Honk, honk, honk. A car is stopped in the middle of the street with a gray-haired woman waving out the window.
“Are you the pastor?”
I suppose standing on the front steps of the church on a Sunday morning while wearing my stole probably gave me away. “Yes, I am.”
“Oh, good. I want to come to church, but I’m terrible at parking. There’s a spot right there,” she says, pointing just down the street, “can you park it for me?”
Before I can answer, she gets out of her car, which is running and still in the middle of the street. I get in, with my knees up to my ears and the steering wheel in my chest, parallel park her car, and give her the keys back at the top of the church steps where she is watching to make sure I parked it to her satisfaction.
I have done a lot of different things in my nearly twenty-one years as pastor of this church, but valet parking cars on the morning of my daughter’s baptism was a first.
When the congregation built this building, its second, back in 1954, there was a grade school next door with a large parking lot not in use on Sundays. Why duplicate paving? The school used the lot during the week and the church on Sunday. This was a fine arrangement until the school was torn down sometime in the 1990s and the parking lot became a village park. Around the same time, the church added a lift to the building for accessibility, cutting into the limited off-street parking we did have.
Living in the first-ring suburbs, we hold the tension of being urban enough that street parking is the norm while also being suburban enough to expect off-street parking at certain places, like churches, which may not have it.
All of this adds to the challenge of being church these days. I don’t have to spell that out; many of you reading this know those challenges all too well in your own churches. But the challenges lead to unexpected opportunities.
Back in the spring of 2023, one of our deacons offered a basic Spanish language and culture class. Her husband is a chef and made sure to include different foods for us each week along with our language learning. Not long after the class ended, two women joined us on a Sunday morning part-way through the service. It was clear English was not their first language, and people were excited to try out their new Spanish. Except the women were from Haiti and spoke Creole. We didn’t learn that! Their English was minimal at best, and our Creole was non-existent, but a few people pulled high school French from the recesses of their brains. Google translate became our friend as these delightful women appreciated our efforts and kept coming. I was unable to find a good translation program for Creole, but soon started translating my sermon manuscript into French each week and handing them a printed copy of it when they arrived. Despite significant language barriers, they were experiencing welcome and belonging, and worshiped with us regularly for several months.
Experiences of belonging are so important. Sometimes it is as simple as a junior higher who sees her arm in a picture of a community bonfire that is hanging in the fellowship area and feels valued and important because she made it on the wall. Or a preschooler inviting his assistant principal to come to the fall fest at church (she came!). You see it when people start bringing cookies to events because they want to contribute, and staying after to help clean up because they have a sense of ownership. It often amazes me how many people we never see on Sundays consider us to be their church, and me to be their pastor. Someone asked me recently about the size of the church and I was honest in saying “I don’t know,” because it includes so many more and different people than we naturally count.
There are so many obstacles to being church these days; yet also so many opportunities to be creative about things. And every so often, someone comes on a Sunday morning even though they are terrible at parallel parking and need to ask for help. She came because her friend Shirley kept talking about church at the local seniors’ club and had been inviting her for years. Shirley is the same one who first welcomed our Haitian friends, and who bought a stuffed animal for our daughter a few weeks ago because “we made promises to her; she’s ours. She’s the church’s baby.”
Indeed, you did, Shirley. You promised to “support, love, and pray for her; to be a church family to her; surround her with God’s kind love; tell her the good news of God’s grace; teach her Christ’s way; and pray for her that she may become a faithful follower of Jesus.”
And you are doing exactly that. Shirley is in her mid-80s, and she is taking these baptismal promises seriously and she is persistently inviting her friends to church. Grade schoolers are sitting with consistory members because they know these women and men care about them. Neighbors I do not know leave after outdoor community movie nights thanking us for everything we do in the community.
There are a lot of challenges to being church these days, and certainly reasons to wonder. I do not know what the future holds. But I do see signs of life, glimmers of hope, and fruit of the Spirit continuing to show up in unexpected places.
