Applause in Church

During high school and college, I developed some very strong ideas. For example, I still truly believe that most parents do the best they can raising their children. Sometimes their best isn't good enough for their child, but I believe most parents really do try.

Another strong idea was that applause has no place in church. Too often to me, applause ran the risk of applauding the musicians and not being actually directed at God. (In white churches, applause usually occurs after a particularly moving piece of music.) It was better, therefore, to abstain. And I have been possibly the only one in a congregation to not clap at such times, so strongly did I believe that it was better not to clap.

Now, I pastor a Hispanic church. It is a "typical" Hispanic church in that it falls into the category my mom calls "joyful noise" churches. Lots of clapping. During songs. After songs. Before songs. And when the music leader calls for an applause for God after a praise song, I clap, too. Perhaps it's because it's so explicitly stated, as this is clapping for God. Perhaps it's because I sit in the front row and my actions are very obvious to the rest of the congregation and I want to show my support for my music leader. Lately, though, I've found that I don't mind giving God a hand.

This past Sunday something quite unusual happened, unusual for any church. I preached from the lectionary and at the end of my sermon, repeated Jesus' question at the end of the Lukan passage, "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8). Then I said, if he will find faith in you, please stand and affirm that faith now with the Hispanic Creed (written by Justo Gonzalez; found in 'Mil Voces'). At the end, I repeated what God said in the Jeremiah text, "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more" (Jer. 31:34) and I said that since we have this promise that God will forgive us our wickedness and remember our sins no more, let us now confess our sins. After the standard United Methodist prayer of confession, I asked them to pray for a few minutes in silence. And then I gave a slightly altered United Methodist pardon,

"Hear the good news: Christ died for us while we were yet sinners; that proves God's love toward us. In the name of Jesus Christ, we are forgiven! Glory to God! Amen."

The congregation burst into spontaneous applause. Wow.

Rest, Sabbath, Day Off, etc.

Friday is usually my day off from church. However, the church doesn't know that; I don't think I've ever told them. While I refrain from doing much church work on Fridays, when a church member calls, I answer. I want them to think that although I live two hours away, I'm still there for them when they call, even if I'm trying to take a day off. I say Friday's usually my day off because sometimes it's not. A pastor's schedule can be so erratic, that it can be hard to have a consistent day off. Things come up and have to happen on Fridays. Then, I try to switch to another day to rest, but not always successfully.

A mentor colleague recently shared with me something he'd read recently (I forget the book's name): we are made to work from rest, not rest from work. Humanity was made on the sixth day and on day seven, God rested and presumably all creation, too. We didn't start work til day eight. We rested before we worked. How different would it be if we really worked from rest? Refreshed from the weekend to begin work Monday (or Sunday for pastors) vs. tired from the week and ready for the weekend? Rested from a night's sleep vs. coming home from work ready to crash?

As a student and as a teacher, I took Sundays off from doing any kind of schoolwork. I tried not to even think about it (usually successfully). As a pastor, I'm having a lot more trouble.

Last Sunday was my first Sunday off, and it was great! Instead of sermon prep when I was in town, I visited five families! And instead of sermon writing when I was at home, I started packing to move in a few weeks. Then I spent a couple days at Duke's Convocation and Pastor's School and felt more refreshed spiritually and more exhausted physically. Now, I'm back to feeling stressed again and struggling with the self-discipline of taking a day off. If only I could figure out how to work from rest rather than rest from work... Maybe I need to find that book.

Cross-Cultural Ministry

When I was preparing to serve in Nicaragua, I went through lots of training and tests that looked at how well I functioned in foreign settings and gave me advice in how to cope. On the adaptability test, I scored the highest in my group.

When I returned from Nicaragua, I attended a debriefing workshop. One exercise was to mash together yellow and blue play-doh to show how the country you served in had affected you. One color represented your home culture; the other color was the host culture. Mashed together, you could no longer completely separate them again. Most people's play-doh turned green, but not mine. Instead, believing that I was following the directions, I carefully mashed together my play-doh so that the yellow and blue were stuck together, but not mixed together. One side was yellow, the other side was blue, and only held up to the light could you see green. The workshop leader called me a chameleon, able to blend in wherever I am.

The fact that I am a European-American serving a Hispanic church makes this ministry technically cross-cultural. But I have spent enough time in Hispanic countries and studying Spanish cultures that the cross-cultural part isn't stressful to me.

Instead, what is the most cross-cultural, where I have the most trouble blending in, is the setting of this Hispanic church, which is rural.

I don't do rural. In any country. In rural places, I stand out. The smallest town I've ever lived in was Asheboro, NC in the early 1990s. In 2005, Asheboro reported 23,046 inhabitants. The city where I lived in Nicaragua in 2005 had 100,000 people. Unidos por Cristo is located in Grimesland, NC, whose 2009 population was 470.

Cross-cultural white American to Hispanic I can handle. But urban to rural is a whole other ball game.

Hard Work

The hardest part of my ministry at Unidos por Cristo isn't the two-hour drive there. It's not the fact that it's cross-cultural or in a different language. It's certainly not planning bible study or the youth group's meetings. What I have to put the most work into are my sermons. Most pastors have all week to write them, finishing them Saturday night, maybe even rewriting on Sunday morning.

My Grandpa, a retired Methodist elder, recently told me the story of when my mom was young and was asked when her dad wrote his sermons. Her answer? Saturday night in front of the television watching hockey. In the 1960s (and probably at least into the 1980s), Grandpa hand-wrote and revised his sermons during the week and typed them on the typewriter Saturday night watching the Philadelphia Flyers play.

I don't have the luxury of a typewriter or of waiting until Saturday night. Because Spanish is my second language and I want to make the Word as plain as possible, I have editing help with my sermons. My accent may get in the way. I may talk too fast. The youth in the back row will laugh when I stumble over a word, which will inevitably happen. But I want the words I'm trying to say to be right. My deadline for sermon writing is Thursday lunch. By Thursday lunch, I email the week's sermon either to Rev. Luis Reinoso, another retired Methodist elder, or to Ms. Idia Piacenti, an administrative assistant at Duke Divinity School for the Thriving Rural Church Initiative and the Hispanic House of Studies. They review my grammar, my word choice, my verb conjugations, my word order, etc. and email the corrected version back to me by Saturday lunch. I then print it out and read it out loud at least once before putting it in my bag for Sunday morning.

For me, sermon writing is work. I have to make myself sit at the computer and type my notes (in Spanish). I read the commentaries and translate them and add them to my notes. Yes, I write my sermons in Spanish; it saves time and energy to just do it in one language. The Spanish spell-check helps a lot. But I have to make myself sit and write the sermon. Nothing else I do as a pastora requires so much self-discipline to get it done.

What I am most looking forward to about my Sunday off next week (Oct 10) is not writing a sermon!