LOST and Holy Week

Ah, the blessings of planning an event. Not just any event. We are talking Holy Week.  It's a series of events. This year it starts with an Easter Egg Hunt.  I know.  I am not fully sure why a church has an Easter Egg hunt but we sold Christmas trees one year so why not step into all that people relate Christian holidays to in the name of "reaching the lost".  What "lost" you may ask? Good question. Without a trusty GPS I frequently am lost. Our senior Pastor last year got lost leaving our community Sunrise service. Well...sort of. He couldn't find his way out of the adjacent high-school parking lot. I am not really certain that counts as lost, but it made for a good story.  Anyway, 11 years ago when I came on staff at a church, I heard about the effort to "reach the lost", and not in any uncertain terms....they had a number. 130 million. Wow. That's a bunch of people no matter how you slice it up. And of course I would like to slice it up. How many lost people here in Florida? I figure most of the "lost" are in Utah with many wives, or at least a big chunk of them.  So maybe in Florida we only have a couple million, and probably most of them in Miami or the Keys. Easy to get lost down there in the Everglades.  So 5 years later at a conference I hear the mission of the Anglican church is to reach the 130 million lost. Are you telling me in 5 years we haven't reached any of them? We aren't reaching 129 million and 8 hundred thousand?  None of them have died or moved to another country? This needs more investigating. Perhaps counting the lost is like the census. We only look every 10 years to see how many are lost. I looked closely at this mysterious number. It turns out for many years now that is the number.  130 million. Even a few months ago at a national conference the grand pubah (or Primatial Vicar as he is properly referred to) stood before the thousands of Anglicans gathered to tell us our mission is to reach the....you guessed it...130 million "lost" people. Wow. We stink at this mission. Talk about Mission Impossible. Maybe on Easter instead of looking for eggs we should look for people.  Now that would be a good event for a church.  Like the egg hunt the hardest ones to find aren't really lost, they are just hiding in a really good spot.  Perhaps we should look harder.  I bet God can find them all.

1000 and Counting

One of my favorite Sesame Street characters was The Count.  I used to count with my girls to entertain them, but mostly to entertain myself. When most people imitate a character to entertain their kids, especially one like Barney or The Count, we are talking about kids that are 2-6 years old.  Mine were teenagers. Sure I did that when they were younger, but I have fond memories of driving through toll booths in Orlando with my girls counting out money to the toll collector (before e-pass) in the voice of The Count.

Speaking of counting, thanks to Google analytics, I can see that this week marks the visit of my 1000th page view.  I have no idea who the 1000th visitor is, but if I could, I would give some sort of prize.  It is funny how we count, and the perspective to which we apply our totals. For me, 1000 visits to my web site is amazing, but for many bloggers, they get 1000 hits in one post. Analytics also tells me I have people from over 26 countries around the world who have read my blog.
Of these, my favorite is Mauritius, a small country off the east coast of Africa. Prior to someone from there visiting my site, I could not have told you where Mauritius is, but now I know a bit about the country because I did a bit of research on it, and you should too.  I would love to go there for a vacation, but it costs way too much just to get there.
Back to counting. Yesterday in church our pastor commented that the Hubble telescope has discovered something like 360 billion new galaxies. 360 BILLION!!! How do we even count that? Ok, there is one over there, to the left of that is two, then three. It would take years just to count that high. How do we know what separates the galaxies? Maybe there are just 8 really big galaxies...but 8 isn't an impressive number that would make it into a sermon. 360 Billion...that number did it. What if there were only a mere 200 million galaxies? What number impresses you? We sold over 300 CDs at our church and it was a huge success. If the Rolling Stones sold 300 CDs you would have never heard of them, and they would have gathered lots of moss.  Perspective. That is it. I recall a pastor once telling me at that this event we spent many hours of manpower working towards, that if just one person came, it would be worth it. Really? I know the parable of the lost sheep, but this seemed like the parable of the lost perspective. If we are going to do something worthwhile, why not make it count for as many people as possible and not actually target one person. My recent trip to Nepal showed me a church in the minority. With 95% of the people claiming Hindu or Muslim faiths, there was no room for a Baptist church, Catholic Church, or Anglican church. There is a Christian church.  I liked that. A friend showed me a recent survey, focus of the survey was not important, that showed 35% Catholic, 9% Christian, etc.   Funny, I thought Catholics were Christian, so why the two numbers? To use an analogy from a friend of mine who has gone back to school and is dissecting animals, we have dissected Christianity into so many parts it is almost like we are heading towards the 360 billion galaxies story.  We don't count someone as Christian unless they go to our church.  As I sit here listening to the thunder, I can't help but think of God looking down on us saying "8 gajillion, 8 gajillion and one, 8 gajillion and two marvelous Christians, HA-HA-HA (insert sound of thunder ).

No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed

Not too long ago when I first started working at a church I taught music for our preschool.  I think I was qualified since I knew music and had three daughters who had graduated from preschool.  I also feel as if I relate to small children pretty well. They understand me.  I shortly understood that having kids and working with kids is not the same.
One of my favorite motivators for preschoolers was stickers. At the end of class they would get a sticker, and then I graduated to ink stamps.  Different animal ink stamps. A monkey, or a horse, or an elephant, whichever they wanted.  And then it was cool to stamp not just the hand, but on the leg, and one day, on the belly button. Whoops. Parent teacher conference. Parent to me..."how did my son get a stamp on his belly?" Me.."I put it there." Parent..."so you lifted his shirt?" Me.."no, he did it and I stamped him."  It was then I caught on that the parent was looking at me like there was something wrong.  Preschool director..."David is a great teacher and father of 3 daughters, we will help him understand not to stamp anything but the hand."  Ok.  Fake smiles and pleasantries exchanged.  Fast forward a couple months to Christmas. We were selling Christmas trees at church.  The guy in charge of the tree sale had put a pop-up trailer next to the lot to stay warm on cold nights.  The kids wanted to see the trees so I took them to see Christmas trees. "What is in that house?" asked a kid pointing at the trailer.  "It is where the man who sells the trees stays warm", I replied.  "Can we see inside?"  "Of course!" 3 months of preschool experience and some new training told me it was ok to open the door, let the kids run inside and check it out while I stayed outside at the door as a monitor.  Next day.... parent teacher conference.  "Little Johnny says he went in the trailer and jumped on the bed with Mr. Mander." My explanation went well and we brought in a few kids from the class to tell how they went in the trailer while I stayed outside. And I thought the music business was tough.  I quit teaching preschool that year.  We never sold trees again.  I know God's grace extends even to preschool teachers, but evidently in this day and age, a preschool parent's grace stays at the dinner table.

Planning Prayers

I recently attended a fundraiser. Actually I attended a few fundraisers in the past few weeks.  I think spring must be fundraiser time, if there is such a time.  Summer isn't good because people are traveling.  Fall isn't good because not only is it time for the start of school, but many summer sports programs are ending and have their banquets.  Then comes Christmas and people are giving to holiday charities. Yes, spring is the time.  New budgets, new flowers; everything is new and so most people have room to give money for something other than themselves.  You know...if you have read any of my blog...I love to be in on the planning of these events because that is where the fun happens. If I am not there for the planning, I always try to imagine how it went to get to the final product we are witness to. Dinner or not dinner. That is the first question. If we serve food are people more or less likely to give?  Sit down dinner or buffet?  Free dinner or charge money? Big money or cheap? Table sponsor or individual tickets? Silent auction, live auction, or both?  Keynote speaker or slideshow, or heaven forbid...both? And in the case of my most recent fundraiser, open bar or cash bar? They chose cash bar. $7 for a glass of wine, $5 for domestic beer, wow! Nothing too good for the kids! Yes, it was a fundraiser for a Christian private school. That was a first for me but maybe someone thought if the people drink more they will be eager to bid more.  We were served a sit-down dinner of both chicken and beef, no choice here.  Whichever one you don't want just leave on the plate to waste as we raise money for the more fortunate.  I wondered how much of my $50 to attend the fundraiser was going to pay for the meal since I didn't notice the hotel caterer as a sponsor. To start the meal, they invited the pastor of this large church to say a blessing for the meal. It was during his prayer that I came to a greater appreciation of our prayer book. Somewhere in the Book of Common Prayer there must be a dedication for school prayer, and a prayer for the blessing of a meal. Even though the book has many great prayers, we can actually say our own prayers, but when called on to pray for a large group on the spot, the book helps us stay on track. Here is the pastor's prayer, or at least my favorite part from it. Remember he was supposed to simply pray a blessing for the meal, but then he improvised.

"and Lord, we give thanks for this school. All the great things this school is. And Lord God, we know that our school is not perfect, it has many flaws, but God, it reflects who you are, and so we are thankful."

I am pretty sure in most Christian churches God is perfect and without flaws. I am also pretty sure that's not what he meant, but sometimes the prayer book wins. Sometimes planning is good, and sometimes God's grace extends even to Pastors.

Pancake Supper Part Two

Sorry it took so long for part two. I took a trip to Nepal and have safely returned. I actually have so many blog topics I may write a new one every other day just to catch up. This post is part two of a previous post. It could stand alone but much of the explanation of terminology happens in part one so feel free to go back and refer to that if needed.
Some years ago our church decided to host one of these pancake suppers on Shrove Tuesday.  We had not done one in some years, and I don't really remember who's idea it was to have one, but that really isn't important to the story.  Like any good event at our church, proper planning took place. We discussed every aspect of the pancake supper, right down to the type of syrup we would use.  Mrs. Butterworth or Aunt Jemima?  Real butter or margarine? Sausage or bacon? Whole wheat or not? You get the idea.  People are funny when making these kinds of decisions. People with clean garages at home, the same people who actually park a car or two in their garages; these are the people who choose by debating which one will be the most used. There is only room for one syrup so we must choose carefully. People like me, with garages full of stuff and no room for cars; we say both and. Give the people choices! Let's have syrup with butter already in it and have plain syrup, and maybe add blueberry syrup as well! So the discussion goes back and forth from choices, to money-concious people who don't want too many bottles of syrup or any leftover pancakes. Where will we put leftovers? When we realized the discussion is about pancake batter and for 100 or so people that may attend, the difference is counted in perhaps $20, I say err on the side of too much. After all, who wants to come to a dinner on Fat Tuesday only to be given a diet-sized portion of food.  Lets buy enough for 150 people and spend that extra $20!
The reality is, what you just read in less than two minutes took a church staff of 6 people several hours to discuss. Of course I am as much to blame since I am one of the six, but you get in the moment and passion for pancakes takes over.  Ok, so we have the supplies, we open the doors, and begin serving people for the planned two hours. One hour into the dinner we have served about 20 people.  Evidently our new tradition hasn't caught on yet. Our cooks are busy counting out controlled portions to minimize waste. Two pancakes, one sausage per person. After one hour had gone by and we sat with empty plates, I encouraged people to go back for more. This is where things went awry.  One of our cooks was the soup nazi of pancakes. This was an "all you can eat" dinner.  He served you two pancakes and apparently that was all you can eat. You will get no more. As he sat in the midst of an overwhelming amount of batter, I let him know as a staff person we had properly planned for people to be able to eat as many pancakes as they wanted so please serve more to the guests. He told me no. I spoke with the senior pastor and made him aware of the rationing, to which he yelled from his seat to the cook, "give them as much as they like!" Well upon returning to the line, our volunteer threw one pancake on my plate and said "you are an ass!" to which I said thanks for the pancake with a smile on my face.
As the dinner concluded, I went to my office, followed by the cook who actually threatened to cause physical harm to me, even referring to a gun he had in his car. Over pancakes. And sausage. We didn't actually come to fighting over the dinner, but my sarcasm probably did not help diffuse his anger either. I guess you could say I dodged a bullet. We discontinued that tradition, and a few weeks later I received a letter of apology from that parishioner. It must have been seven or eight years ago that this happened. This year we had some new members who wanted to put on the pancake supper. I checked my schedule and would be in Nepal during the event. "Sounds great" I said. I heard it went well and there was plenty of leftover food.

Pancake Supper Part One

As I get ready for a trip to Nepal, I am going through many preparations. Part of these preparations include making sure our music is covered when I am gone.  Normally this is not too complicated but this time I will be gone over one of those Anglican holidays.  Of course Ash Wednesday is not necessarily an Anglican holiday, or maybe holiday isn't the correct word. I believe it it a feast day, although since it marks the start of Lent, it is also a fast day.  Whoa...I know I have confused many of my Anglican't friends, Catholics are probably ok so far.  Lent, fast, feast, Ash Wednesday? Lent begins the countdown to Easter, but not like a normal countdown, 40 days but we don't count Sundays. Please remember at this point most of what I say is rhetorical, so don't send me an email to explain stuff to me. I actually get it, but this is not an educational or theological blog, it is for entertainment; mine mostly but a few others have enjoyed it as well so back off.
Ok, back to our story. 40 days not including Sundays makes it 46 days in real calendar days, but things in the Bible didn't happen for 46 days and nights. The number is 40, so apparently we rest on the Sabbath which means we rest so much we don't do anything at all.  We can't even count on that day. We wake up the next day and begin counting again.
The church also does a lot of preparing I have found.  We cannot properly celebrate Easter without preparing for the 40 days, however, we cannot have the 40 days of preparation without preparing for that. Makes perfect sense. Since many people partake in a fast during Lent ( a fast is where we give something up), why not gorge ourselves the day before the fast. Great idea. Gluttony doesn't count as a sin if we are doing it as preparation.  If I could think of one thing to have as a last supper to prepare for the Last Supper which prepares us for Easter, what would it be? Well obviously someone important thought of pancakes. I say someone important because somehow it is now the observed tradition of the church. If I thought of pancakes people would say, "thats stupid", or "pancakes are for breakfast".  And I would be defeated. But this smart person turned the tables. They obviously responded with, "it is not stupid because I am talking about pancakes..... for supper!" Wow! What should we call this event? How about a pancake supper?  That doesn't sound very churchy. Lets call the day Shrove Day, or better yet, so we remember what day it falls on, Shrove Tuesday. Brilliant! You can look up what shrove is, but as a hint, the term Mardi Gras is french for Fat Tuesday (nothing to do with beads, naked people, body paint or parades).  Once again, the world took a holiday the church had, and like Christmas and Easter, added commercialism to it and made it more fun so everyone could enjoy it.  God still has grace for the human race.

You'll Put Your Eye Out

Everyone knows this saying. The funny thing is most people never heard their mom say it.  They just hear other people quoting a line that has become infamous.  Anyone who has kids know that as a parent if you were to say this, it wouldn't carry much weight.  "Be careful with that" is about all we can say. The warning is good enough. Inventing a probable consequence or predicting what will happen if the warning is not heeded puts you in a different category somehow.
We do like warnings in America.  Thanks to lawyers we have lots of warnings that don't make much sense.  "Not intended for consumption" is one of my favorites.  You know that warning came because someone tried to eat it, whatever it was. A can of air-freshener may smell like berries, but let's not spray some on our toast.
Yesterday at church we had family sunday. The first sunday of every month is designated family sunday.  I guess every other sunday is individual sunday, but we don't call it that.  On family sunday the kids don't have sunday school.  They stay in church with their parents and we hear a children's sermon.  I think for most people the children's sermon is the one sunday everyone understands the lesson and it usually only lasts 10 minutes. Win-win.  Anyhow, on this particular children's sermon, one of the leaders in the program was scheduled to speak.  She gave a terrific lesson on light. Jesus is the light of the world, and I helped the kids sing "this little light of mine." Great! To end it on a good note (pun intended) she gave out glow sticks. She was quite proud of this give-away. First of all it went with the theme.  She even told us the glow sticks had been on sale 15 for a dollar so she went crazy and bought lots! I thought, that was brilliant!! (more pun intended, thanks)
Usually the person speaking to kids gives out candy. Then we find the wrappers all over the place and the kids make noise unwrapping them.  No noise this time, and what could be better than glow sticks during the day?
About 5 minutes into the prayers that follow the message, came a cry. Not a cry like a baby, more like a scream, then a cry, then more screaming.  Then a mom running out of the middle of the service holding her son. What could have happened? Apparently the 15 for a dollar glow sticks are not made as well as the 2 for a dollar glow sticks. The young boy had bent the stick and it broke open splashing glow stuff liquid into his eyes. And it burned.  Without warning.  People sprang into action. We had a nurse jump up to rinse with water. We had church people praying. We had lawyers investigating and doing lawyer stuff. And we had a concerned person call 911. Nice. Our emergency? Umm, a glow stick exploded in a kids face during the service. What kind of a church is that?
Well, everything turned out alright. The paramedics treated and released our kid into mom's care right there in the parking lot. He was fine. Turns out no toxic chemicals went into the making of those glow sticks. Probably because some kid did it before and now there are regulations and a label, but who reads those things anyway. I am pretty sure I heard another mom say as she took the glow sticks away from her kid's hands..."give me those, you might put your eye out!"