written accounts or even “interviews” for the parish or mission newsletter can be effective. Most of us now have parish websites: these can be wonderful vehicles for members to share the stories of their own faith journeys. In many of our congregations, we don’t really know one another. Rather, we know one another socially, but not with much depth. We don’t know what really excites one another, what our hopes, fears, joys, and challenges are. If we are to be truly the family of God, we need to work at that. In the end, no one can inspire and challenge us quite as well as our own.

A Volley from the Canon, Number 122: The Fallacy of Peterkin Music

A VOLLEY FROM THE CANON, NUMBER 122 THE FALLACY OF “PETERKIN MUSIC” Campers at Peterkin tend to love worship in Strider Chapel. I’ve even seen evaluations from kids stating that daily Eucharist was the camper’s number one favorite camp activity! That is remarkable, and it certainly needs to have some attention paid to it. The campers particularly love to sing in the chapel, and they do so loudly and with energetic hand and body movements. It is participatory worship in the Anglican tradition, squared. Lives are changed at Peterkin, and there is no doubt that Strider Chapel is a key element of that reality. Ergo—this just makes sense, right?—if we can just transfer Peterkin music back to our home congregations, the local youth and young adults will return in droves, bringing their friends. The worship of the whole congregation will be enlivened, and the Holy Spirit will descend like a very happy dove upon all present. Not. There are factors involved other than song selection and instruments used. Put a bunch of old people (God bless us!) into the mix, even with the words to the songs clearly projected on a screen (even if it were visible from all parts of the room, which it never is, and even if we could read it, which we never can), and even so, you still get “dud” worship. The magic is gone. At Peterkin, the young campers make up the majority present. Even at Family Camp, Young- Campers-With-Many-Years’-Experience still make up the majority. Most of them not only know the songs, but they form a chorus to help carry the others who don’t know the songs yet, and it is easy enough to add a new tune to the mix occasionally. Of even greater importance, music at Peterkin camps is peer-led, or close to it. The counselor staff are college students, quite responsible adults, but still, just a few years older than our older campers. They are downright glamorous. They are much-admired and respected “older siblings” to the campers. Someone said last summer, “Those counselors are ‘rock stars’ to these kids.” O. K., imagine your favorite rock stars knowing your name and paying attention to you, as a kid! If it is true that music is crucial to the worship at Peterkin, it is also true that it matters greatly who leads that music, and who comprises the bulk of the congregation, youth and wanna-be youth. Our kids are very open-hearted, inclusive, and non-ageist. They have no problem with the fact that the celebrant(s) at the altar is packing some years. (It could be noted, though, that many of our clergy leaders at the camp are younger clergy, and that the preachers through the week include counselors and younger staffers as well as clergy.) The celebrant doesn’t do that much, anyway, and the kids have gotten to know him or her along the way. Communion is distributed by those same rock-star counselors! The kids don’t even mind if there is a gray head in the orchestra. Nevertheless, that balance on the age scale has to be tipped toward youth for the miracle to happen. If we want meaningful worship for young people and young-at-heart people, we can’t over-simplify. If we just bring in a couple of guitars on Sunday morning at 10:30, or even at a special time later in the day, and impose Peterkin songs, projected or printed, on our regular congregation, all involved will be disappointed, and they will say so. To make it work, we have to have youth leadership, youth involvement all the way in planning and presentation, and a core body of youth to bring the thing off, even with the weight of some older, more restrained worshipers dragging on it. In most of our congregations, which have just a handful of young people to start with, unless they do some serious evangelism before beginning to secure the participation of their friends from beyond the church (or plan the worship ecumenically from the beginning), that Peterkin spirit is unlikely to happen. We all need to provide some variety in our worship experiences, as the bishop has challenged us to do. A more contemporary style of worship, in addition to, not replacing, traditional worship, is a great place to start. We just need to be sure to lay the groundwork first, and not assume it will be an easy transfer for us. We might do well to consider this, too: maybe God likes for the Peterkin worship experience to be special.

A Volley from the Canon, Number 115: Narrative Budget

A VOLLEY FROM THE CANON, NUMBER 115: NARRATIVE BUDGET Who wants to read a budget, church or otherwise? Most of us can hardly make heads or tails of all those parentheses and “year-to-dates.” They make us go all squinty-eyed. We also get bogged down in petty details, about how many dollars go here and how many go to whom. A way to express budgetary realities meaningfully and usefully is to translate them into a narrative budget. It is one thing to know that a staffer is paid X dollars, or that the electricity bill for the church was Y dollars, but what does that mean in terms of ministry? What are we paying staff FOR, and what are we heating and cooling and lighting the buildings FOR? Narrative budgets give us that information. We need only a few categories. How much staff time, and how much energy use, is used for EVANGELISM? How much for SERVANT MINISTRY? CHRISTIAN EDUCATION? WORSHIP? ADMINISTRATION? PASTORAL CARE? These areas are graspable and graphable. They also show, visually, what is really happening with our church budget. And they inspire people to support them, rather than quibble over nickel and dime details. We need to report dollar amounts in the interest of full and open disclosure. More helpfully, though, a narrative budget expresses real ministry. It should be part of all our budget reporting.