Funeral Rites

Years ago our daughter Mary became the proud and happy owner of two gerbils. She named them Cookie and Brownie.  Even though the “shelf life” of gerbils is about eighteen months, Cookie and Brownie triumphed over the pet store statistics.  Cookie lived to be about two and a half years old, while Brownie made it past four years.  These gerbils were tame enough that they climbed up and down Mary’s arm, and around her bed when taken out of their cage.  They co-existed with our cats, even though Edward terrorized them by sleeping on top of their cage and once had to be forced to release a stolen gerbil out of his mouth.

When Cookie died, it was a sad day; sad most of all for Mary who came to me, sobbing, and placed a lifeless—but still warm—Cookie in my hand.  There was no doubt that we had to conduct a funeral for this small, well-loved rodent.

Our family gathered around the hole Will had dug in the ground.  Cookie was placed in a small box which Mary had decorated.  We put the little gerbil casket down into the hole, and covered it with dirt.  Then one of us read from Psalm 104, Mary gave a little eulogy about what a good gerbil Cookie was, we said the Lord’s Prayer, and then sang “All Creatures Great and Small.”  It was as lovely a graveside service as any gerbil could want.

When Brownie died, we also had a little funeral service, not as memorable, much briefer—probably because the weather was colder when she died.  Then Mary bought two more gerbils, which is when we learned that pet store people do not know how to tell the gender of a gerbil.  The two little girl gerbils turned out to be a boy and a girl, and in case you are wondering, the gestational period for gerbils is every 25 days. So in less than two months, we had a total of 17 gerbils.  We had to separate the male gerbils from the female gerbils, placing them in separate cages to avoid further reproduction, and then separate them even further because one of the gerbils was born angry or crazy and would attack the other gerbils, thus necessitating her own cage.  We put the original pair of gerbils in their own cage, having had the male gerbil neutered (now that’s a story unto itself!).  Our front hallway was lined with gerbil cages; our evenings will filled with the sound of nocturnal rodents, chewing and skittering in their cages.

Unlike the original pair, these gerbils were not hardy.  Despite our best efforts, about every week we’d find a dead gerbil in one of the cages.  The very last gerbil died on the day we were hosting a party. Moments before our guests were scheduled to arrive, the children discovered the lifeless gerbil body, and I instructed them to put the entire cage in the garage where the temperature was cold and the body would “keep” until we could tend to it.  Later, after all the guests had gone, we retrieved the gerbil’s body.  The elaborate funeral rites once held for Cookie had now morphed into a less elaborate rite of wrapping the dead gerbil in a paper towel, placing it in a plastic bag, and putting it in the dumpster.  No scripture, no prayer, no hymn.

Still—and you probably won’t find this in Calvin’s Institutes or Barth’s Dogmatics—I believe that whatever or whoever God created goes back to be with God.  No, I can’t quote you a scripture to back up that statement.  But whether we are burying an animal or a human, and however we are burying an animal or a human–that bit of creation returns to its Maker, and is welcomed home by its Creator.  Regardless of the type of funeral rites,  “All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful—the Lord God made them all!”

 

Driving Words

On two consecutive days, I have found myself driving behind the same blue truck.  It’s not a new truck or a large truck, but a weathered blue truck with a broken taillight.  I couldn’t see who is inside of the truck but I could see what’s written in large, yellow letters across the glass of the truck cab: YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL.  One yellow heart preceded the YOU and followed the BEAUTIFUL. The first time I saw this truck, I drove behind it from downtown Franklin to my house; the second time, I drove behind from my house to downtown Franklin.  Now, the driver of this truck could have written those words about his or her truck–after all, truck owners are quite fond of their trucks!  But I prefer to think that the truck owner took a little time to jump in the bed of his or her truck, and write that phrase to counter so much of the unkind, unpleasant sayings that appear on other cars and trucks today.  Bumper stickers no longer declare a preference for a political candidate, they denounce the opponent in unflattering and sometimes crude ways.  Even religious views are affixed to vehicles with an edgy “you’d better watch out” phrasing.  It seems to be a indication of a discourtesy that has infiltrated our nation.  Reading negative bumper stickers certainly doesn’t help our mood in traffic, either!

So how refreshing to be behind this truck whose message was a simple, “You are beautiful.”  I may be ascribing far more meaning to this phrase than the truck owner intended but it was a relief to travel down highway 96 behind a compliment instead of a criticism.  So to the owner of that beat-up blue truck, I hope you know you are beautiful, too!

Customer Relations

At the end of a long, busy day, I have discovered that what perks me up every time is a visit to my neighborhood grocery store or dry cleaner. 

The people who work in my local grocery store seem to like their work, and communicate that they like the customer as well.  So when buying groceries for dinner feels like I’m wearing concrete shoes, it’s wonderful to have a friendly grocery store person make an entrée suggestion–and not in quota-driven, aggressive manner but in a “that’s what I’m here for” way.  And all through the grocery store, whether they are stocking groceries or returning carts, each employee gives a nod or smile, makes eye contact, asks if he or she can be of help.  At the check out line, each checker is efficient but not frantic, always asks about my day, shows genuine appreciation for my presence.  So it is that I leave the grocery store happy and energized, marveling at how a trip to the grocery store was the tonic for my weary spirit.

Likewise, at the dry cleaner, I am greeted with a smile and flattered every time that the clerk begins to write my name at the top of the cleaning slip as I come through the door.  [This, of course, is due to the fact that I am a frequent customer!]  They inquire about my health and my day, and they take pride in their work, even pointing out when all of a stain couldn’t be removed.  While my visits to the dry cleaner aren’t daily, on those days when I drop off clothing early in the morning and pick them up on my way home, my day is  bracketed by a pleasant experience.

Here are two businesses whose overall spirit and attitude makes me want to return to them again and again, as well as to recommend them to others. 

So I have wondered: does the church do the same?  And not just my particular church, but does any and every church communicate that we Christians like the gospel and enjoy sharing it with others? Do we in the church show a sense of caring and concern, without being overly intrusive?  Do we greet one another warmly and inquire about one another’s health? 

Oh, I know that the church is not a business, nor do I want the church to be run like a business.  However, I think the church can learn a little something from the business world about customer relations.  The church could strive to make each member feel important (especially the less honorable ones, as the Apostle Paul wrote in I Corinthians 12), responding to member needs, creating such a positive experience that people want to return Sunday after Sunday and recommend the church to their friends.  As the writer of I John expresses it, “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”  And that’s just good customer relations!

Grace and Grape Juice

In the 27 years since I’ve been a minister, I feel like I’ve made every mistake at least once and had all sorts of things happen to me at least once. I’ve misplaced my sermon in worship, I’ve had to halt a baptism because there wasn’t any water in the baptismal bowl, I’ve read the wrong scripture passage before preaching, I’ve prayed good health for a person had already died, I left off the entire closing portion of a confirmation service, and in a wedding service, I completely forgot about the soloist, concluding the service while he stood waiting—and never getting–to sing. Well, the list goes on and on. So I thought I was on the tail end of “things that happen to me once” until this most recent communion service at church. All seemed to be going well at communion—I had not forgotten my communion words, there were enough elders to serve, elements to be served, and I had just finished serving the elders and was placing the cover on the juice trays. At that moment, I heard a thump, a sound which is not a part of the communion service. Specifically, I heard a thump accompanied by a small gasp and as I looked around to discover the source, much to my horror, I saw that I had overturned the goblet filled with grape juice and a large purple stain was quickly spreading over the handmade white communion cloth. Lots of words were piling up in my head at that moment but I managed to restrain all of them from being piped through the sound system except for the one word, “Ooops!”
Meanwhile, an elder from the choir loft was capturing the juice which was now spilling down onto the sanctuary carpet. Another elder was moving the trays around the table to provide more dry space for the placing of the pledge cards, which came next in the service. It was a horrifying first for me; I hope it is the last!
Although much embarrassed, I nevertheless moved the congregation into the passing of the peace which followed. I was somewhat hesitant to participate because I was so embarrassed by what looked like the world’s largest purple stain on a pure white cloth, so I was slow to move toward the congregation. However, the congregation wasn’t slow to move toward me. I am quite sure we took a bit longer to pass the peace than usual that day, but I was certainly grateful for the hugs and pats and kind words that people shared with me, consoling me or commiserating with me. It truly was peace that was passed, and I led the remainder of the service with such peace in my heart and thanksgiving for folks who don’t value things over people, who seek solutions to the problem rather than dwelling on it. In this case, three ladies of the church helped move that stained cloth from the sanctuary into the parlor sink, and ran cold water over it. I think whether that cloth had been 100 years old or 10 years old, those ladies would have showed the same calm, sensible, kind manner.
At this writing—despite various remedies and even a trip to the dry cleaner—the stain remains visible. It’s no longer purple, but is kind of a grayish blob. Maybe before the next communion service, someone will figure out how to remove that stain. Or maybe that stain will be our visible, constant reminder that at the Lord’s Supper, forgiveness, grace and peace abound.

Little Scraps of Love

In our kitchen, a scrap of paper is taped to the cabinet door above the dishwasher. It’s a drawing of a snowman, with the words, “let it snow! let it snow! let it snow!” printed underneath the snowman. The paper is faded and brittle—so brittle, in fact, the top part of the snowman’s head broke off when my daughter handed me the picture. She had rescued it from the kitchen cabinet in my childhood home in Nashville, shortly before all new cabinets were installed.
I drew that picture of the snowman when I was a young adult, and while I don’t remember the details, I know it was during one of those times when I was living at home and working in Nashville, having discovered that the concept of “snow day” didn’t exist outside of school. I remember that my dad was still going to work in Old Hickory, TN and that his carpool was never fazed by inclement weather. I knew that in our household, my father liked snow and my mother only liked snow if, to quote her exactly, “I don’t have to go out in it or any of you have to go out in it” and also if there was enough bread and milk in the freezer (we would have survived months of blizzards based on the milk and bread we had stored in our freezer).
It was snowing pretty steadily that morning as I left for my work and my dad left for his work. Knowing my mom would most certainly be staying home, I hastily drew her a snowman with the inscription, “let it snow! let it snow! let it snow!” and taped it to the kitchen cabinet, above her Desert Rose cup and saucer, Sanka instant coffee, and Sweet ‘n Lo. My father left out those three things for her every morning before he left for work. That evening, I learned that my mother was amused by the snowman, as well as grateful that my dad and I got back home “without incident.” And so the little snowman stayed right there on the kitchen cabinet through about thirty more winters and summers as well. Now I look at that tattered little picture every morning as I pour my own coffee, and fondly remember my father and my mother who never took down the little picture that I taped up that morning.
I am writing about this little picture because it illustrates for me that the journey of grieving is navigated through subtle obstacles that we encounter in places like bathroom drawers, hall closets, and kitchen cabinets. Oh, sure, we miss our loved ones on the obvious occasions such as the holidays or birthdays or anniversaries but the surprise of grief comes when one opens a closet door and a faint, familiar perfume still lingers or we catch a handwritten note that falls out of the leaves of a book. We steel ourselves for the family events which are forever changed by the absence of a loved one and we manage to emerge from those events fairly intact. But on an ordinary day, for no apparent reason, we will stumble across some silly, even trivial object that causes us to feel our loved one’s presence—and absence—with such clarity that it brings tears to our eyes. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s always a surprise. The nature of a surprise is that we can’t be ready for them. And those surprises continue for many, many years, as long as we can remember and grieve.
So when the Apostle Paul wrote, “Love never ends,” in his famous chapter on love (I Corinthians 13), I think part of what he is describing is the unexpected recollection of love. The love we have for someone in this life doesn’t stop when one person moves to life eternal while we stay earthbound. No, here on earth, love lingers and surrounds us through major events and the minor little scraps of paper, so that like Paul, we, too, believe that the “greatest of these is love.”

Women Ministers

Recently, a minor mishap in assembling a piece of furniture at our daughter’s new manse in Whitmire, SC necessitated the 22-mile drive to nearby Newberry, SC to the locally owned furniture store. The friendly folks at Morris Furniture Store (this is like free advertising!) were helpful and as I was paying for our purchase, the cashier asked what brought us all the way from Franklin, TN to South Carolina? And I proudly replied that our daughter was now the pastor of the Whitmire Presbyterian Church in Whitmire, to which the cashier replied, “Oh, I’m Lutheran myself and I knew that we Lutherans had lady pastors but I didn’t realize the Presbyterians had lady pastors, too.” I told her that I was a pastor, too, as was my husband and we engaged in a wonderful conversation about churches, preachers and genders.
Her comment about “lady pastors” reminded me of when Will and I moved to Ripley, Mississippi where not only were we the first clergy couple that Tippah County had ever known, I was the first woman minister the county had ever known. (Well, there was supposed to be a female pastor at one of the Methodist churches but something happened and she ended up going to another church. I don’t know the story, but wish I did). And as often happens when one is a “first,” the local newspaper wanted to write an article about me (there had already been an article about Will and me). The interviewer for the article was a quiet young man named Kenny Goode, whose name appeared as a byline under most of the articles that appeared in the Southern Sentinel, leading me to believe that perhaps he was the only writer on staff. Kenny, a native Mississippian, hailed from the Potts Camp/Hickory Flat area, southwest of Ripley. Kenny was also a lifelong member of the Church of Christ and from our first handshake, admitted that he had never met a woman minister and in fact, didn’t know that women ministers existed.
Kenny and I had a long chat, which felt less like an interview and more like a theological discussion. While I have encountered folks who, not favoring women ministers, have been somewhat antagonistic and confrontational with me, Kenny seemed fascinated if not somewhat puzzled by this “woman minister” thing. The interview drew to a close; Kenny and I stood up to exchange goodbyes. He said, “I’ve really enjoyed talking to you and I hope we’ll meet again sometime. . .” and then he stopped and looked at me. “But what should I call you?” he said, “Should I call you Brother Sally?” I considered for a moment, realizing that in a very real sense, Kenny had paid me a compliment. I said, “No, you can just call me Sally.”
That day, a newspaper reporter from Ripley, MS learned about the existence of women ministers, and a woman minister learned that to survive in the male-dominated world of priests and ministers, sometimes it’s a compliment to be called “Brother.”

Clear Signals

The other morning I was driving down Highway 96 towards downtown Franklin. I moved into the left-hand lane, past Alexander Square and then noticed that the car in the right lane beside me was easing over toward my car, into my lane. No turn signal was flashing so I didn’t think he wanted to get into my lane, plus he wasn’t looking at me or the lane, like one does when one is trying to change lanes. Looking straight ahead, he pulled back into his lane, and then a few seconds later, was drifting into my lane again. No eye contact. I wondered if he was distracted because he was messing with stuff—you know, coffee, phone, children and that was the reason why he kept nosing into my lane. His “left lane drift” happened a couple of times more, when all of the sudden, his car roared ahead of me like at a NASCAR race, crossing into the left lane in front of me, and then crossing more lane over into the left turn lane. Now he glanced at me, glaring with an expression of disgust and threw up his arm as if to say, “What is wrong with you?” I noted, by the way, that as he made his left turn onto Mack Hatcher, that he didn’t use his left turn signal there either.
Well, I am not the best driver in the world but I know that if that man had simply used his turn signal when he was in the right lane, I would have let him pull in front of me. In the absence of a clear signal, however, and not even a physical clue (you know how in a desperate lane change moment, some people will wave, or wildly point at your lane when they want to change lanes? ), I assumed that he wanted to stay in the right lane.
What intrigued me about this entire incident was—after he finally changed lanes—how very sure that man seemed to be that he was right and I was wrong. Based on his reaction, he assumed his drifting into my lane was a clear signal of intent. I imagine that he arrived at his office or appointment fussing about this dumb woman who refused to let him change lanes even though he made his intentions perfectly obvious!
We humans are really no better at giving clear signals in our everyday relationships. We will throw out subtle signals, like drifting into someone else’s lane, and wonder why the driver doesn’t get our message. “I thought you could tell I had a bad day; I have been moping around the kitchen since I came home.” “You should have realized I wasn’t feeling well when I laid down on the couch.” “I made it perfectly obvious that I didn’t like that idea.” Southerners often pride themselves on giving off signals that are meant to be understood without speaking a word but I’ll confess that even though I’m from the South, I really don’t care much for ambiguity. I had a woman tell me once that she didn’t believe that I was from the South because I was far too blunt!
But clear signals don’t to be abrasive and harsh, just clear—as clear as using a turn signal. “I’d like to shift into the right lane.” “I’d like to lie down for a few minutes because I’m not feeling well.” “Could you lower the volume on the television, it’s hurting my ears?” “I had the worst day today.”
Admittedly, using clear signals in our relationships with each other is not the easiest thing to do—using a turn signal in a car is easier! We’d love it if our friends or family or co-workers could pick up on our intentions as easily as one can smell cookies baking in the kitchen. But chances are, they’ll be like I was as that man drifted and eased into my lane without a clear signal—thinking of every reason why he’d be drifting toward me except the real reason he wanted me to pick up on without a signal.
Which leads me to my final thought: maybe we need to develop signs which clearly communicate our intentions. When you see a car with a gas cap that hasn’t been re-attached, haven’t you wished you could hold up a sign which says, “Check Gas Cap”? Or when someone follows too closely behind you in traffic, to have a sign which pops up in the rear windshield, “Please back off.”
So what if we had those signs in our everyday life? We walk into the office carrying a sign that says, “My mind is a little fuzzy because the baby kept me up all night.” Or we arrive home wearing these words, “I need to talk about my awful day.” In the absence of signs, though, we’ll have to rely on clear signals and unambiguous communication. The Apostle Paul said it well when he said, “ Speak the truth in love.” Speak the truth (give a clear signal) in love (with regard for the other person’s feelings). With that in mind, both our traffic situation and our human situation might greatly improve!
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Weighty Words

One mark of a good sermon is that no matter how many times you hear it, you can still get something out of it. A case in point is our daughter Sara Anne’s most recent sermon which I have now had the pleasure of hearing four times—twice at worship, and twice at two Presbytery meetings.
Her sermon was on Jesus’ words to the Pharisees that they should not be worried about all the ritual cleanliness and dietary laws because it’s not what goes into the mouth that matters but what comes out. Specifically, Jesus was referring to words and Sara Anne’s point in the sermon was that words have great power.
Each time I’ve heard her sermon, I’ve heard something helpful or new. Last week, I focused on Sara Anne’s quote from an expert on bullying who said that people who were bullied as children remember quite clearly into adulthood the hurtful words they heard. This week I heard Sara Anne speak about the choices we make when we speak—do we use words which include or exclude, words which encourage or discourage?
Hearing her sermon(s) caused me to think about random words that I remember other people speaking to me. Do you ever find yourself recalling something someone said which wasn’t profound but was for some reason unforgettable? A relative who turns to you at a family gathering and says, “You probably shouldn’t wear yellow, that’s not your color,” and you avoid wearing yellow for the better part of your life? Or you watch your intake of bananas because someone said, “never eat two bananas in one day.”
We all have lots of unforgettable but useless phrases floating around in our memories, but I think that the breeding ground for unhelpful but unforgettable words is funerals. Words spoken with all sincerity to a grieving family members are some of the least helpful—and sometimes hurtful—words ever spoken. It is for that reason that I have advised people who don’t know what to say at a funeral to simply say, “I’m sorry.” “I’m sorry” pretty much covers it all—there’s no need to say more unless you were close to the deceased and want to add, “I’ll miss him/her.” There are, however, a million memorable but unhelpful things NOT to say at a visitation or a funerals like, “God must have needed her more than we did,” or “We can’t understand it, but this was all part of God’s plan,” or, these unhelpful but unforgettable words which were spoken to me last November at my mother’s funeral, “I hope what happened to me doesn’t happen to you. After my mother died, I gained a ton of weight.”
I’ll confess that I didn’t quite know how to respond to that statement—it was more like a funeral fortune cookie, “may you stay thin in your grief.” The really irritating thing is that while I can also remember the kind and loving things that were said to me on the day of my mother’s funeral, those unhelpful and somewhat jarring words keep bobbing up in my brain. To make matters worse, I didn’t even know the speaker of those words! I’m guessing this woman knew my mother, but for all I know, she wandered into a fellowship hall full of good food and began randomly to speak to strangers. She didn’t introduce herself to me, and she didn’t say anything more than those ominous words of comfort/warning. But I can clearly remember that she stood before me, holding a full plate of food, leaning her face towards mine as she gave her peculiar condolence, “I hope what happened to me doesn’t happen to you. After my mother died, I gained a ton of weight.”
Now I am not a large person but I’ll confess that her words alarmed me, and I’ll also confess that since I heard those words, I have indeed gained weight. I don’t know whether I gained weight because I am no longer pushing my mother about in the wheelchair, or no longer skipping lunch because I was going to visit her, but that unknown woman’s words have settled like a curse on me. I step on the scales, see my weight and hear those words, “I hope what happened to me doesn’t happen to you. After my mother died, I gained a ton of weight.”
I haven’t gained a “ton” of weight but I do so wish I had never heard those words, however well-intended they were. So going back to our daughter’s sermon, I would echo the importance of words. Think before speaking–or texting or posting on Facebook or tweeting! There is power in words, whether thoughtfully spoken or randomly tossed out like a piece of bad fruit. Words can heal and words can hurt—and some words just add unnecessary weight.

Photographs & Memories

Last week’s blog on visitation prompted questions about my most memorable home visits. I have more than a few which I am happy to share with you, changing or abbreviating the names to conceal true identities.
One of my first home visits was to an elderly member of a small church I served in North Carolina. Mr. E. had been recently widowed. His wife of over 50 years had died of a stroke. Mr. E. lived in a small blue mobile home (not a double wide) about half a mile down the road from the church that I served. I stepped inside his trailer at his invitation and we sat side by side on his couch, I asked questions about his health, and found out about his children and his grandchildren. Then I asked him about his deceased wife, and he talked and talked about their years together, the things she loved to do, the love he had for her. I asked him if he had a picture of his wife, since I didn’t see any pictures of her on the wall in his den. His eyes brightened and he said, “Oh, yes!” and he disappeared into his tiny bedroom. He returned with two Polaroid pictures, and placed them in my hand. I was expecting to see candid photos of the two of them at a family event, or maybe pictures taken on his wife’s birthday. Instead, I was looking at two close up photos of a woman in a casket. Certainly, I had been to funerals and with my own eyes, seen people in caskets. But I had never seen a photograph of anyone in a casket. I didn’t know people took photographs of their loved ones in the casket. But Mr. E. did—-he had—-and he handed me the two pictures of his dead wife and sat down beside me, looking with me.
So what does one say when handed a picture of a dead person in a coffin? I couldn’t say the traditional, “she looks so natural,” since this was my first glimpse at Mrs. E. I was looking at a close up of an elderly woman lying back on a satin pillow, who could have been sleeping except for the obvious presence of the coffin lid. “Well,” I said, speaking slowly as my mind raced to say the appropriate words. I didn’t want to appear startled (this was my first visit with Mr. E. in his home, after all), or unnerved, even though I was. All sorts of things were racing through my head, including, “we were never taught have to handle this situation in seminary.” Finally, I focused on her dress, which was blue and looked lovely on her. “What a beautiful dress, “ I finally said, “Did you select it?”
Truly, God gave me those words! That question prompted Mr. E. to tell me that she had worn that dress to their son’s wedding, and that the blue matched her eyes, and the brooch she was wearing was one he had given to her on their 50th anniversary. A startling moment became an opportunity for conversation and connection.

But there’s more. After that first visit to Mr. E’s trailer, I visited him a number of times, getting to know him pretty well. As a result, it was only natural that when he was moved to a nursing home in Georgetown, SC, Will and I drove to visit him. It was en route to seeing Mr. E that we first saw the sign pointing to Pawleys Island. We took a little detour off of Highway 17, fell in love with the beautiful cypress trees hanging over the beach road, and found a real estate company with cottages to rent. We have been going to Pawleys Island, SC ever since! I owe it all to those mobile home visits with Mr. E.

Visitation

Recently, I was invited to make a presentation to a group of younger ministers-to-be, describing what I did as a minister (other than the “Sunday-thing”). Afterwards, there was a time for questions, and one of the ministers-to-be asked me if there was anything that I wished I did better or on which I wished I spent more time in my ministry. And I replied, “I wished I spent more time visiting my members.” And one of the ministers-to-be spoke up and asked, “Oh, do you have a lot of sick members?”
I thought this was an odd question, until I realized that this younger minister-to-be’s only concept of visiting was visiting someone in the hospital. So I explained that I was referring to home visits, to which she said, “Why? What’s the point of visiting people at home if you see them at church?”
In the ministry, one is always learning, and that day I learned that researchers have concluded that those of us who were trained for the ministry before 1990 carry an entirely different concept of what it means to be a pastor from those who were trained after 1990. I graduated from seminary in 1983, which places me in the category of ministers who were taught that our work involved preaching, teaching, and visiting our members—in their home as well as when they went into the hospital. The ministers-to-be who were present that day had graduated in 2010 or 2011, and were fascinated by the novel idea of going to see someone in his or her home. None of them had ever been visited by a minister in their home (although, in fairness, the majority of them had not even joined a church until their college years). And as if she was talking about something that happened in the American Revolution, one minister-to-be spoke up and said, “Oh, I remember my mother talking about how, when she was a little girl, the minister came to Sunday dinner at their house once. Weird.”
Another minister-to-be pressed me to give a compelling reason why visiting in the home was important to my ministerial generation. So I told this group that visiting where a person lived could help you know that person without having to conduct a survey or interview. (I think about the recent survey that we took at HFPC about preferred communication methods, and my mind immediately visualized particular members and their preferred method of communication—I know that person only has a rotary dial phone, or doesn’t own a computer, etc.)
I remember one seminary professor telling us that when we sat in the living rooms or dens of our members, we would see the things that were near and dear to their hearts: photographs of children & grandchildren, collections of shells or figurines, a painting above the sofa that prompts a discussion of the child, now deceased, who painted it, the lemonade one was drinking was a family recipe, diplomas on the walls which spelled out one’s degrees and sports allegiances. Every home or apartment tells a story about a person, couple or family that a hospital room simply can’t tell. What someone has (a huge carving of an elephant) or what someone does not have (there’s no television set) can help ministers connect with their members and even communicate more effectively in a sermon. And often in the comfort of a home, someone will talk about something that please him or bothers her, and an honest conversation ensues.
In a hospital visit, conversation is usually brief and limited to the current situation and the prognosis. Occasionally, there are pictures or flowers about which one can comment, but normally there’s not much more to talk about other than the program being watched by the patient (who is ometimes watching by default, because he or she can’t work the television controls).
Those ministers-to-be were interested in what I was saying, but somewhat skeptical. It wasn’t how they were trained. One commented, “I have had success getting to know my members through the various committee meetings I attend.” Well. . .ok, that works for her and I’m glad. This pre-1990 trained minister has found that my increased number of committee meetings has kept me from doing what I like to do most, even if I don’t do it best: visit my members in their homes, and by doing so, draw closer to them.