Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Some people appreciate me

Every second and fourth Mondays of the month there is a group of women who gather in the parish hall to work on quilts.  They do some fabulous work, and their latest creation is going up for raffle at the Christmas Bazaar.

I walked out of my office while they were here yesterday and one of them said, "I just want tell you that we really appreciate you."

"Um . . . okay . . . thanks.  What did I do?"

And they proceeded to tell me the tale of a funeral they all attended at another establishment.  The service lasted two hours with a variety of speakers and the lead pastor preaching for well over 40 minutes and "coming within inches of an altar call."

"We just wanted to let you know that we really appreciate the way you handle services."

"Thank you."

Yet another reason to love the BCP -- I have a good set of guidelines on how to run things.

2 comments:

Lady Anne | 4:31 PM, October 29, 2013  

It is hard to mess up a service from the BCP.

A young man in our parish - 30 years old - went into a coma following relatively simple surgery, and died after seven weeks, when his kidneys shut down. Our own church was not large enough to accommodate the expected crowd, and a local Baptist church was gracious enough to allow us to use their sanctuary for the service. Several people mentioned to those of us who had come from Resurrection that they really liked our service. "So simple and dignified."

One of our former rectors refused to write sermons for each funeral. He had a story about dragonfly larvae escaping from a pond and not being able to return to their friends underwater after they had "earned their wings". He told it at EVERY SINGLE funeral he ever did. Drove us all nuts. I had actually arranged for somebody else to do my funeral, when the time came!

Reverend Ref + | 5:02 PM, October 29, 2013  

I get a lot of people at funerals and weddings who tell me they thought the service was "lovely." I invite them back and tell them that we will have another lovely one every Sunday.

Nobody's ever taken me up on that.

I don't have a standard funeral sermon, but I do have a standard wedding sermon. Basically because nobody ever listens to or remembers wedding sermons. My thought is that if I can say something that sticks with the couple, then I've don a good job.

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