When the teacher becomes the student…

Having taught for over 20 years, there is one truth I learned long ago. I might be the teacher, but for me to really do my job well, I must also be the student. This lesson was reinforced this past week in Glendo at our book study.

After years of reading spiritual and theological books we chose something different this time: Shop Class as Soul Craft by Matthew B. Crawford. It is a book about working with your hands both creating and fixing things and how our culture lost something vital when we moved away from this kind of work.

What this book does not directly deal with is anything to do with church or religion. It is an experiment to see if we can identify where faith and communities of God are present in a non-religious book. Now I believe this is true in theory, but I really have no idea how to go about exploring this concept. So I have been coming each time with a whole set of questions and observations about the chapter, throwing them out until the discussion takes on a life of its own.

From the beginning this book study has attracted a few people who take their faith seriously but for whatever reason, do not attend Sunday worship. It turns out that they are the real teachers. Let me give you an example from our last session. In the chapter we were reading Crawford talks about the dilemma he struggles with in his motorcycle repair shop. A customer will bring him an old broken down bike, which will probably cost more to repair than the bike is worth. But the customer loves the bike and even with this warning, authorizes the repairs. Now the author takes great pride in his work, so he wants to do whatever it takes to make the bike right. The problem is that to do this will take so many hours of work that he doesn’t feel right charging the customer. This is especially true when he knows he can do an ok job and the bike might well run just fine for quite a while. Financially this is what makes sense, but emotionally it is a decidedly unsatisfactory solution. What should he do?

For me the answer seemed obvious. He should call up the customer and let him decide. It took quite a bit of discussion before I began to understand that the problem here is not giving the customer the right to decide, but rather getting a person emotionally attached to the motorcycle to hear the decision that needs to be made. It’s a process of learning about how to best serve the customer while satisfying the need to make things right.

When this finally made sense to me my teacher went on to say: “It’s like faith where we seek to serve others as Christians all the while we are growing in our walks with God.” Bingo!! There it was. - So simple. Yet I am so entrenched in my theological language and concepts that I could not see what was right before my eyes. It was a great evening.

We have such a need in our church families to invite and then listen to those people who are not entrenched in our traditions and teachings - for they will bring us new ways of understanding faith that will enrich all our lives.

Things are not always the way we see or hear them….

Having struggled with a hearing loss the past few years, I am sensitive to the acoustics in the churches I work with. Most of them have really good acoustics for singing but the sound tends to disperse making it hard for people with a hearing loss to understand what is being said. Many churches have sound systems, but this simply makes things louder – not more understandable.

About a month ago a new/returning woman turned up at Christ Church in Douglas. It has been years since she attended services, but the older members of the congregation knew her. I did not get a chance to visit with her before worship, but afterwards asked her if she had been able to hear during the service. Shaking her head sadly she said “no”, BUT Douglas has been experimenting with putting the liturgy on a screen in the front of the church and smiling she thanked us all for this because she was able to read and participate. She has been back every week since.

Now I have always thought of the use of screens as a way to appeal to the young and overcome the confusion of the Prayer Book for new comers while at the same time saving paper. It never occurred to me that it might also be an issue of hospitality allowing people with a hearing loss to join in the worship with others.

God is found in the most unlikely places??

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. ICorinthians 13:4-7

Having worked with many different churches over the past seven years, I have been to many and varied annual meetings. Last Sunday at St. Stephen’s was one of the best. But that is not what I expected. First of all they hold their annual meetings during Sunday worship, using the meeting instead of the traditional sermon. How, I wondered can the tedium and tension over elections and money possibly draw our attention toward God?

Secondly, I already knew there had been some tension the past year over issues that involved both control and money. Sermons are always a good place to address the role of these twin sins in God’s Kingdom, but was this the best place to address such things in the particular?

Finally, last month at the Ministry Support Team – the place where all the ministries share information and planning – it had been decided that they would try something new this year and set the annual meeting within the context of celebration. I couldn’t help but wonder if this meant they were going to avoid all the issues from the past year, something churches tend to do only to have them come back making things even more difficult.

The meeting lasted an hour and a half, but no one seemed to get restless. Everyone had a chance to speak. Several of the most difficult issues from the past year were addressed without much tension. And eight new people who have attended church for quite a while but haven’t been active in the ministries of the church stepped into new roles. Amazing!

What followed was a real celebration. Each person was given a small bag of m&m’s for mutual ministry and a party favor horn. Then each ministry was named – including the ministry of presence – and placed within the liturgy of the Prayers of the People as everyone ate candy and tooted their horns.

The celebration at worship ended with the Eucharist and then everyone went downstairs to the parish hall where ice cream Sundays and cake were served. It was a great day!

Who were the people in this story and how do they show God’s activity?