Home Again? (Part Three)
Last weekend, my parents were in town for a visit. (We always seem to end up going to visit them only a week or two from when they come to visit us.) After a day touring Monticello, we went to UBC on Sunday.We managed to piddle around in the morning long enough to miss Sunday School, since they wanted to come to our class with us, and we weren't wanting to go. Our class at UBC is called "Twentysomethings," and unlike other classes my parents have visited with us, it's age-based. I'm sure it would have been fine for them to join in, since there are often thirtysomethings in there, plus teachers and their spouses who are my parents' age. But we skipped it.
Another reason we wanted to skip Sunday School was that we had a special mission. Sunday School often involves discussion, sometimes one-sided, that lasts until approximately 20 seconds before the worship service begins upstairs. This would have harmed our chances at a successful special mission, because the special mission required us to find people who have been at UBC for a long time and talk to them.
You see, when we visited my parents a few weeks ago, my mom had been going through some of her dad's old things that she had recently received. She showed us one of them, a large black-and-white photo of some men burning a piece of paper at the front of a church sanctuary. The stained-glass window behind them was unmistakably the one at UBC. Some of the paneling and columns have changed, but this was a picture taken around the time my mom was born, when her family lived in Charlottesville and attended University Baptist Church. (She was six months old when they moved away, so she doesn't exactly remember living here.) Because we had been out of town since our visit to my parents' house, we hadn't shown this photo to anyone.
My mother immediately succeeded in finding someone who recognized the photo. "Oh yes, I was there," he said. "I recognize all those people." The event was a note-burning to celebrate the church paying off a debt of some kind, probably for the building. UBC might already have a bunch of these photos, since photography isn't generally practiced in the Sanctuary except on special occasions, but we gave him the photo to keep with the church's collection.
And then my mom turned to me. "Isn't that neat?" she asked. "You have an old tie with this church."
Home. It's an interesting word. Is the old tie I have with UBC - the fact that my grandparents went there - enough to make it my home? Does that mean it's the right place for me now? Not necessarily. But added to the fact that I spent four years there, that it was the right place for me during that time, and that the church gave generously of itself to support Jubilate, a ministry I benefited from... there is an argument to be made.
And because of all those factors pulling on me, it does kind of feel like cheating to be visiting other churches. And I feel paranoid. In last week's issue of The Word, UBC's weekly newsletter, the pastor's note quotes John Chandler's book Courageous Church Leadership:
I once asked a church architect about why there were so many church arguments about the selection of the color and style of the carpet. He replied that, while very few people understood technical issues related to roof trusses, nearly every person in the church got up in the morning, stood in front of the mirror, and decided that they knew what looked good. Everyone is an expert in what looks good! By the same token, people who have extensive experience 'attending' church sometimes automatically assume that they have great experience 'leading' church. While flying as a passenger in a jet plane doesn't necessarily mean that you know how to pilot one, that does not stop many from offering criticism to those in the cockpit.As I said, I am paranoid. Although the pastor then tied this to being appreciative that people serving on the Advance Task Force were church leaders and not just attenders, it seemed like it could be directed at me for posting my thoughts here. I know it's not. Exchange of ideas is valued at UBC. Besides, I am not trying to criticize the leadership of any church. I am simply offering the view from the pew, which necessarily involves observations and descriptions of what seems to work and what doesn't.
Speaking of the Advance, I am looking forward to this Sunday, when we will hear UBC's Advance Task Force Report. (The church was going to hold a planning retreat, then somebody pointed out that they didn't want to be retreating from anything, so they changed the name to the Advance. Really. They stuck with it.) We were unable to attend the Advance, since it was on our anniversary weekend, but I am hopeful that the report and ensuing discussion will be encouraging regarding UBC's future. Part of me hopes that it will somehow make it clear to us that UBC is the right place for us and that we don't need to be searching for something else. I know the presentation will not cement anything like that, but I am still interested to hear what was discussed and any recommendations the task force came up with.
Cliffhanger!
Labels: church
posted by Peter @ 17:22
1 Comments:
Small correction: your mom was six WEEKS old when they moved away from Charlottesville.
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