Over the holiday weekend, the Daily Episcopalian will be the every-other-Daily Episcopalian.
By W. Tay Moss
Between the Christmas Eve Pageant service and the Christmas Eve Candlelight Midnight service my cell phone rang with the dreadful news, “the roof is leaking.” I had only been home for an hour and had just settled down by the fire with a drink and a cat and my toddler nephew playing by my feet. Dutifully, and with haste, I trudged the five minute walk back the church to find my distressed cleaning staff.
“Oh, Reverend,” she said in a thick accent, “I’m so sorry; I didn’t know what to do!” She took me upstairs to an office of our daycare, where the water was nearly gushing through the ceiling into buckets. I thanked God that, Scrooge-be-tossed, we had booked our cleaning company on Christmas Eve. Otherwise the problem might have had all night to fester.
I flashed back to a continuing education session a few years ago. The Director of Planning and Development for the Diocese at the time was giving us newbies a crash course on the basics of church property management: “If you remember nothing else from this talk, remember this. This is the most important thing for incumbents to know how to do. Whenever any problem comes up with your building, ask this question.” He paused dramatically and then continued, “’Is this the result of water migration?’ That’s it—the most important thing you need to do is ask is that question!” At the time he told us that I thought “Wisdom speaks…”
Watching the water drip off the ceiling I thought, “…and is vindicated by her deeds!” I dusted off my University Spanish (minus the naughty words, of course) to tell another cleaner, Eduardo, that the problem was certainly on the flat roof and we would only know if it could be patched with a trip up the hatch.
My Honorary Assistant clucked her tongue as I climbed the ladder and hoisted myself onto the roof, “You are a brave man!” This from a woman that used to live in the war-torn Middle East. I didn’t feel brave, mostly I felt determined to stop the water. The problem was immediately evident: a slushy snow and rain mixture several inches deep covered the whole flat roof section. Without a way to drain, the water had obviously found a path of lesser resistance. No doubt there was a hole to patch somewhere, but a good stopgap would be to get some of the slush off the roof. Supplied with snow shovels, Eduardo and I started to shovel the freezing mixture onto the parking lot 25 feet below. After assurances that he could go on without me, I left to get ready for the Midnight Mass.
Listening to this story at a clergy Twelthnight party, one of my colleagues said, “I would never have gone up on that roof.” I, too, am not sure that I made the right decision. More experienced priests may have patiently watched the water drip while waiting for someone else to take responsibility. “Let the Wardens handle it,” they would advise. I’m always aware that when I do something like this I may be displacing lay ministry. But the truth is that the only people willing to climb up onto that roof that night were me and Eduardo, and I would not have felt right about abandoning him to a snowy fate. And when it comes down to it, I’m too much of a control freak to “let it go.”
The decision to engage or not to engage the stuff-that-comes-up is a constant of ministry. On the one hand, we want to build communities of hope and compassion and that seems to require some rolled-up cassock sleeves. Between e-mails, phone calls, buildings, budgets, and anything else you may care to name, there are weeds to pull and vines to tend in God’s green pasture. The word we use, after all, is “building.”
On the other hand, our spiritual teachers are telling us that we need to abandon such cares of the world and embrace the holy now. Consider these lines from a 17th century sermon by given Mark Frank quoted in Stephen Reynold’s For All the Saints:
And alas! what have we, the best, the richest of us, as highly as we think of ourselves and ours, more than Saint Andrew and his brother: a few broken nets? … What are all our ways and devices of thriving but so many several nets to catch a little yellow sand and mud? … there are so many knots and difficulties, so many rents and holes for the fish to slip out of, that we may justly say they are but broken nets, and old ones too, the best of them, that will scarce hold a pull, all our new projects being but old ones new rubbed over, and no new thing under the sun.
This business of casting off the “net-works” that entangle us is a strikingly modern sentiment, but I guess there really is no new thing under the sun. Most of us fishers-of-people, I suspect, abide somewhere between the fierce urgency of the holy and ascetic now (cast off your nets) and the Parish Strategic Plan with its tactical appendix (build the kingdom).
We scramble to maintain the tippy centre of our fishing boats—perched as we are between competing pulls. Or, in my case, standing on the top of a step ladder (the step they tell you not to step on) arms hooked over the edge of the roof access hatch. Life is about balance, after all!
The question that keeps me occupied is how do I go about finding that balance? It’s different for everyone, I am sure, but some self-examination bears fruit. Am I being driven by need to control the outcome of this endeavor? Am I doing this other project because I want acclaim? Perhaps that initiative is being driven by a false expectation of what my church “should” be doing to grow? These are the questions that can save us from drowning when the roof leaks!
The Rev. Tay Moss is an Episcopal priest currently serving the Church of The Messiah, Toronto. Besides enjoying hot-peppers, martinis, and monks (though usually not together), Tay maintains a blog between pastoral duties.