Day #144: James and the Church
Today, despite being a day that was not productive in terms of preparing the house for the imminent arrival of family, was productive and even fun.
So here's the thing you have to know about my church. It doesn't have a ton of kids. It doesn't have no kids, it just doesn't have a ton. James is in a Sunday School class (when things are normal) for ages three through grade 2. On a typical Sunday, the class has around half a dozen kids or so. I'm not sure what their total registration is, but on average. I can think of maybe five young families that I regularly see attend church.
Churches like ours have this problem. Young families tend to gravitate to large churches with praise and worship music and extensive kids programs where you sign your kids in to a child care/Sunday school situation before you go in to the service. And those kind of churches...are not my jam. There's reasons for that, we don't have to go into all that here, they work well for a lot of people but I don't tend to like them. I don't care for the music and I don't love the theology. I prefer the Lutheran church in which I grew up. But there's a generational problem and our church tends towards the elderly and white haired.
Now, understand me. They LOVE my kids. We are believers in everyone being in church together...a nursery is offered as is a play space but kids are welcomed and invited in. And my kids are loved by this church. They don't really know me, but they know James and they ADORE him. And it works for him because he likes being fussed about.
Online church doesn't really meet that need for either of us. And while I understand the need to be online only, especially given the demographics of our church, through the end of the summer and probably longer, I haven't been hitting up the old church Zoom meetings much. They have gotten better. But they aren't my jam.
One of the things I really like about the church is they are very focused on social justice and giving. It's a fairly affluent community so one of the things we focus on is using our privilege to be of service to others. So giving, in various forms, is a big deal. There's always a sock drive going on for the homeless, sometimes a food drive, quilts are made and sent to women's shelters and prisons as well as lonely college students and overseas and it goes on and on. In the summertime, one of the big projects is school kits. The quilters make drawstring backpacks and the church stuffs them with school supplies. They are then boxed up and sent all over the world.
So last year, as she does, one of the spearheaders of this project announced to the church the date they would be sewing backpacks and invited everyone to come and help, no sewing skills required, and she used the magic word: brunch. James heard there was food and he was IN.
I don't think these very nice church ladies were prepared for a five-year-old's help...it's a very special sort of help and he may have been the first, but they welcomed him, found jobs for him, and fussed over him to the point that weeks later when they were boxing up the kits to send them overseas the coordinator emailed me and said could James meet her before church on a Sunday so she could get a picture of him putting together the last one?
So I saw on Facebook this week they had a couple of work parties, one of which was today, to help put these things together and I knew I had to bring him. Last year we did the sewing piece. Usually the filling is easy...they just set it up in the church lobby and on the way in and out of service everyone goes through the line and fills a kit or two up. This time they had to do it differently. They had stations set up in the church parking lot with pens and pencils, scissors and erasers, etc. and you walked station to station, with social distancing marks on the ground just like in the grocery store, filled your kit and then grabbed another.
We lasted forty-five minutes. Which wasn't half bad. It was hot and eventually James discovered it was boring. But he also got fussed over, they got to see how much he had grown, and he was proud of himself for being helpful. Trying to teach volunteerism and selflessness one day at a time.
In person connections, man. They mean a lot. I mean, yeah, it was masked and forty-five minutes...but until all your in person connections get taken away you don't know what they mean. I hope we'll be back in church for real one day soon. And in the meantime...I'll be grateful for today. It really is the little things.
Media consumption: Might finish Redwood and Ponytail tonight. It's so cute. Also read a few more poems from Whereas.
Today I'm thankful for the cool basement, church connections, that Max and Daddy took a long nap while we were gone, that I got to take a walk with Max, Max reading with me, and fish tacos.
So here's the thing you have to know about my church. It doesn't have a ton of kids. It doesn't have no kids, it just doesn't have a ton. James is in a Sunday School class (when things are normal) for ages three through grade 2. On a typical Sunday, the class has around half a dozen kids or so. I'm not sure what their total registration is, but on average. I can think of maybe five young families that I regularly see attend church.
Churches like ours have this problem. Young families tend to gravitate to large churches with praise and worship music and extensive kids programs where you sign your kids in to a child care/Sunday school situation before you go in to the service. And those kind of churches...are not my jam. There's reasons for that, we don't have to go into all that here, they work well for a lot of people but I don't tend to like them. I don't care for the music and I don't love the theology. I prefer the Lutheran church in which I grew up. But there's a generational problem and our church tends towards the elderly and white haired.
Now, understand me. They LOVE my kids. We are believers in everyone being in church together...a nursery is offered as is a play space but kids are welcomed and invited in. And my kids are loved by this church. They don't really know me, but they know James and they ADORE him. And it works for him because he likes being fussed about.
Online church doesn't really meet that need for either of us. And while I understand the need to be online only, especially given the demographics of our church, through the end of the summer and probably longer, I haven't been hitting up the old church Zoom meetings much. They have gotten better. But they aren't my jam.
One of the things I really like about the church is they are very focused on social justice and giving. It's a fairly affluent community so one of the things we focus on is using our privilege to be of service to others. So giving, in various forms, is a big deal. There's always a sock drive going on for the homeless, sometimes a food drive, quilts are made and sent to women's shelters and prisons as well as lonely college students and overseas and it goes on and on. In the summertime, one of the big projects is school kits. The quilters make drawstring backpacks and the church stuffs them with school supplies. They are then boxed up and sent all over the world.
So last year, as she does, one of the spearheaders of this project announced to the church the date they would be sewing backpacks and invited everyone to come and help, no sewing skills required, and she used the magic word: brunch. James heard there was food and he was IN.
I don't think these very nice church ladies were prepared for a five-year-old's help...it's a very special sort of help and he may have been the first, but they welcomed him, found jobs for him, and fussed over him to the point that weeks later when they were boxing up the kits to send them overseas the coordinator emailed me and said could James meet her before church on a Sunday so she could get a picture of him putting together the last one?
So I saw on Facebook this week they had a couple of work parties, one of which was today, to help put these things together and I knew I had to bring him. Last year we did the sewing piece. Usually the filling is easy...they just set it up in the church lobby and on the way in and out of service everyone goes through the line and fills a kit or two up. This time they had to do it differently. They had stations set up in the church parking lot with pens and pencils, scissors and erasers, etc. and you walked station to station, with social distancing marks on the ground just like in the grocery store, filled your kit and then grabbed another.
We lasted forty-five minutes. Which wasn't half bad. It was hot and eventually James discovered it was boring. But he also got fussed over, they got to see how much he had grown, and he was proud of himself for being helpful. Trying to teach volunteerism and selflessness one day at a time.
In person connections, man. They mean a lot. I mean, yeah, it was masked and forty-five minutes...but until all your in person connections get taken away you don't know what they mean. I hope we'll be back in church for real one day soon. And in the meantime...I'll be grateful for today. It really is the little things.
Media consumption: Might finish Redwood and Ponytail tonight. It's so cute. Also read a few more poems from Whereas.
Today I'm thankful for the cool basement, church connections, that Max and Daddy took a long nap while we were gone, that I got to take a walk with Max, Max reading with me, and fish tacos.
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