January, thank God!

November and December kicked my butt, workwise. 

I went off to CREDO the second week of November and because I took a couple of extra days to visit my mom, I was gone for 11 days. Right before I left my parish secretary left to take a new position, but a volunteer stepped in, and I left fairly confident, assuming that things were in place so that when I got home we'd ready for Thanksgiving and Advent.

Well, you know what they say about assuming...

 I hit the ground running when I got home--I had a meeting of the nominating committee that very evening, just a few hours after I got off the train. I prepped the Thanksgiving bulletin, I pulled out the Advent plans...

Except I could never get any momentum going. Because everywhere I looked there was a crisis of some sort, a fire to put out, a pastoral issue that needed my attention, a problem with the building, a ruffled feather here and a hurt feeling there. It was as if that Mayhem character from the Allstate commercials had been running amok through the parish.

It was awful.

Of course we kept on ...Advent wasn't bad, really, although I was too rushed to really feel it. But all sorts of things fell through the cracks and/or were done hurriedly--newsletters, getting the results of our pledge campaign really put together, finding candidates for vestry. Some hard conversations were had.  Some grim facts were faced. In the midst of a very sad death and a very large funeral there were moments of grace.  We hired a wonderful new parish administrator. And then came Christmas.

As I've already written, the boilers that heat the church and parish hall both failed in the days leading up to Christmas, and a large steam pipe that runs through our downstairs space sprang a devastating leak. Suddenly all the other crises dimmed in comparison as we scrambled to see how bad the situation really was, and when we found out, how fast we could get the repairs done. And of course, what do to about Christmas.

The decision not to have Christmas in our own building was hard. And it didn't please everyone. But it did bring its own moments of grace. Worshiping in a new and different setting with a congregation that was largely unknown to me gave me a different perspective. As much as I love old beautiful churches, I realized in a new way that we are far too married to our buildings. As much as I appreciate the deep roots people have in congregations where their families have worshiped for generations, maybe it is time for us to think about how we build new communities and develop new ways of being church.

I took most of the week after Christmas off.  After my family left (and it was really wonderful having them here) I just vegged out. Went to the movies twice. Exchanged some gifts. Because I didn't have to preach Sunday (because we had a service of Lessons and Carols postponed from the previous week), I spent all of Saturday doing what much of the world does on Saturday: cleaning and cooking and baking. I think I really needed that time.

Monday morning the whirlwind started up again. Not all of the drama has subsided. I need to really catch up on all the things that fell into or through the cracks in December. We don't have enough candidates for vestry. Our budget deficit is bigger than ever before. We have a third boiler (circa 1975) that could fail--or it could be good for another 10 years; who knows? I need new volunteers for almost everything that happens at church, and I'm not sure where they are coming from. I could be overwhelmed if I let myself.  But I guess that is the nature of parish ministry.