A Little Dead Grass

The air was crisp and cool, as the sun had not yet cleared the little rise to the east, and the pup was taking his sweet time gettin' about his business.  There's no rush on a Tuesday morning, though.  I was perfectly happy to walk for a while in the long waking shadows of morning.

We'd reached the top of our street where it ends at a t-junction, the highest point in the neighborhood.  That meant going right, so we did.  Three houses down, I was lost in a thought when there came a sound.

shsz shsz shsz, it went, to the right and close and near my feet.  It was a quiet rustling percussion, like a brush dashed thrice across a drumhead.   

I turned to look, and as I did, the sound came again.

shsz shsz shsz, coming from a white-painted raised bed.  The bed was one of three and empty, as it always is at that neighbor's house.  They'd been put in back in the pandemic time, likely with the good intent of getting into gardening.  Good intentions being what they so often are, for the past few years I've never seen anything growing there but grass.  

The bed now contained copious quantities the aforementioned grass, once tall, now fallen, dry and dead and yellow-tan.   Tugging at a tuft of it with diligent intent was a male American robin.  shsz shsz shsz, went the grass.  shsz shsz shsz, went the robin, tearing some away, and now it had a small beak-full.

It paused.  It stood upright and still.  One dark expressionless eye limned about in white observed us for a moment.  

The little thumb-drive of a brain processed what it was seeing.  Human: slow.  Dog: distracted.  Threat assessment: low.  Flight: Unnecessary.  Priority Task Nest: unmodified.

Back it went to gathering, shsz shsz shsz, dry dead yellow-tan grass and dreams unfulfilled repurposed into a home for eggs and nestlings.  

The Dread Pastor Roberts

Over the last month, I've instituted something new in both the email newsletter and the worship bulletin of my little church. That new thing is fairly simple: a worship headcount. It's a pretty straightforward thing, really, and is a way of illustrating a bit of data that is easy to miss in the gracious intimacy of our little fellowship.

That bit o' empirical reality is this: after six years of a group of diligent and hardworking folks working together to revitalize a dying suburban church, we're not at the point where we're self sustaining. Yes, membership has grown. Worship attendance has doubled. Our giving has nearly tripled. But after all that time, we're still not a self-supporting congregation. We're still significantly reliant on the small endowment of the church, and that endowment has taking a brutal beating over the last year.

Unless something shifts dramatically in the near term future and the trend-lines run in a different direction, we'll run smack up against an inescapable reality: we can't support the institutional structures of our church. Our building isn't quite the money pit it was a few years ago, thanks to some major repair projects and maintenance. But it's too big for us. Our staffing level--and by that I mean me--is too costly for the community to maintain without the endowment, even if my salary is 10% less than Presbytery minimum and slightly below what the average Metro bus driver makes.

If we really stretched it out, we could go for a few more years. We could spend down to zero and then walk away. But that's just not an acceptable option. We've got to be aware of the realities that we face, and we've got to respond to them mindfully.

I really, really like my church. The fellowship is great, and the praise team rocks, and our Bible studies are both fun and places of spiritual growth. But I feel increasingly like I'm compelled to become the Dread Pastor Roberts, who at the end of every Sunday says to his congregation,

"Wonderful worship! I really felt the Spirit moving here today! That comment in Bible study was really insightful! Keep up the good work, and I'll most likely kill you in the morning."

I understand that can be quite the motivator.