Category Archives: Ministry

Let’s talk about paperwork

Posted on January 18, 2011 | Leave a comment

Because paperwork is EVERYONE’S favorite topic. You know you love it….can’t you just FEEL the love?

Ok, I’ll come clean.  I don’t love paperwork.  I don’t love filing, sorting or hold music.  And I am tremendously bad about jotting important things down on tiny post-it notes which will later end up buried on my desk or at the bottom of my purse.  I am one of those people who has literally been saved by technology – I can now jot down notes in my Palm Pilot and then do a device-wide “search” and find whatever I’m looking for!

With the new year and increased activity in the church, I’ve spent the past few days doing a lot of paperwork, and am nearing the end of the original mountain.  Quite a bit had been accomplished -  tax forms have been ordered, the church website is well underway and the kids’ immunization forms have been given to all the right people.  Not to mention the fact that I can see my desk again.

Because color coded charts make us smarter. No, seriously they MAKE US SMARTER.

It has not been the most fun I’ve ever had (shocking, I realize!) but I have to admit that a lot of things in my life are way more accessible and easier to work with than they were five days ago.  I even appear to be smiling more at my computer!  Maybe organization does have a greater spiritual purpose….

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Posted in Church Administration, Family, First Unitarian of Norton, Ministry

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What are we looking for?

Posted on January 14, 2011 | 8 Comments

It is a pretty commonly accepted fact that not a lot of Americans today attend church.  Most data suggests that between 40 percent and 50 percent of people in Generations X and Y did not grow up attending any kind of church at all.

Those who were born after 1970 (X and Y are generally defined as people born between 1965 and 1990) had Baby Boomer parents who lived through the tumult of the 1960s, saw JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr., shot, and were involved in the Vietnam War in one way or another.

Many Boomer parents did not send their kids to church because they themselves were breaking out of the norms of the day.  And how much more “normative” do you get than going to church?  Even those who did send their kids to church or who attended as a family often did so in a very relaxed fashion.  There were the “Christmas and Easter” families, of course, but also the families who went to church only when their kids were little or, in the Catholic faith, until their youngest child “made First Communion.”

As a result of all this, and other factors, many churches today are dying.  People don’t go because they never have.  They may visit a few times, but don’t find it relevant.  They sing songs they don’t know, recite prayers they have never heard and get asked to be on committees.  Sometimes they stay.  More often, they leave.

Yet the fundamental religious need has not changed.  The desire to have a life full of meaning and purpose is alive in all of us.  The questions about faith and God and death go through all of our minds.

So what are we looking for from churches?  My theory is that we are looking for a place to share our experiences and ask questions.  We don’t want a place that tells us what to do, but we do want guidance.  We want to enjoy our time, because life’s too short to do something that is more “work,” and we could always be playing Farmville.  We want to laugh, do something meaningful, and know that we are not alone.

What do you think?

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Posted in Church, First Unitarian of Norton, Ministry, Spiritual life

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New Year’s Inspiration

Posted on January 3, 2011 | 1 Comment

On New Year’s Eve I participated in an Interfaith Service that kicked off the First Night activities in the town of Norton.  I was there as a representative of the First Unitarian Church, but since the service was held in the oldest church in town, I was also the host.

I went in with truly no idea what to expect.  I was asked to take part in this service just a few weeks after I began the restart process, but have not really been involved in the planning of the service.  I knew when to show up, how to turn on the heat for everyone (cause that’s REALLY important on a New Year’s Eve service in New England, let me assure you) and that I was opening and closing the service.

What a terrific surprise New Year’s Eve turned out to be!  First of all, the church was almost filled.  For Norton Unitarian, that means about 150 people, give or take some empty spaces.   My colleagues are gifted speakers, and listening to them was a real pleasure.  But best of all was the feeling that we were all talking about – community.  As we all spoke and told stories and laughed, a community was built up in the church.  It was neighbors and friends, people who have known each other for decades and  people who had never seen each other before.  Yet through that shared experience – experience in this newly-being-born-yet-old-as-the-hills-church! – we built a community.

It was inspiring.

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Posted in Community, First Unitarian of Norton, Holidays, Ministry

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Why Church?

Posted on November 16, 2010 | 2 Comments

I recently reconnected with someone I used to work with in hospice.  She is a lovely person, and asked me honestly why I had left the field, and moved my professional life from hospice chaplaincy to parish work.

“And why”….she continued  “this church?  A church that’s just beginning?  Why would you do something so unusual?  Don’t you miss hospice?  Isn’t this all planning and program work, and no time really with the people?”

To an extent, she is right.  Parish life, at least restarting a church with the intention of significant growth, is about a lot of planning and development work.  Where I used to spend all my days with people, holding hands and being part of an experience, I am now spending a lot of time writing, talking on the phone, planning and organizing.   I still meet with people, but it is much less frequently, and for very different reasons.

Hospice work is awesome, and I think it’s a program WAY more people should be involved with, both in terms of volunteering and receiving care.  But I have to say, I think the church is awesome too.  The ideas we are working with are just incredibly important.  How do we make a church that is relevant to people’s lives?   Does community really have a purpose, or are we all better off on our own?   What makes church – or any kind of spiritual experience – meaningful?

It matters because none of us can go it alone.

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Posted in Community, Ministry, Spiritual life

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The Humanity of it All

Posted on November 11, 2010 | 2 Comments

The image that seems to come to mind with the word "minister"

I really got a kick out of this post on Andy’s realization that ministers are human.   It brought me back to some of the more uncomfortable (yet laughable) moments in my own life, when someone has belately discovered that I am a minister when appearing to be “just a normal person!”

I am, in fact a minister.  Been doing it for the past several years now, in one way or another.  I do really enjoy my work, as I always have.  And yet, am also…..at least I’m told……fairly normal.  I have two small children, a husband, two cats and a dog.  I have a brother, two parents, and deep love for reading, coffee, and dark chocolate.  When you see me at the grocery store, the bank or the playground, I look pretty much like any other woman my age – doing my chores and chasing my kids.  Yet, when the subject of my profession comes up, people seem to view me with a slightly different lens than the other folks around them.

To me, being a minister is about a lot of different things.  It’s about leadership, and it’s about being part of something greater than myself.  It’s about thinking and speaking and being there with people in all different times.  It’s NOT about placing my values on people’s lives, or about telling others what to do.  It IS about community, and values that matter.

Hello, God? Can you hear me now?

The tragic news is that that I do not (as I was recently asked about) have a cell phone with a direct line to the Holy of the Universe.

The totally awesome news is that as a minister, part of my job is to be there with people on their spiritual journeys as we all figure out who we are, what matters to us, and the meaning in our lives.

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Posted in Family, Ministry