“...and we hold you personally responsible for the uncomfortable temperature in this church!”

Brick Consciousness

 A man is walking along in his garden. His consciousness is abundantly blessed with pleasant sights, sounds, and odors. Suddenly, he trips over a brick. Now his consciousness is one hundred percent brick.

Every Sunday morning, Rev. Agnes preaches, conducts liturgy, leads prayers, etc. If the service goes well—her “performance” is well integrated into the entire ensemble effort including the organ music, the choir’s anthem, the congregation’s hymn singing—Rev. Agnes feels a great deal of satisfaction as she stands at the rear of the sanctuary sharing handshakes and hugs with the congregants and they file out.

“A great sermon, pastor,” several satisfied customers proclaim.

And then Mrs. Heyward approaches with a scowl on her face. “This church is so cold, I almost froze,” she complains.

“I’ll pass it on to the trustees,” Agnes replies.

“I’m holding you personally responsible,” Mrs. Heyward persists. “And if something isn’t done about it, my family and I are leaving this church.”

Mrs. Heyward departs and Mr. Hanratty appears next in line. His face is beet red. He loudly announces, “Just look at my face,” he says. “It is so hot in here that I sweated the entire hour. I hold you personally responsible. If something isn’t done about the inadequate air conditioning in the sanctuary, my wife and I will never come back here again!”

A brick has been dropped on the pastor’s toe. As she drives home after the service and coffee hour, her consciousness is one hundred percent brick!

“It’s only until we can get the plumbing repaired!”

“Would it be all right if I moved my desk into the chicken coop? It’s less crowded there.”

"..and it doesn’t  seem to matter to anyone."

At the Church on the Corner,

Janice, one of the founding members is having an affair with a married man. They even take vacations together.

Henry, another of the founding members, brags that he doesn’t believe in God and that his only interest in Jesus was in the “moral fables” he told.

Victoria, a third founding member, has assailed every minister over the years with the declaration: “You’re really a fine speaker, but you’d be much better if you’d knock off all that God, Bible, and Jesus stuff.

Victor, the treasurer, is inept. He has served since the church was founded. His reports are frequently inaccurate, delayed, and incoherent. He forecasts financial disasters that never happen and blames them on the pastor.

Malcolm, the husband of the Sunday school superintendent, comes to meetings drunk. He is loud and abusive.

The sanctuary is forty years old and the construction has never been completed. The interior walls are unfinished and the cracked concrete floor is uncarpeted.

The church owned preschool stresses self-esteem but does not teach religion or morals.

And it doesn’t seem to matter to anyone.

The church secretary has no office. She does her work and greets visitors at a desk amidst choir gowns and folded chairs.

The last three ministers and their families have considered the parsonage, located next to the sanctuary, unlivable.  The average home in the community costs over a million dollars, so the ministers cannot afford to live within twenty miles of the church.

The Sunday before Christmas, the congregation schedules no service. Instead there is a Christmas pageant in the church school. No one notified the newly appointed pastor and he prepared a service, wrote a special Christmas sermon, and invited his parents and his wife’s from out of town.

The church secretary is an alcoholic, who packs a revolver in her purse. She has never learned how to use the church computer, so the minister does all of her inputting for her.

Tom, a longtime member, often interrupts Sunday services to make announcements of having cast out demons and healed critically ill individuals for chronic diseases. None of these healings actually occur.

The electrical systems and plumbing are a hodge-podge of homemade, substandard repair, many in violation of local building codes.

And it doesn’t seem to matter to anyone.

The choir director will not select music suited to the minister’s message, the scriptural readings, or the liturgical season.

The choir will not let the minister or his wife sing with them. They consider the music program their private turf.

The sanctuary has perfect acoustics. Mr. Henreid, a major donor who never attends church, has donated a sound system in memory of his wife. It is turned on every Sunday even though it is not needed and the speakers are located so high in the rafters that they cannot be heard anyway.

Two broken electronic organs, donated to the church for tax deductions, sit in a front corner of the sanctuary, in plain view. There are no plans to have them fixed or any use for them.

Someone donated a calf to the church. It wanders the church grounds until it becomes a full-size bull and must be removed for the sake of safety.

Someone else donated twelve laying hens. The trustees built a brick, air-conditioned chicken coop for them from which, unfortunately, they often escape, running into traffic.

And it doesn’t seem to matter to anyone.

“We have to let him go for safety reasons. Some of the trustees are voting for a cookout!”

 When important matter are being discussed and voted on, members who have neither attended church nor made financial contributions in more than twenty years show up to argue against any changes.

There are no pew Bibles because some of the members want the King James version and some want the Revised Standard . The pastor considers both obsolete.

The pulpit was designed for the last pastor, who was six foot two inches tall. The current pastor is five foot eight. He can scarcely be seen when he preaches.

The church library has hundred of volumes—none of them purchased since the 1960s. Not a single book has been borrowed in thirty years.

The furniture in the church parlor, where all the committee meetings are held, and through which members and visitors enter the sanctuary, is shabby and broken down.

Mrs. Reynolds, who has not worshipped in the church for twenty years, wants her granddaughter baptized on Sunday during the service. The child’s parents are not members of any church and have no intention of raising the child in the Christian faith. This is contrary to the official position of the denomination.

And it doesn’t seem to matter to anyone.

“…and another thing—this podium could use some improvement!”

The church financial secretary does not send out regular statements of donations paid toward annual pledges. Many members have lost track and do not contribute regularly.

The newly elected chairman of the deacons has never been baptized or confirmed.

During the past year, the pastor has been propositioned twice—once by Phil Winters, a major donor, and once by Tiffany Malden, an attractive young woman. He refused both offers.

The large wooden at the road in front of the church still bears the name of the pastor who left three years ago.

Near the conclusion of each Sunday service, just before the benediction, Mrs. Avery, decked out in her Sunday best, enters the congregation. She sits in a pew as the service concluded, then stays to visit with her friends. The pastor can hear the “clack, clack, clack,” of her high heels in his sleep! Her unfashionably late entrance is her way of expressing her contempt for the pastor.

And it doesn’t seem to matter to anyone.

The question remains: What does matter?

“I’m already following the bull around with a poop-scooper. Get someone else to follow the chickens!”

“Could you hurray up a bit? I think my water just broke!”

“With this ring. . . .”

“Premarital counseling is largely a waste of time.” So asserts Edwin Friedman. He states that he has never known of anything said by anyone to any couple before marriage that has ever had any effect after marriage.

There are many reasons for this, chief among these is the fact that relationships change qualitatively after commitment. In addition, couples about to be married are moving toward on another “at the speed of light” and, relatively speaking, away from every one else. Under such circumstances, advice cannot be heard. In my experience, lust trumps all admonitions.

I have been an ordained minister for more than forty years and have performed a fair number of weddings at my home church, at other churches, and in various other venues including rented halls, back yards, and living rooms. I have married friends, relatives, slight acquaintances, and total strangers.

The couples whose marriage I have performed seem to fall into two categories. In the first, bride and groom are obviously in love, are cooperative, attentive, and appreciative.

In the second category, the bride-to-be is cooperative and attentive while the groom-designate is bored, uninterested, and tired of the whole thing. His total vocabulary consists of the word, “whatever.”

How well the marriages of couples in either category succeed is a mystery to me. Ministers rarely are informed of the outcome.

About half of the brides in both categories have been pregnant at the time of the ceremony. Well, at least the couple has something in common.

Couples in the second category are prone to have nasty arguments at some point during the proceedings. One groom actually said, “With this ring, I thee dread!”

Most couples express no preference as to the form of the ceremony or the wording of the vows. A few work the most imaginative combination of personal lifestyle choices into their ceremonies. I think of the New Age, Buddhist-meditation, anti-war, vegetarian, don’t-mention-God, let’s-crush-a-bottle-of-nonalcoholic-champagne-underfoot (to please his Jewish relatives!) wedding.

The most annoying was the bride who asked for the traditional ceremony but who immediately thereafter publicly announced that she had no intention of keeping her vows of lifelong fidelity. And she didn’t. Ten years after the wedding, she told a group of us gathered for an anniversary celebration that she had slept with 342 different men! The couple subsequently divorced. Talk about “unholy wedlock!”

The most irritating groom was the drunken cowboy in his ten-gallon hat, boots, and Western tuxedo, who exchanged ludicrous jocularities with his best man throughout the ceremony. Today he is the happily married, loving, responsible father of three.

The Japanese mother of one of the brides brought a novel approach to one wedding. As her daughter entered, she stood, and remained standing for the entire ceremony. And, of course, the entire congregation stayed on their feet with her! For all I know, she is still standing somewhere years later!

And then there was the hostile flower girl, the bride’s four-year-old daughter from an earlier marriage, who forcefully cast the rose petals at the congregation to her left and her right as she proceeded down the aisle ahead of her mother.

After-the-ceremony receptions have run the gamut from cheap and simple to extravagant and sophisticated. The one that still has me scratching my head was where the entire buffet consisted of pieces of Round Table pizza fashioned with cookie cutters into the shape of hearts, clubs, spades, and diamonds. I know that marriage in our day and age is a gamble but this was ridiculous!

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