If you see me early in a week while the weather is clement you can tell immediately whether I have had time to do any gardening over the weekend. As I write this note, I have about 20 bug bites that are driving me crazy, and my right hand and arm have all kinds of scrapes and scratches on them. I pulled a splinter out of a knuckle on my right hand this morning (not easy to do when you are right-handed) and something pretty nasty stung me on my forearm and left a welt.

Ah, the joys of gardening! But, I have enjoyed this hobby for my entire adult life. When I am in the garden I do not take my phone, I don’t listen to anything except the sounds around me, and my family pretty much leaves me alone. They know they might be asked to help if they appear in the yard. I know whether most plants are weeds or not (at least in the Midwest) and know which ones I can pull with my bare hands and which ones to avoid. I know my way around a garden and I am attracted to the work.

When I walk up to a church building, I notice the landscaping. I mentioned a few weeks ago visiting a church that had an overgrown perennial garden that made it seem like no one loved the church. I was so tempted to start pulling weeds, but I did not do it; after all, it would only be a temporary fix. I cannot go there every week to weed their garden. It also does not address the underlying problem of their lack of attention to the way their building appears to their neighbors and potential members.

What do the signs of neglect on the outside of the building say about the life of the congregation when they get inside?

The dilemma of seeing what needs to be done, knowing how to do it, but knowing that doing it for the church will not be helpful in the long run is the dilemma of presbytery work. Whether it is a member of the Commission on Ministry or the Mission Committee or the Commission on Anti-Racism and Equity, we walk into the circumstances of your congregation with fresh eyes. We have no particular stake in the details of how your congregation runs its life together. We have experience in other places that might lend itself to your situation. We notice things to which you have become accustomed.

Sometimes the solution to a problem that has brought your congregation to our attention seems so obvious. The dilemma is that if we point out the problem, that is not always well received. If we try to solve the problem, it does not address the underlying cause. If we order a solution (as if we could!) it does not really solve anything beyond the very surface presenting problem.

The work of a presbytery is to stand alongside a congregation or session as it responds to God’s call and to offer assistance or advice based on our best knowledge about this and similar situations. Oftentimes, sessions want us to make the sadness or the inability to act or the acute presenting problem go away (and then go away ourselves). But the weeds will come back. If we have not helped a congregation understand why there are weeds and how to manage them into the future, we have not really been any help.

When I worship at the church where my husband is pastor, I am in a sanctuary with quite a few people I have literally known for my whole life. You see, we live in our hometown. My home church went through a little kerfuffle a couple of decades ago and some people from there ended up in the congregation that he serves. My daughter and her family like to sit in the balcony. As I was looking down into the sanctuary one recent Sunday, it struck me that I can almost see the ghosts of those who have left us and that I know some of the struggles that people who are in worship are facing.

I notice the widows and widowers whose spouses were my Sunday School teachers and friends of my parents. It is touching to see the way other people in the congregation have filled a seat that might have been empty next to each of these people. I see the brother of the actor who played “Father Mulcahey” on M.A.S.H. on TV who has outlived not only his brother but his spouse. His daughter who is my age sometimes brings him to church; sometimes it is his granddaughter who navigates her tall grandfather and his walker into the pew. I see the business leader who recently retired and then was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. He slips into the pew next to his wife after finishing an open meeting with members of the church who have questions about decisions made by the session.

I see the pastor who was one of two pastors who performed our wedding and, a few years later, our ordination, sitting with his spouse who is still a very active deacon. I see the place where my mom sat next to her second husband (my dad did not live long enough to see us come back to Peoria). She passed away 10 years ago. Her spouse is now too infirm to come to church so his place is vacant as well.

But that is not all I see. There are also the young people in their thirties who are in charge of the mission project that supports a boys’ home in Mombasa, Kenya. There are the babies making cooing noises throughout worship. I see the young man with long hair who dresses very casually for church (especially for this church) who is a member of the session and who preached in my husband’s absence the week before. I see the young doctor who leads a Bible Study. I see the senior high kids leave their seats in the summertime when the children leave; the big kids help with their activities.

Every one of those people and the people with whom you worship on Sunday mornings brings their own story into the sanctuary. Where else in our society do people of such different ages gather to do something together? Perhaps this is a part of that “great cloud of witnesses” by whom we are surrounded. It is not only those who have gone before us. It is also the motley crew who gather each Sunday, with their own memories and needs and visions for the future, who help to bring hope in the name of Jesus Christ.

Imagine approaching your church building as a visitor. Here are some of the things I notice.

• What door should I enter? Many churches have multiple doors and the one that the architect originally intended as the “front door” is not the way most members enter. I have sometimes sat in my car outside of a church on a Sunday morning until I see someone walk in because I have too many times tried two or three doors before I find the right one.
• What does the outside of the building look like? Does it seem like it is abandoned when you look at the paint or the roof or the state of repair of the sidewalk? If there is landscaping, is it maintained? I once walked up to a church that clearly had planted gardens around the building at one time. (Remember, I am a gardener.) They looked like they had not been maintained for years. A few scraggly perennials were doing their best to grow, but the beds were overgrown with weeds. It was all I could do not to pull a few of them. It would be better to take out the gardens and plant grass that can be mowed than to leave these symbols of neglect.
• What are the bathrooms like? In many smaller churches, most of the members live close enough and are there for a short enough time that they never use them. I have lost count of the number of times when I have gone into a kind of scary, dark ladies’ room only to find a little sign by the toilet that gives me instructions about how to flush. ‘Hold the handle down and count to 10; wait five seconds; flush again quickly,” or something like that. If you need to give this kind of instructions for this basic task, call a plumber!
• Are there stacks of dusty old books, curriculum, etc. in the corners of the sanctuary and the hallways? Are there announcements pinned to a bulletin board about events that happened months ago? Does it look like this is a living organization or one that is dying?

Another mass shooting. Two, in fact, in less than 24 hours. Some news reports say that we are now past the 250 mark for mass shootings this year in the United States. Sadly, it almost doesn’t matter when this note makes it into the Connect. There will be a mass shooting again whether at a school, church, mall, synagogue, entertainment district – anywhere that people congregate.

Guns are too available and too deadly. That seems clear, but it is a topic on which politicians and others will get stuck and then stuck again after the next mass shooting. Guns have always been available in this country, but this phenomenon of mass shootings is new. That is to say nothing of the slow motion mass shooting that occurs every day in Chicago and other cities. Something has changed in the 21st Century.

 What causes these young men to become so desperate or so enraged or so fame-seeking that they walk into a school room which is, often, filled with other students they have known since kindergarten and open fire? What causes them to drive nine hours to shoot people who are different from them and whom they have been told by our leaders are a threat to them? What causes them to dress for battle and then kill strangers and relatives alike? Have they been desensitized to violence by the world around them and by the world created before their eyes on their screens? Have they been abandoned by families who are so busy trying to stay afloat financially or who are distracted by their own demons that they do not notice that their sons are on the edge? Have they been drugged since early childhood in a society that turns to pharmaceuticals to solve problems?  What gives their own lives so little meaning that they are willing to lose it in a hail of police bullets or lose it by spending most of the rest of it prison? And, why do they have access to weapons that were made for use by trained soldiers on a field of battle?

We may not be able to agree on answers to any of those questions. But on what could we agree? Does the gospel have anything to offer these young men and boys? Can we find a way to communicate it so that it is heard and believed? Do we believe that the church can help to provide meaning in all of our lives in a way that nothing else can? Are we willing to find out what is happening for boys and young men in our society by creating safe spaces in which they express their fears and sadness?

I have had the privilege of sitting in on the meetings between members of the Commission on Ministry and the Mission Team with sessions that are requesting Salary Supplement funds. As you may recall, the presbytery voted to begin using funds from two sources in order to provide salary supplements to small churches with limited funds of their own. The application period has now closed for 2020 and seven congregations made application. There is a three page document that becomes the basis of the meeting to discover more about the congregations and to see if they qualify for this grant. It has been a privilege because we get to hear so many good things about the mission and ministry of these congregations. Some of them average 40 or 50 people in worship but their impact on their communities goes far beyond what you might imagine a small group could do. They host people without secure housing; they feed people with fresh food; they work with children from nearby schools who need time with caring adults and so on. I heard something in one of the visits that sounds like such a good idea that I wanted to pass it along. At the Presbyterian Church in Palatine, they have seasonal teams instead of standing committees. On their pledge Sunday each year, they have sign-up sheets for people to use to volunteer to serve on one or more seasonal teams. Each team has about five members. For instance, you might sign up for the Advent team. That team meets with the pastor and musician about eight weeks before the season begins. They spend time on the lectionary readings for that season and look for a theme. They then build everything that will happen in the congregation during that season around that theme: education, social events, mission projects, worship. One individual can sign up for two seasons in a row if they choose, but then they must take a break for at least one season. What a great idea! Imagine being a member of that church and looking at your calendar for the whole year. You realize that you will have the time and energy to serve during the summer and from January until Lent, for instance, but not to sit on a committee that meets every month whether they need to or not. Imagine the new ideas that can be generated when you have a new group of people handling these aspects of a church’s life. There is less of the “we have always done it this way” approach to the church year. Just imagine using the lectionary readings as the basis of your decisions instead of thinking that it is February so you must serve something with cherries, or it is the second Sunday of September so you must serve the same hotdogs at the Sunday School kick off that you have always served!

Susan D. Krummel (Sue)
Executive Presbyter
Presbytery of Chicago
312-488-3015

I saw the new “live action” movie version of Disney’s Aladdin recently. This is probably about the twenty-fifth (at least) time that I have seen this story portrayed either on stage or screen. My children were the right age for the original animated version. I imagine we saw it in a movie theater, but mostly I remember watching it on our TV at home through the auspices of our trusty VCR and the VHS tape. As it happens, we still have that VHS tape and we still have a VCR connected to our TV. (The DVD part of the device no longer works, but I don’t want to get rid of it because I don’t think we could find another VCR!) That means that our grandchildren have also enjoyed the movie that their mothers loved. And when I say “enjoyed” I mean that they kind of watched it on a loop when they were younger. Three of our grandchildren and my husband and I have also seen the stage musical here in Chicago. All of that is to say that I know the lyrics to the songs; boy, do I know the lyrics to the songs!
 

So when I was sitting in the theater, I immediately spotted one of the changes made in the 2019 version. Perhaps you know the Disney version of this story, too. If so, then you know there is a big production number when Aladdin, who has been turned into Prince Ali by the genie, makes his “royal” entrance into the city where the princess whom he seeks lives. The genie sings the number, introducing this new arrival into the succession of marriageable men seeking the princess’s hand. (This is a very common theme in Disney movies, along with the required dead parent.) I was kind of singing along in my head in the theater and we got to the part of the song that used to be “Brush up your Sunday salaam.”
 

The whole song is about preparing to meet the princess. As a part of that, one is admonished to get ready to give your best greeting. In the 2019 version, the words have been changed to “Brush up your Friday salaam.” Nice. Someone realized that putting on your “Sunday best” is a Christian concept. They changed it to make it more culturally sensitive. Or at least to make it more cognizant of the fact that in this fictional Eastern realm, Sunday might have been replaced by Friday as the time to put on your best and do your best.
 

I imagine that there are some people who think that is silly. It is a made up song about a made up place. Some might dismiss it as being merely politically correct. But what is wrong with noticing the differences among us and making an effort to be more inclusive and sensitive to those differences?
 

As our congregations continue to adjust to the way the world is in 2019, we need to be as observant as the people who reviewed those 1990’s lyrics of Aladdin and realized they should make some changes. What have you noticed about your neighbors that would lead you to change something in the way your congregation carries out its ministry? What small adjustments could you make to be more accommodating? How might you change so that the way you share the gospel is not a hindrance to that gospel? After all, the heart of our call is to share hope in the name of Jesus, not to do so in exactly the same way we have always done.
 

Susan D. Krummel (Sue)
Executive Presbyter
Presbytery of Chicago
312-488-3015