Change and Cardboard Boxes

Our little church is changing.

We’ve been worshipping together on Sunday nights for something over three years. We started as a little Bible study that had big dreams for a church where anyone would feel welcome – young people, older people; gay people, straight people; physically challenged people. . .you get the idea.

We wanted to be the church a lot of other churches claim to be, but from our particular, individual perspectives – aren’t.

Our little church is changing. We’re not quite so little anymore.

It used to be easy for me to keep up with everyone. I knew the ins and outs of people’s struggles. It was an informal system where nobody really fell through the cracks too often. The informal system just doesn’t seem to be working so well these days.

The task of what fulltime pastors get to so vaguely call “pastoral care” might be a lot easier for me if I didn’t work two other jobs. The church is my calling but working in graphic arts and swabbing toilets pays the bills. (Another janitor in the congregation calls herself a “DNA Specialist.” I like that!)

I’m starting to realize that if I don’t do something different soon, keeping up with the spiritual needs of the congregation is going to become a point of great stress for me. The questions are what changes should I make and how to implement them. Those questions inevitably lead to examinations of how much change is good and productive and at what point it is just bringing on more stress.

I don’t mind change. I just have to remind myself to replace old habits with new ones every now and then. Seems that the old grooves that have been worn in my brain are the ones that come back so conveniently.

An example:

One night about 14 years ago we were cooking dinner. Nothing out of the ordinary. I’m a “clean kitchen cook” – I do all the dishes as I go. This particular night there were a lot of dishes because we were cooking something kind of intricate. So, there was a sink full of cold, greasy water. You know, with the chunks of food floating in it?

I decided it was time for new water so I reached down into the sink and pulled out the drain. Below me, there was a funny sound. Reaching down and opening the door of the cabinet, I saw that the curved pipe had completely come off of the straight pipe running down from underneath the sink, and that all the nasty grey water was running right down into the floor of the cabinet!

That pit of the stomach “what the hell am I supposed to do now” kind of feeling kicked in. Being somewhat organized, I had a cardboard box full of cleaning supplies under the sink.

What a relief!! That stinky water wasn’t running all over my kitchen floor! The cardboard box was catching it all!!!

I allowed the sink to drain fully and I carefully pulled the box out from inside the cabinet. Another problem immediately reared its head however. The cardboard is rapidly disintegrating in my arms and in a split second I have an important decision to make. . .

What does one do with a cardboard box full of garbage water?

This is where the old grooves that had been worn in my brain kicked in. . .

Reason and experience and habit and the mindset that “I’ve always done it this way” took over and I think you’ve guessed it by now. . .I poured that box full of water right back into the sink and down the broken drain.

I should have just taken it and poured in on the floor. . .that would have saved me from feeling so foolish. . .

At least I can laugh at myself. But this story comes back to haunt me in the moments I think about doing things the way I’ve always done them. It’s starting to haunt me now when I fear that individuals are disappearing from lack of care in our little community.

I have a few ideas. Could we envision a spiritual mentorship program that somehow would make congregational connections that don’t need a “pastor” at their center? Could we make the concept of the “priesthood of ALL believers” something that has flesh and bones in our midst? It might work. It might be a disaster. I’m willing to try.

Ideas and change are good. Just keep a cardboard box handy.