I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to engage more people in spiritual practices. It's a tough row to hoe. As my study confirms, people are pathologically busy. One symptom of that is the withdrawal from involvement. It's getting harder and harder to mobilize enough people to do all the things that a busy congregation is used to doing. But people express a longing for transcendence and for the experience of God.
One of the men in my church grew up Roman Catholic. He used to take responsbility for preparing the elements for the eucharist -- communion. Then, I guess somebody decided he was too busy and helpfully relieved him of that task.
He told me that he really misses it, because the time spent preparing the bread and the wine (juice actually) for communion was an intensely devotional time for him. He reflected on the meaning of Jesus' self offering when he cut the bread and filled the cups.
Maybe we contribute to the problem by the way we ask people to be involved. We either say, "Look, it's really tough to get enough volunteers, will you pretty please do this?" (appealing to guilt), or we say, "It won't take hardly any time" -- in other words, it's not very important.
Maybe what we should be doing is offering people opportunities to draw closer to God -- and teaching them how simple things like preparing or serving communion, working in the nursery or taking up and counting the offering can be windows open to the presence of God.
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3 comments:
Hi Paul
I've been thinking about how busy folks are. Yesterday I visited a man in his 80s, and he was telling me about his first job (using a horse-drawn cart to make deliveries for a butcher). He worked 10 hour days minimum, usually 6 days each week. He said this was the norm. Yet (most) folks still made time for worship. One difference today, we agreed, is that there are many more 2-income families. Still, are folks busier today?
I think you've hit on something really important here, but relatively unknown. Opportunities to serve others is one of the great benefits of being in a church environment. Serving dinners at Out of the Cold is one of the best things I have ever done for myself. I started because I thought it would help other people, but now I realize that I am getting the most out of it. How can we communicate this message?
The whole busyness thing is interesting. My Dad worked six days a week and was out several nights, but church never got squeezed out. I think there are two factors. One is that consumer culture has obliterated any distinction between one day and another. Every hour of every day must be made available for the one thing our culture truly values -- making money. So there is no longer the rhythm to the week that there used to be, leaving a place for ritual occasions including family time and church. The second is that technology has speeded everything up so that we come to expect everything to be done instantly. Work intrudes increasingly on private time with the advent of e-mail, blackberries and the like. There has also been a proliferation of options -- so many more things to choose to do -- and all of this contributes to a sense of being time stressed and overly busy.
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