Giving Effort
Years ago, when I worked at another church, the sexton pulled me aside one Wednesday night to observe how few parishioners took their plates to the kitchen when they were finished eating. Instead, they just left them on the tables, trusting that someone else would clean up after them. At the time, I had worked at that church for years but had not paid much attention to the table-clearing habits of the parish. The sexton, of course, did not have that luxury. He was the one who had to clean up the mess.
I started to notice what he was talking about. I was appalled. Good, faithful, dedicated parishioners who gave lots of time and money to the church simply got up and left, leaving their dishes behind without even thinking about it. Parents, whose children had made a giant mess all over the table, would wipe their children’s faces and hands and then toss the napkins or wet wipes onto the table and then lead their families out the door without looking back. In horror, I would shoot a glance across the room at the sexton, who knew exactly what I meant, and he would shrug his shoulders as if to say, “I told you so.”
“Why do they do that?” I asked him. “Didn’t their parents teach them to clean up after themselves? Don’t they know how much work they’re leaving you to do?” Some people are just like that, he explained. It is a cultural thing. And sometimes that culture defines a congregation.
This Saturday at our Parish Work Day, we will do the opposite. At St. Paul’s, we usually set aside three Saturdays a year when parishioners are invited to show up early in the morning and help take care of the church we love. Each time we gather, there are some familiar chores we try to tackle every time, like picking up trash around the building, changing lightbulbs, washing windows, and organizing the parish hall closet. Sometimes there are seasonal tasks we work on, like cleaning out gutters, unclogging downspouts, trimming bushes, and raking leaves. Usually there are one or two items that are specific to that work day, like replacing fence panels that have come loose or relocating a heavy piece of furniture.
We design the Parish Work Day to be an opportunity for every person to contribute. Before volunteers arrive, I work with the Properties Committee of the Vestry to generate a list of all the chores we would like to accomplish. We separate them into different categories based on whether the work is indoors or outside and whether the work requires special skills, like the ability to use a power tool or safely climb a ladder. We put each task on a slip of paper and lay them out on a table so that volunteers can choose what they want to do.
Sometimes the work requires more than one person, and teams of volunteers will decide to do a job together. My favorite part of Parish Work Day is the opportunity it provides for parishioners to get to know each other while taking care of their church. Even if we all worship at St. Paul’s, our church is big enough—and we have enough distinct services—that individuals may come to the church every week for years without meeting each other. When you spend an hour or two beside someone, dusting under every pew or tightening the hardware for each kneeler, you get to know them and their story.
Truthfully, we do not need to have Parish Work Days. We could pay our cleaning crew extra money to do the deep cleaning they normally do not have time to complete during their regular work. We could hire an outside contractor to come in and rewire all of the fluorescent light fixtures with bad ballasts. We could ask our landscaping company to do more work every spring and every fall. We could make the parish staff haul away things that no longer have a home in our church. For every chore we will do this Saturday, we could pay someone else to do it, but then we would miss the opportunity to give our effort to God, and we would lose the satisfaction that comes from taking care of our church.
When we talk about stewardship, we typically focus on time, talent, and treasure. Are you giving to God the first fruits of the resources God has given you—the first hour of your day, the top skills on your résumé, the first ten percent of your income? To volunteer at the Parish Work Day requires time and talent and, for those who choose to give up time at work, treasure, too. But I think the most important thing we will give to God this Saturday morning is our effort—our decision to make the care of our church our own responsibility—to confirm that taking care of the buildings and grounds of St. Paul’s belongs to us and not to someone else.
Come to the church this Saturday morning at 8:00 a.m. and choose some chores that will give you the satisfaction of helping take care of the church you love. If you do not see a job that appeals to you, walk around the property and find one. This is YOUR church. It is YOUR responsibility to care for it. If you cannot join us this weekend, look for another Parish Work Day when you can help out. We usually hold them in the spring, summer, and fall.
I must admit that Parish Work Days do not work in every church. In some congregations, the idea that it is our responsibility to care for the church’s building and grounds seems foreign. We pay someone else to do that. As long as someone else is willing to pick up our trash, we do not need to worry about it. But, when we all delegate the responsibility of caring for something dear to us for so long that no one remembers whose job it is to take care of it, we lose our connection with the thing that was once dear.
To put it another way, those of us who show up to take care of the church even when someone else could do it are making space in our hearts and minds for the church we love in a deeper, fuller, more robust way. When we scrub greasy stovetops and dust cobwebs from high corners, we connect with God through our bodies—through our effort. And that kind of care—that sort of stewardship—is always an opportunity for spiritual growth.
Yours faithfully,
Evan D. Garner
