Unexpected Benefit

I was pondering the church change this afternoon. My reasons for changing were sort of an accumulation of things—yes, there was a smoking gun, but there was also an accumulated weight of straws trying to break this camel's back. I wasn't expecting much from St. Matthew's though. About all I could foresee was attending every Sunday, quietly listening and participating, then slinking quietly back to my apartment.

That's not what happened.

The first couple of Sundays I discovered that several coworkers were in the congregation, that someone thought I'd be just great in the choir (haven't responded to that one yet) and that I was really welcome there.

St. Matthew's has an odd idea about volunteers. Grace Fellowship sees volunteering as a lifetime commitment, but at St. Matthew's a person can volunteer to do something once in a while. That means that there's essentially no screening process for someone to read a Bible verse. For another thing, the St. Matthew's question is whether the volunteer can do the work, not whether the volunteer is spiritually ready to do it or needs emotional validation. That's why I'm doing the St. Matthew's website but wasn't allowed to do the GFC website. I can do websites. That's a vote in my favor in Ashland, but a vote against me in Mansfield. The main reason Ashland wanted me to do a website was to get a website; in Mansfield, the main reason would be to make me some sort of officer—for a lifetime—of the church.

One Episcopalian oddity is that it takes an enormous number of people to make things happen, and there are always openings in the cadre of volunteers. On any given Sunday, we need at least someone to read the Bible, someone to help with communion, a couple of people to pass the offering plates, and someone to put the after-church meal together. Then there are the ushers, the Sunday school teacher (only a few kids), and the people who clean the church. And the choir. If we had a few teenagers, we'd have torch-bearers, too. Grace gets along just fine with a couple of ushers. Yes, there are musicians, the PowerPoint person, the announcement reader, and the coffee person, but those tend to be lifetime jobs, not available for casual volunteers.

So the surprise is that the structure is incredibly permeable. There's a way for people to start being part of things almost immediately.