Let Me Count the Ways

While reflecting on the beginning of a new year, I was overcome with love for my beautiful, quirky congregation, where I have been pastor for twenty years— a small, urban, blue-collar Presbyterian church in south Seattle. In this post, I simply want to sing the praises of this delightful group.

How do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways.

• When I first came to the church, a group of three men from the neighborhood Adult Family Home came to church each Sunday unaccompanied. They often made jokes and laughed at inopportune moments. Sometimes they whistled at me as I walked up the aisle. We eventually had to run interference on some of these behaviors. One Sunday, as I baptized a baby, one man twisted the top off his water bottle and poured it all over his friend’s head, to peals of stifled laughter. 
  
• One day, a couple from the church mentioned that they were overwhelmed accompanying a family of recently arrived Burundian refugees. I went to visit the family, and found them living in difficult conditions with their nine children. From that day, this family became an integral part of my life and the church’s tapestry. The matriarch, Joy, would get up at services and sing praises in Kirundi. Sometimes these praises would have many verses. At first, I reminded people that Joy lived through genocide carrying a baby in her womb, a baby in her arms, and a toddler on her back, with several others running beside her. Her songs proclaim her belief that the only person who kept her alive was Jesus.
  
• While presiding at communion one day, Joy started approaching the Table with a bundle in her arms. What should I do—pause the liturgy? As she got closer, I paused, and then received the bundle in my arms as she offered it. She nodded for me to unwrap it. I unrolled layer after layer of colorful Burundian fabric, finally arriving at the kernel at the center: a small white envelope. I opened it and found a crisp $100 bill.
  
• After a while, we got to know Joy and her family well. The mother of fourteen children (some already grown when the family came to Seattle), Joy had to be the strongest woman I had ever met. One day I asked her (through the translation of her daughter) how she managed to have fourteen children while escaping genocide. “Some in the bush, some on the bed, and some in the hospital!” she replied. 
  
• Recently Rafael, a man accompanied by his service dog, began to attend services. Last Sunday, I introduced the carol “Angels We Have Heard on High” with words explaining that the “Glo-o-o-o-o-o-ria!” refrain is often sung in harmony even by congregations who don’t usually sing harmony. We began to sing the carol and came to the first “Glo-o-o-o-o-o-ria”. As if on cue, the dog barked his harmony, eliciting laughs, especially from me.
  
• After the service Lydia, a member from the Congo, approached Rafael wanting to know (through her daughter’s translation) why anybody would bring a dog to church. Rafael explained that the dog helps him get up the hill on the way to church, among other things. With a shocked expression, Lydia asked, “Don’t you have children and grandchildren to help you?” Rafael explained that his children help finance his service dog. Still in shock, she asked, “They hired a dog to help you?” Rafael said that the dog was a big help, and that since his wife’s death the dog even sleeps with him to keep him warm! Lydia’s expression said it all as she muttered, “America!!” Laughs were shared by all parties.
  
• We were in the middle of a Calvin Worship Institute grant when the pandemic hit. Unable to continue as we had planned, the Worship Institute suggested we find creative ways to spend the grant money. Inspired by news clips of Italians singing and playing accordions from one balcony to another, we hatched a plan. One evening a week throughout the summer, our music team (a keyboard, a violin, and a djembe) set up on the church’s front lawn with chairs for passersby to stop and listen. We jammed to music, and sometimes neighbors would bring their instruments to join in. During “open mic time” members and neighbors shared what they had been learning about anti-racism.
  
• When the congregation started meeting in person again and the weather turned to fall, we didn’t want to give up our jamming sessions. Every Sunday at the end of our service, we pass out rhythm instruments and the entire congregation jams for a few minutes.

How I love this congregation!