During this Easter season we have been considering the three possible celebrations which can be drawn from the story of the empty tomb: First, there is the resurrection of Jesus himself – one whose spirit could not be conquered by death nor contained in a tomb; second, the Easter event lifts our hearts for the anticipated resurrection of our own selves. (The word “self” is used here with a large measure of intention – and not the word “soul.” In any discussion or presentation of the resurrection, we should employ the word “self” to remain true to the Biblical presentation of the resurrection. In the garden, on the road to Emmaus, in the locked and shuttered Jerusalem hideout and on the shores of Galilee, Jesus’ companions and disciples met a risen self, the whole person made new in the resurrection, not a disembodied soul. The Gospel of John was the last to be written. By the time John was written, much argument and debate was taking place among believers about this very subject. John included the story about doubting Thomas, a story left unnoticed in all the other Gospels, to pound out the point that the risen Christ was a resurrected self, not a disembodied soul set free by death. The Biblical writers take death very seriously, and death is not presented as a friend that sets our souls free. Death is the last enemy of God to be conquered. The conquest is done by God through the resurrection. Thus John presents the risen Jesus as one with wounds in his feet, hands and side that can be seen and touched. The risen Jesus is the whole person of Jesus prefiguring our resurrection of the whole self in the newness of the general resurrection, the day of triumph over death.)
Then there is the third and often overlooked resurrection to be celebrated at Easter. That is the resurrection of the church, which is also called the Body of Christ. The church, scattered, lost and defeated, was called back to life by the first resurrection. Reflecting on the Easter church takes us to lots of interesting places. There are theological and spiritual implications for us as we think about the Easter event and the Easter church, the resurrection.
If we think about Jesus and his disciples in today’s terms and language and envision Jesus as the first pastor of a congregation, then the disciples become his staff, the first church staff. How amazing it is that the only people to whom the risen Jesus appeared were his staff people. Jesus’ staff was incredibly important to him and if important to him, incredibly important to the whole church and important to any minister. This particular thought has been a part of my theological underpinnings for ministry for a long time, but this is about the only time I have ever shared this thesis in a sermon, which is witness itself to how easy it is to not appreciate the everyday and close at hand. The Easter Church, brought to life in the resurrection and called by Jesus’ appearances to his staff, gives us cause to celebrate and reflect on the giftedness of church staff to the church.
Church staff has been a part of my life ever since I can remember. My father never had a church study or a church office until a major building program provided those luxuries after I had left home for college. I am thinking about Dad this morning. Even as I wrote this very paragraph yesterday morning, I received a call from my sister telling me that Dad is in the hospital again. So I honor my parents this morning with a remembrance from their lives and ministries. Dad never had a secretary except for the few years during World War II when he was a chaplain in the Army Air Corp. The old parsonage had eight bedrooms on the second and third floors. One of them became Dad’s study. In one corner of that room there was a table with an AB Dick mimeo monster on it. The presence of that printing equipment made that corner of the study the church office. It was a southeast corner on the second floor with lots of sunlight. The brightest corner in the house. My mother also laid down a territorial stake or two in that corner. She placed so many of her houseplants in that corner that you practically needed a machete to get through the jungle to crank the handle on the AB Dick mimeo jungle monster. It was my mother’s less than subtle way to say to the church, “There’s some sacred space being violated here, folk.” It took over twenty years, but finally an office was built and the mimeograph moved to the church.
The presence of that mimeo in our home leaves my family and myself with innumerable memories. In the absence of secretaries, Dad had a number of volunteers who handled a variety of office tasks. One of those volunteers arrived at the kitchen door every single Saturday night just as we were sitting down for supper. She was there to print the Sunday bulletin for the next morning. If she had been there just to go upstairs and print the bulletin, the whole thing might have been doable. But the hovering for fifteen or twenty minutes over our family meal and dominating our conversation got to be more than what my older sister and I had the patience for. We began to consider this hovering helicopter over our meal like a pesky housefly buzzing the salads. The difference between the fly and the volunteer being that my mother and father would have gotten rid of the fly. One night our hovering guest announced to us kids right in the middle of our family meal in our own kitchen that if anything ever happened to our mom, like her dropping dead, she was going to marry our Dad. The old rule that children are made to be seen and not heard was suddenly forsaken and abandoned. My older sister and I in one voice without a moment’s hesitation vocalized something about a fiery place freezing over first. That night it didn’t matter if our supper got cold. We were sent to our rooms without finishing. But later, after the proper ecclesiastical decorum had been re-established, my mom fixed us something to eat with a big grin on her face. After all, she was the one who planned and planted the houseplant jungle!
In these childhood experiences I learned something that has stayed with me throughout my adulthood and ministry. In particular, I learned the importance of maintaining boundaries around church staff and recognizing and upholding the differences between staff, family and friends. In case the point was missed in the story that I just told, the comments, which the preacher’s kids were subjected to at their dinner table, were highly inappropriate and uncalled for. Preacher’s kids or not, we should not have had to listen to some of the remarks that we heard about our mother’s demise.
There are some conversations that are appropriate for family with family. There are some conversations that are appropriate among friends. In the church, staff is here to be staff, not family or friend, and there are some conversations that are inappropriate between parishioners and staff, just as inappropriate as the unsolicited and uncalled for comments about my mother’s death at her children’s dinner table. Boundaries were crossed that should not be crossed.
In the day-to-day operations of the church, staff is here to be staff to support your minister as part of a team and to be related to as staff – with courtesy and even with love. Staff has an incredibly important job in being here to support you in your ministries as the church. Boundaries need to be maintained to preserve the unity, cohesiveness and teamwork of the staff. A single staff member should not be drawn out of the team by being asked questions by parishioners such as, “How are things going?” “In particular, how are things going with other staff members or with a particular staff member?” “What do you think about what your fellow staff member is doing? I don’t really like it. But I want to know what you think.” And so forth.
Those questions might be appropriate in one’s home among family when a family member comes home from work and you check in with him or her as to how good things are going. But in the church in day-to-day conversations that type of comment and question do not belong in conversations between church members and staff members. They serve no good purpose.
The old saying is that there is a place for everything and everything in its place. Check-in questions with staff about how things are going with them as staff members need to be asked, but asked in the appropriate place and that is as a part of periodic reviews. Those are supervisory questions and the only persons who should be asking those questions of the staff are those who have been duly elected or appointed by the congregation to supervisory roles and positions. The church has a process for taking care of staff. When we sidestep appropriate boundaries, we substitute for the orderliness, cohesiveness and unity of process the chaos of personalities. When we take care of staff appropriately, we take care of the whole church for it is so true as Paul wrote, “that when one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers.” When one part is injured, the whole is injured. When one part is lifted up, the whole is lifted up. When one part rejoices, the whole rejoices.
The risen Jesus appeared only to his staff. He didn’t show up at Pilate’s doorstep or drop in on the chief priests’ court. He appeared to his disciples because they were the ones he loved and they were important to him. From the many wonderful experiences that I have had with staff over the years, I can understand why staff was so valuable to Jesus. As a minister who has always worked with a staff, I have a vision for staff and how staff shares my ministry with me in the church. An important and essential piece of that ministry is that staff members work with me to live and witness to you and to the world what our life together is all about around Christ’s table. Every fiber of my being believes that there is something different about our life together in the church that can transform our families and our world if we experience enough of it in the church. This business of respecting and maintaining boundaries and roles and relationships is central to that work of transformation.
In my first pastorate, I worked in a team ministry that taught me a lot about staff. My co-pastor and I were almost the same age. He had been in the parish for two years as an associate pastor before I came to work as a co-pastor with him. Paul graduated from two of New England’s most conservative schools, Gordon College and Gordon Conwell Seminary. I graduated from two of New England’s most liberal places of learning. There was hardly a single point in theology and Biblical interpretation that the two of us saw eye to eye on. To further challenge us in our relationship, Paul was single and I was married. Also, Cheryl and I moved into the parsonage formerly occupied by the senior pastor. The combination of my marital status and the house where I ended up living made it difficult for a lot of parishioners to not treat me as the senior pastor and to continue treating Paul as the Associate Pastor as they had known him for two years before my arrival. Paul and I had a lot to carry between us in our relationship that could have been difficult.
Paul and I used to meet regularly on our parsonage front porches. We quickly learned that the place for our differences was the front porch of those parsonages and that there was nothing to be gained and everything to be lost by letting those differences go beyond our conversations on those porches. It is important for staff in working with each other to make each other look good. When staff work as a team to make each other look good, the whole church looks good. Not only does the church look good, it becomes and is good. Staff can play an essential role in the transformation of the congregation. Furthermore, staff need the prayers, support, cooperation and love that cares enough to honor and recognize appropriate boundaries from the congregation in order to do this difficult task.
There were boundaries that needed to be maintained around church staff and that need to be maintained around all church staff in all church settings. Public presentation by church staff needs to be one of unity and working together. We are all always working together for something greater than any one of us or all of us together. When we lose sight of that greatness, something much greater than any of us, then the only vision that comes before us is out of our own smallness. That vision is not enough to save us from ourselves.
Jesus’ only resurrection appearances were to his staff. What a testimony that is to the importance of staff in our churches today. Your staff is a gift that God has bestowed upon your church. Your staff has a purpose as staff and as staff alone. I see a part of that purpose as witnessing to you an example of community that you will not find anywhere else, a community working together in the spirit of the risen Christ.