Simply returning the shopping cart creates possibilities for connection that are closed off if you ditch it on an island before slinking into the driver’s seat and pulling away. It’s the simplest of decisions, and, like most simple decisions, it can change your whole day.

On my last trip to the local grocer the parking lot was crammed and the closest available spot was in an adjacent lot. I grumbled all the way into the store, and I grumbled all the way back out again, pushing my cart past a store employee who was returning a train of them left in that adjacent lot. Mostly due to guilt–If I don’t return this thing that poor guy is going to have to come and get it–I closed the trunk and made the long trip back to the front of the store–the store that has no cart corral in its parking lot.

A dear soul from the church was standing in the exit. She beamed to see me.

“How are you?” I asked with that casual-yet-pastoral tone we use when we see church folk in town. She only smiled and said, “I love you” before striding away whistling.

Changed my whole day.

Seriously, always return the shopping cart.

Do you take vacation from projects? Take vacation from your job, sure. Get out of the office–or the classroom or the shop or the hospital–for a time to clear your mind and relax.

But does project work involve vacation?

I’m on vacation and blogging with my phone. Should I be?

I had a great conversation with my dear friend Brian on this week’s podcast. One of the things we talked about was this: is passion required to start a new project, or is curiosity enough?

Have a listen.

Listen to The YoRocko Podcast Episode 8 with Brian Ellison by Rocky Supinger #np on #SoundCloud
http://soundcloud.com/rsupinger/the-yorocko-podcast-episode-8

If you’re not prepared for a crisis today, chances are you won’t be tomorrow. How do you prepare for the suicide of a teen in your community? How do you get ready for your partner’s sudden termination or your spouse’s medical diagnosis?

These aren’t crises we can prepare for. They will find us, ready or not, and reveal this very moment who we are and what matters to us.

For organizations like churches that want to be helpful in times of crisis, the best preparation is a predetermined process for accompanying the afflicted. How do we stand with people in grief and walk with them through distress? If we have an answer for how we do that, I think we’re prepared.

I lived in an intentional community for about nine months that was situated along a neighborhood “peace line” in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For years, people had been dying of shootings and bombings in the neighborhoods on both sides of that line, and for years the people of that intentional community had a process of visiting, in pairs, every single family of every single victim. Often they were welcome, but often they were not. But that was their process, and nobody dare fault their preparation.

What most people are not prepared to do–but what we must prepared to do–is show up during a crisis and absorb its effects with the hardest hit. Prepare to do that by deciding your process ahead of time. Then do it.

Emailing a gift card is just one way that technology makes helping people in need easier. More stores could make it much easier.

Someone came to the church office yesterday with a varied list of pressing needs: food, socks, a new prepaid phone. All of those things are at Target. So I bought an email gift card to print in my office and send with him to the store to get the things he needed. I’d never done that before.

Stocking up on gift cards to grocery stores is a simple way for a church to respond to the needs of people who drop by during the week as well as those who worship there on Sunday. But it often happens that a person’s immediate physical needs go beyond groceries, and so cards for stores like Target are useful too. I learned yesterday that you can buy those online and print them in your office if you haven’t got any (note: it took about 10 minutes for the email to arrive).

It is usually so much more difficult than this to help people with these kinds of needs. The list of things we’ve struggled to help people with includes a bill for a storage facility, a night at a hotel, utility bills, and medical costs. Even when we have funds designated for those kinds of things, we’re often frustrated–the hotel manager requires a signature in person; the person doesn’t have the actual bill; the storage facility is 50 miles away and won’t take payment over the phone.

There’s  got to be a way that the digital technology housed in many church offices can quickly help with more concrete needs. Any ideas?

Sometimes worship leadership is going through the motions, and that’s okay. Especially during Holy Week or Christmas or that week with two funerals, standing before the people of God with words of salvation and hope and liberation won’t always connect emotionally for the worship leader. That’s not the worship leader’s fault, and it doesn’t even diminish the worship. Thanks be to God that the efficacy of the Word and sacraments does not depend upon the focus of ministers.

Say the words.

“The body of Christ, broken for you.”

They’re still true, even without an earnest, searching look deep into the eyes of the person whom you’ve just addressed by name and served the bread.

Say the words.

“Lord, have mercy.”

God’s mercy is not taking your emotional temperature. God is merciful, even if you’re not sure you mean it.

Say the words.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

Though you did not know the deceased, you are dust too, no matter how automatic the words feel as you say them.

Say the words.

“Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed!”

Those words are no less true for their issuing from your tired mouth than they were that first Easter morning when they were uttered by disciples who were more freaked out than celebratory.

The good news is that the Good News is true and effective quite apart from our ability to vivify it with our expression and tone of voice. Of course, much of the time we do exactly that, and for those times we are grateful. But we can’t kick ourselves when it feels off. We’re not actors trying to get in touch with the emotional center of a dramatic character. We’re heralds of a message whose truth does not need us to be true.

I’m friends with an artist in town. Three years ago we worked together on a photography project with junior high students, and now we’re doing a project with high schoolers that uses wood to make a Stations of The Cross installation that mimics our sanctuary’s stained glass.

He is all kinds of jazzed about the stained glass. He’s noticed things about it that I haven’t in seven years, like the fact that the pieces of glass are set in mortar throughout that supports the building; there’s not a single pane of glass in the place.

He looked up the company that installed the stained glass and discovered that they’re local and that this year is the 50th anniversary of its installation. He called them up, and yesterday he toured the place. He was giddy when we spoke on the phone last night.

He took with him one of the company’s pamphlets that we had in our office, dated to the early 90’s. The staff oggled at it. They learned things about their company they never knew before. He chatted up one of the craftsmen there, and by the end of his visit the craftsman had been invited to come do a demonstration at our church.

The craftsman was intrigued by our artist, someone who’s not a member of the church, who doesn’t even identify with its religion, taking such an active interest in the place and even acting as its representative.

All this to say that churches are still pretty amazing things. Those of us who lead them and worship in them every week often don’t notice the things that a fresh set of eyes notice, like the interplay of the light with the glass in the late afternoon.

Voting should be a bare minimum expectation these days, not just in elections but also at home and at work and in church; there’s no excuse not to participate in the decision making that is all of our shared responsibility.

But neither is there an excuse to only vote. Take a side, yes, but make a case. Deliver a speech. Convince us.

Better yet, propose something. Because we really need ideas, specific suggestions for moving forward and solving problems, not indignant condemnations of what’s already on the table.

Best of all, put yourself in the solution, so that we can all see what you’re willing to risk in order to be right. We’re more likely to support you–join you, even!–if we can imagine ourselves helping you.

Vote. Advocate. Propose. Risk.

Let’s lead like that.