Mondays are funny days at church. This week I was off and running very early. I came into the office at 8:00 a.m. and got a few things ready for the day and then was off to an appointment across town at 8:30 a.m. I am a member of the Norwich Rotary club and we had some work to do in preparation for our Charity Auction this coming week-end.
I joined the Norwich Rotary club in the spring of 1991. Three of our members Len Royce, Ed Regets & Dick Strouse) belonged at the time and Len Royce asked me if I would like to come to lunch with him. I didn't know very much about Rotary back then but I had been asked to speak at a meeting in the Rose Garden in June of 1990 and enjoyed the experience. They seemed like a great group of people. I would later come to find out that the Rotary club is made up of professional men and women from across the community. Many of the leading citizens of the city belong to the club. Many prominent business men and women have had their associations with the club over the years.
Now Rotary isn't just a social club or a prestige society. It is an organization that tries to make a difference in the community by working with different agencies in the city and at times by raising money for the groups and their programs. For example, we hope to raise between $10,000 -25,000 to support the Mahan Coat Fund, The Dictionary Project, and the Friendly Neighbor program for Schwartz Manor at this weekend's auction. Every year we provide close to 500 winter coats for children in the city. It costs over $10,000 to do this. We also provide dictionaries for every fifth grader in the city schools. This is part of Rotary International's Literacy program. We also provide a few groceries to the resident's of one of the city's poorest housing complex.
Now joining Rotary for their philanthropic or social connections should be reason enough for me to get involved. But I have another reason to do it as pastor of the church. I do it so I can be grounded in the world outside the church. Too often we pastors become insulated in the church and lose touch with the world. It becomes harder and harder to relate to every day life. Our sermons become intellectual fodder or pie in the sky rhetoric that doesn't touch the hearts of the people in our pews. I have always believed that to be a good pastor you need to be in the world, but not of the world, as Paul says in his epistles. The people I sit with each week at Rotary are good people. Some go to church or synagogue. Some don't.
The Rotary Club also gives me a community I can reach out to with the gospel and practice the type of relational evangelism that I encourage everyone else to do. The idea is to make friends outside the church and let Christ's light shine through you. I've always felt that the pastor has to model what he preaches. I'm not an evangelist like Billy Graham, but I love Jesus and I let it show when I go out into the community. I have met some wonderful people through Rotary and a few of them, including Matt Isenburg, have ended up coming to be a part of our church community. I have also been able to minister to several folks in the club and pray with them in difficult times. It is an extension of our ministry in that way.
Anyway, that's why I was off to the Rotary meeting. At 10:00 a.m. I was off to a meeting with the chaplains at Hospice of Southeastern Connecticut. I have been a hospice chaplain off and on since 1988. I got involved when Russell Furbush, one of our members, was taken on the program. I was immediately impressed by the dedication and care that the nurses and health care team provided. When then asked me to join them, I readily agreed.
Over the years I have ministered to many of our people as well as to others in the community. I have networked with other pastors, led seminars on grief and pastoral care, ministry to the elderly and hospice chaplaincy. In order to do that I needed to read up and learn more about the issues and I think it has made me a better pastor.
I always look at my involvements in the wider community from two different points of view. The first is whether or not the commitment will enhance what I am doing for the church and make me a better pastor. The second is whether or not what I am doing will make a difference in the community or the lives of the people I meet. Both Rotary and Hospice meet those criteria.
At noon I dropped in the office and my administrative assistant, Sandy had updated the web page, outlined the Sunday bulletin, made changes in the mailing list and cleaned up my mess from over the weekend. I checked in with her and we made plans for the rest of the week.
After lunch I came back to the office and did some catching up on office work from last week. I always seem to be about a week behind, if not more. I am a classic hurdle jumper and the more immediate the need for a project, the more likely it is to get done. So last weekend I was working frantically on the booklets and slide show for Basketball Sunday. This week I am paying the price for it.
After a break to go to the gym and work out at 3:00 p.m. on the exercise machines with Scot Rapoza (He is making me do it! He challenged me to a "get healthy" contest) I came back to the office to clean up and prepare for a meeting with a family who had recently lost a loved one. I have a memorial service for Herbert Lawton on Saturday and the family came in to talk about Herb and the service.
Someone once asked me if I did weddings and funerals for anyone. The simple answer is that I will consider a service for anyone. I believe that if someone is reaching out to God, then I need to hear them out.
I do weddings for folks who want God's blessing on their marriage. They don't need to belong to the church. I always encourage them to get involved with a church and to seek God if they want their marriage to be all that it can be. The same is true for funerals. I usually try to only do services for people I know. I don't solicit funerals. I also don't promise anything I can't guarantee. All I do is lift up the hope that we all have is that God will be merciful and point people to the promises that if we believe in Christ we will be saved. Most of my funerals come from referrals from family and friends of the person who passed away. That was the case for Mr. Lawton.
By the time I finished up with the family I headed out to do some personal errands (you know like grocery shopping!) I got home and wrote up an entry for the other blog and then called it a day. As you can tell from this entry, every day tends to be a little different. And most of them are good!
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