Stuff I learned on Sunday
A microphone is too strong a temptation for a six year-old child. If you use one during Children’s Time, and if you sit atop the chancel steps with children huddled around you, at least one of them will be unable to resist the urge to get their face within range of that magic stick so that they can answer the question, “Do you know what God did then?” with, “Boo!”
And that will be the correct answer.
Stuff I learned on Sunday
If you invite worshipers to come forward so that you, the minister, might pray for them, one of them might pounce upon the end of your whispered prayer for her ailment and truncate your warm smile and your assuring squeeze of her arm in order to launch into her own prayer for you, the minister, that God would bless you and your ministry.
Just saying that could happen.
Stuff I learned on Sunday
She was out of the front pew on the first note of the Introit and mid-aisle by the third, arms outstretched, head upheld–the unmistakable pose of a 6 year-old about to dance. Two unbidden syllables escaped my lips in the moment: “Oh man.”
The dancing of Daughter and her playmate(s) during worship these last several weeks has been a delightful development; people have expressed pride in being part of a church where little girls dance freely in worship. People actually said that to a consultant. It’s great.
But it feels like now might be a good time to give the pirouetting and jumping some, shall we say, boundaries. By the end of the Introit our two adorable dancers had done splits, bounded down the center aisle, and run the chancel steps. If members of the choir were given to feeling upstaged, they had good reason to be, though nobody said so.
Before it becomes a point of contention, I think I’ll suggest limiting the dancing to hymns–not choral pieces–and the space between the front pew and the lectern. This makes me a bit of a Grinch, I know. But I think you follow your gut on these things (there’s no children-dancing-in-worship policy), and my gut yesterday morning clearly said, “Oh man.”
Stuff I learned on Sunday.
Pilot Jay still snores like he did in high school. He’s crashed on my fold-out after a late-night landing. Who needs an alarm clock when you have this guy?
When you under-cook granola, it’s soggy. But when that sog consists of butter and sugar, who cares?
Pilot Jay does not like sweet soggy granola.
Apparently, telling police officers that you’re a pilot is a great way to get out of traffic tickets. Pilot Jay tells this to a 10th grader in Sunday school who immediately demands to know EXACTLY-HOW-THAT-WORKS.
The newest acolyte is a kid after my own heart. Moments before worship starts, this fourth grader says, “O.K., one more check, just to be sure: light the candles, hand the lighter to you, go to the podium . . .” She’s got this.
The candles don’t care about the acolyte’s checklist. They’re not lit by the end of the Introit, and the Call to Worship is happening without her. I should have bailed her out sooner.
The term “Mount of Olives” is hilarious to a five year-old.
When the preacher cracks an inside joke during the sermon, it’s much less fun when the butt of the joke isn’t in the room.
The answer to the question, “Why did Wife and Daughter suddenly disappear from worship?” is: because Daughter puked.
You can resist the Sunday school donuts before church, but never after. Never. After.
Daughter is just wiped from a week of dress rehearsals and performances. Doesn’t seem to be sick.
With the third kitchen chair broken, a plastic lawn chair must suffice for lunch with Wife and Pilot Jay at the dining room table.
My weight combined with a plastic lawn chair combined with a wood floor adds up to falling.
It’s fun to have Daughter school Pilot Jay on her favorite iPad games as he’s getting ready for a flight. He’s annoyed, but really polite about it.
Pilot Jay taught daughter to take a screen shot of the iPad. Goodbye memory.
Pilot Jay looks rad in his pilot getup, even though he doesn’t do the hat.
Aviator shades on an actual aviator look so much cooler.
In addition to 11 pm on a Saturday, 2 pm on a Sunday is a fantastic time to drive to the Orange County airport. Pilot Jay convinced Southern California’s reputation for bad traffic is a lie.
A Sound of Music sing-along at church is as much fun as it sounds.
I’m not the only one wearing that tubby German guy with the protruding chest hair T-shirt!
There are few sights more exciting than that of a Der Weinerschnitzel truck in the church parking lot.
My church is a amazing.
Spaceteam is a thing, and the Flexor Toggle must be set to 4. Now!
If you give Daughter a graham cracker snack before bedtime, she will break it into four equal parts which she will arrange on her vanity before ordering you to leave the room so she can eat them alone.
There’s a clergy couple edition of Monday Morning Quarterback!
Stuff I learned on Sunday
There was an altar call during worship at the youth retreat, and I was totally okay with it. That’s a change for me. Here’s how it went down.
The preacher was a woman from a Spanish-speaking Presbyterian church where altar calls must happen all the time. Her sermon built up to a time where she invited students (vaguely at first, but with increasing urgency) to “surrender” to God to “step forward,” and even to “kneel.” A couple of students, the ones from the preacher’s church, did exactly that. And it was fine. But you could tell the preacher was used to more of a response than this and was discouraged. She invited the music leader to come up and play some music while she reiterated the invitation a couple more times. He did, but nobody else moved. Finally, the preacher said “Amen,” docked the microphone, and sat down. The students looked around, then sat.
The music leader cleared his throat and looked apologetically at the preacher. “I’m sorry,” he said, “But I just need to add something here.” He noted that several students seemed to be confused about what they had been invited to, that many seemed to him to want to respond but nervous about how. So he carefully reissued the invitation in terms that teens from mostly white Presbyterian churches could understand.
“We Presbyterians like to live in our heads,” he explained. “We work from the inside out. But it also works the other way around. Taking physical steps can get our heart in a different place.” He told them he would play another song and that they had a “second chance” at taking a step of commitment to God by walking up to the front and allowing their peers and pastors to surround them and pray for them.
He’d hardly begun playing before students were moving. I stepped out of my seat to join another adult leader in receiving them. She knelt. I stood. We placed our hands on students’ shoulders. She whispered prayers for them. After a few minutes I noticed several students crowding behind me, so I turned around and offered to pray for them. Yes, they wanted that. The song ended and everybody sat back down without any air of awkwardness or embarrassment.
Time was when this would have rattled me and I would have participated very hesitantly as a careful observer and analyst rather than as a leader. I’ve got issues with alter calls from my childhood church and college evangelistic rallies where coercion and guilt reigned to everybody’s detriment. But this was careful and sensitive. I know the people who were leading it, and I trust them.
Also, youth need moments like this. Adults need moments like this, where we are invited to say “Yes” and to take a concrete physical step right now, right here, in response to God. This has been a major blind spot in my pastorate. Thanks to a group of friends and colleagues from diverse churches and the immovable youth retreat, something about that is changing.
Other yorocko youth retreat posts:
Ownership: The Annual Youth Retreat Post
Stuff I learned on Sunday
My students are all too willing to embarrass themselves with me at a moment’s notice.
Performing a stewardship-themed parody of Do-Re-Mi with students in worship is… well, how do you think it is?
9 out of 10 people, when asked to use a microphone to address a large group, will insist that their voice is “loud enough.”
When someone addresses a large group without a microphone, someone with a microphone will need to repeat what they said.
People are eager to see what’s NEXT for the church.
When the glass cover of a light fixture falls 15 feet to the concrete floor and explodes, passing only inches from your face as it plummets, you will hear it before you see it.
When 50 youth are stomping around overhead, it’s best not to stand beneath the light fixture.
Youth ministry sometimes inspires phrases from colleagues like, “My favorite thing about this game is having dead bodies all over the church.”
A 30 pound pumpkin is too heavy to put atop the head of a 6th grader.
That youth ministry colleague who your students love to roughhouse with is doing you a great service.
A 13 hour work day is totally doable if the last 5 hours are spent with your favorite youth and adults smashing pumpkins are running screaming through a darkened church. Totally.
Stuff I learned on Sunday.
Spending the morning before worship away from the church makes for a less stressful Sunday overall. Coffee and the New York Times at the farmers’ market > fretting in my office (on a related note, this cover piece from Sunday’s paper is devastating).
Parents and their small children at the farmers’ market work together. Kids are easily engaged in the task. What does this suggest for worship?
My acolyte rules the school. Candle out? Re-light. Out again? Give it more wick. Gently . . . gently . . . masterful.
The worship leader is having a little too much fun with the Passing of the Peace: “Let’s share with each other the peace we deserve!” This kid’s trying to steal my job.
The organist is reading my mind. Before I can finish telling the children that Jesus said when we give in church we shouldn’t “blow a trumpet,” he plays an extended trumpet blast on the organ. How else do you explain that if not telepathy?
The phonetic spelling of the NRSV pew edition is a game changer if you must read Deuteronomy 34 out loud.
Moses and Maria von Trapp are of a kind. Seriously. Think about it (h/t @revsap).
I can drive a college student home after worship and still make it back to the church in time for the annual congregational meeting.
In addition to a knockout sermon, my colleague also produced a parody of “My Favorite Things” for the congregational meeting this week. Um, I, um . . . played scatterball?
Matilda promotes the Myth of Redemptive Violence. As the meany principal Miss Trunchbull gets stoned with lunch stuffs, my six year-old approvingly notes, “She deserves it.”
A blender is a far inferior tool for making hummus than a food processor. Pitching the latter during our recent move was a hasty mistake.
Finger cookies are a thing. Wife and Daughter are a little too good at them for my comfort.
You could do much worse for Sunday dinner than a first grader’s crock pot experiment. Lentils? Check. Carrots? Check. Black beans? Check. Potatoes? Check. Water? Check. 9 different seasonings? Check.
Wife has mad holiday decorating skills. Seriously, if it were up to me, our house’s walls would be bare year-round.
Twitter is a terrible World Series companion, especially when you’re losing. Mass high intensity criticism of minute managerial decisions in real time is not a complement to the experience but a menace.
Game 6 of the World Series will conflict with Beer and Hymns. A potential game 7 will conflict with a session meeting. Fretting, fretting, fretting.
Michael Che told The Perfect Joke on Weekend Update (0:36).
This is a special edition of MMQ dedicated to the annual community Walk for The Hungry, which took place yesterday afternoon. I had a group of three walkers, which is two more than I had last year but scores less than our church used to get. I want to pick this thing apart.
A brief history. Time was when our congregation recruited dozens of participants for this event. At least this is the story I’m told. A couple of decades ago, scores of people would raise money and walk, bringing along their kids in what was a vibrant expression of church mission in the community. After some time, the Walk turned into a youth group event, where dozens of teens who had done the walk with their parents as children now did it without them as teens. The church was behind them 100%.
The start of my work here coincided with the last gasps of the Walk as a youth group event. My first couple of years would see between two and five students respond to my pitch for walkers. Then I hit upon the idea of making it a youth leadership vehicle, so I recruited a particular go-getter student to recruit her friends to walk and to raise money in the congregation. That worked really well.
After that student graduated and went off to college, the student leadership model didn’t exactly thrive. So much of what worked was the particular student and her unbounded enthusiasm. Absent that, it was a job.
So here we are. The Walk is no longer a thriving church mission event, no longer a marquee youth event, and not even a clever student leadership mechanism. My three Walkers yesterday are champs, yet they’re frustrated as well. What do we do?
Pull the plug? Do we acknowledge that the energy is no longer there in the congregation for this and stop trying to compel participation?
Re-commit? Do we double down on our efforts? Start recruiting earlier, make more phone calls, really push hard to get either adults or teens to come out? It works for other groups; lots of church and school groups come out for the walk, many of them in matching T-shirts and all kinds of energy.
Give it away? Is there another group in either the church or, say, the church preschool that might have energy for helping the community through the event, and can we set them up for success?
A big part of me wants to pull the plug. But it feels wrong to give up on an important vehicle for our church to be out in the community in mission.
What do we do?
Stuff I learned on Sunday
The coffee that is your sermon-writing friend late Saturday night is your can’t-get-to-sleep enemy early Sunday morning.
The pink tie on the back of the tie rack is there for days like this.
Arriving at the church early to practice the sermon in an empty sanctuary is futile if the custodian is there. He arrives early to tell share a 15 minute story with the first person he sees.
Adult education classes taught by trustworthy, intelligent people on complicated issues on faith and life: this is my normal.
Three high school students with donuts, chocolate milk, and The Lord’s Prayer is church, Church.
The new fourth grade acolyte is fearless.
The experimental worship leading internship with that college student is going to work out juuuuust fine.
A sermon that employs the noun “breach” in the title has a limited bank of synonyms on which to draw. Hole? Crack? Fissure?
Employing the lyrics of a Jackson Browne song for the Prayers of The People is the kind of thing you can get away with once. Make it count.
When your spouse proposes meeting up at “The Mexican restaurant” for lunch, better clarify which one so that you don’t go to one and she another.
Daughter’s growing interest in drawing is accompanied by a growing insistence on narrating the content of each picture.
The “Secret Country” Daughter has been talking about for months is bisected by a river and contains a district called “Vixen.” She’s mapped it. I’ve seen it.
The restraint it took to leave the Royals out of the sermon will be rewarded by a Sunday afternoon group email from congregants suggesting ways it could have been accomplished (winner=”The Royal Priesthood”).
There’s a way to preserve a Jack-O-Lantern.
Four gallons of Jack-O-Lantern solution in a five gallon stock pot+one pumpkin=a wet countertop.
Text from Youth Group Leader that there are no junior high students at youth group makes me think more about this blog post.
Sunday afternoons spent folding laundry are a gift from God.
Daughter and Wife are waaaaay into Little House on The Prairie, Daughter for the character who shares her name and Wife for a shirtless Michael Landon.
Stuart Little on audiobook is a valuable weapon in Operation Get-Daughter-To-Bed.
Some battles you lose regardless of your weaponry.
Stuff I learned on Sunday
The 5:30 AM airport run is a terrific way to start The Lord’s Day.
Eating a banana on the 105 is breakfast. Eating two is brunch.
When Sunday school and worship employ three separate pieces of technology, you’d better come early.
If the laptop you’re setting up in the sanctuary shuts down to install (Windows!) updates, you can go work on the one in the Fellowship hall.
When the laptop you’re setting up in the Fellowship Hall shuts down to install (curse you Bill Gates!) updates, you can curse in the hopes that nobody’s lurking in the kitchen to hear you.
The DVD’s that accompany this PC(USA)-though-not-really-PC(USA) curriculum are garbage. We ordered 20 copies, and, while I can’t say for certain that the whole batch is defective, I can say that at least nine are.
When you ship a defective product, it’s no good to include a shipping note explaining that “.1%” of the products are defective, but that, since it’s free anyway, don’t sweat it.
Our church’s Sunday morning custodian has seen a UFO.
When worship involves three congregations and melds three languages, it will not go smoothly. Best to say that up front.
Tears for Fears wrote liturgical music, as emphatically proven by my students singing “Mad World” as an Introit.
“Holy, Holy, Holy” in Indonesian sounds pretty amazing.
When you’re using a laptop to project a slide in worship and that laptop is connected to the sanctuary’s sound system, you should mute the laptop so that the notification “ping” doesn’t ring out during the Children’s Time.
The we’re-all-different-but-the-same Children’s Time message can be undermined by one child who exclaims, “Yeah, like white bread!”
Asking the Spanish and Indonesian-speaking preachers to add English translations in their sermons is a convenient way for the English-speaking preacher to weasel out of preaching.
The multilingual Great Prayer of Thanksgiving is amazing–if only the worship planner remembers to put the words in the bulletin.
Lunch with Murphy and Veronica is relaxing and exciting at the same time.
It’s taken less than a week for me to become an emotionally-invested evangelist for Alex Blumberg’s Startup podcast.
The preacher nap should always precede the grocery shopping. Always.
When you shop from the Cooking with Trader Joe’s cookbook, half your cart will contain jars and cans.
When the Tigers are getting swept out of the playoffs, you should stay in the car to hear the final play and then say a prayer for your Tiger fan friend.
When your spouse is mixing a shampoo substitute and mistakenly combines baking powder (instead of baking soda) with vinegar in a kitchen spray bottle, the explosion will be loud but harmless.
Roasting is a tasty way to use those tomatoes that didn’t make it into the previous week’s meals.
Being a father and husband means interrupting the greatest thing to happen to the Royals in 29 years so your wife and daughter can watch Cupcake Wars.
When the neighbors you took to the airport at 5:30 in the morning invite you to use their t.v. while they’re gone, there’s no better use than to be part of this:
YoRocko! 
