Every Picture Tells a Story

In my early thirties, while working full time as the coordinator of pastoral services in a mental health facility in South Carolina, I was invited to become a “stringer” for The Greenville News. The newspaper had a statewide circulation but needed someone in the Orangeburg area to write about emerging trends in the local culture. I had done some writing for areal newspapers on subjects related to faith and mental health so I at least knew what a byline was. Orangeburg and its environs had long been an agricultural community but the local culture was changing fast. A new mall had been opened, a new regional hospital was in the works, and some of the old, established political leadership was being replaced by professional city managers, municipal planners, and whip smart young attorneys from other places. The local newspaper had hired an editor from north of the Mason-Dixon Line.  Old timers with tags on their trucks that read “Fergit, Hell,” met at the Calhoun Restaurant and pined for the good old days before all those outsiders moved to town.

My first assignment from my editor was to write a story about the effect of the new mall on the downtown stores that had lined Broad Street for the past hundred years. I dutifully interviewed the mall manager, downtown store owners, customers on the street and in the mall. My editor said that if I provided photographs, I got paid an extra fifty bucks so I shot a wide angle photograph of Broad Street around one o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon. The parking spaces that lined the streets were mostly empty. Few cars, no people, and the downtown business district looked dead. However, the story I wrote painted a different situation. Everybody agreed that the mall had not cut into the downtown stores’ business. Most of the stores in the mall were chain merchandisers and fast food places. If you needed a Stihl chainsaw, you still went to the Ace Hardware on Broad. Churchgoers looking for Sunday lunch still went to Berry’s on-the-Hill Restaurant downtown. If you were shopping for an engagement ring or a high school class pin, you went to Andrae’s Jewelers on the upper end of Broad. Mostly, storeowners liked that there was more variety which encouraged more shopping. But the photograph spoke volumes more than the few hundred words in my article. It showed a vacant, dead looking downtown. I had captured it in a slow moment. I hadn’t meant for it to convey anything but the truth but it did. The photograph ran with my article and the phones started ringing off the hook. My good friend, Jim Cherry, director of the Chamber of Commerce, suggested that I not show my face in any of those downtown stores for a while. The owners complained to him that I had portrayed the downtown business district as dead. My journalism career was not off to a good start.

Sunday morning worship in any church is a lot like a snapshot. If you visit on the wrong Sunday or the wrong service, you might not get a positive impression of what’s going in the life of the congregation. If you see pews full of old graybeards and no children, it’s not likely a church you where you want to bring your children. If the lighting is poor and the temperature ten degrees off comfortable, you may check out the church down the road. If worshippers are stony-faced and do not welcome you, what does that say about the church’s willingness to be in ministry to a diverse world? A cold reception always trumps good preaching, the organist’s skill, or how many of your favorite hymns the congregation sings.

Last Sunday, I greeted a visitor, an African American gentleman. He lives in the neighborhood. I had to wait a moment to meet him because other people were welcoming him. He told me that he had driven by several times on Sunday but never saw many cars in the parking lot. He wondered if much was going on in our church. He decided to come inside and take a closer look. I explained to him that our larger lot where a lot of people parked was on the back side of the church and not visible from the street so I was glad that he decided to come inside the building.

I did not get the chance to talk with him after worship so I don’t know what sort of overall impression we made. People come to church for all kinds of reasons but it all boils down to one thing: they are looking for some experience of God.

Next time you see someone new to the congregation, remember that Jesus welcomed the stranger. Greet them in the name of Jesus and say, “Welcome to the kingdom of God.” That’s what Jesus would do. Hospitality on the part of Christ’s followers was the driving force behind the growth of the early church. It is still a defining feature of growing churches today.

Joy to the World

This will be the first of many blog postings from me as part of a new format for our monthly “Source.” The good thing is that you can respond immediately to what you read. Comments will be filtered before they are published.

JOY TO THE WORLD

About this time two years ago, on a night when the temperature was in the low teens, our son Daniel suffered a heart attack and subsequently underwent a triple heart bypass. The cause, we were told, was probably long term hypertension due to an undiagnosed constriction in his renal artery. In March of last year, his kidney function ceased and he went on dialysis three times a week. We are hopeful that soon he will be the recipient of a transplanted kidney. It has been a hard journey for our family. Daniel has faced it with a sense of determination and hope, plus a sort of emergency room sense of humor. When I told him that my 2012 resolution was that I not spend any all nighters at Grady Hospital wondering if he would survive the night, Daniel countered, “Dad, not to worry. I’m an Emory patient now. You can worry at Emory Hospital Midtown.” Joy. Well, yes, joy is what I said. Joy is so much better than just happiness. There is a tinge of the divine in feeling joy. Buying a new sweater can make me happy. Driving my truck makes me happy. Listening to a Paul Thorne song makes me happy. Joy has something to with my relationship to God; it’s about being connected to something larger than me, something so full of goodness and creativity and generativity that I can’t help but feel it. So I joyfully anticipate seeing our first born receive a kidney and get on with a life that is full of potential and love. I joyfully anticipate the birth of our first grandchild in May and I pray daily for our daughter Jessica’s and Baby Boy Ammons’ health and well being. When I see our youngest child, Rachel, working with the children at Oak Grove UMC school where she is employed, I wonder if God is calling to her through their laughter and warm embraces. She has that sort of Earth Mother quality with kids and that fills her with joy and so lights up my day. I am full of joy and thanksgiving for Karen, another gift from God, and the only woman on earth willing to be married to me for forty years come April Fools’ Day this year. And lastly, I am finding that even in a difficult year of moving to a new appointment, a new residence, dealing with family illness, and struggling with a sick economy, I am the beneficiary of joy in serving the Embry Hills UMC congregation. As I said in my end of year report to the congregation, I anticipate being in ministry with you, laughing, having fun, sharing our burdens and sorrows but also giving thanks for the good times and particularly for the joy of our life together. So ends my first blog post. Blessings.

Lee