A Metheran Easter

Jess: Last year, after attempting Holy Week with a 4-month-old and two churches, we realized that we did not have a sustainable model for the busiest week in a pastor’s year. I really don’t know how we’ll handle Holy Week as the years go by. Once our kids are old enough to stay home by themselves/be ready to go at a certain time, it will be a different story. But for the foreseeable future, we’re going to be struggling to balance parenthood and pastorhood during Holy Week.

For those of you who are unaware, the typical Holy Week looks something like this: a normal schedule Monday-Wednesday, which means working more or less 9-5 or 8-4. Thursday evening includes some sort of service or gathering. Depending on the size of the congregation and the traditions of the surrounding area, Friday includes 1 or 2 services. Again, depending on the church community, there may be some semblance of an Easter Vigil on Saturday, which can range from 1-3 hours and go as late as 1 a.m. Then there is the potential for an Easter sunrise service on Sunday, and definitely one or (mostly likely) more services on Sunday morning. After this, the tradition is for a pastor to collapse in exhaustion. Between us, Wes and I had 12 services between the evening of Maundy Thursday and the afternoon of Easter (7 for me, 5 for him).

Besides the sheer number of services during Holy Week, there is the prep work that goes into them. At least one of the services leading up to Easter Sunday will have a sermon. An Easter Vigil sermon and an Easter sunrise or regular service probably won’t have the same sermon. Had I been the pastor of TLC, I would have preached three times in three days this weekend. At smaller congregations, there may not be the same number of services, but there are still bulletins to put together for each of them, and all the planning that goes into the services, including decorations (or the lack thereof), music, etc.

Wes and I both had enjoyable, worshipful weekends thanks to my mom coming out and helping with James during this crazy week. We also took the initiative to take Wednesday off so that we could rest up a little, knowing that we wouldn’t have an opportunity to take Thursday off as usual. All in all, although exhaustion definitely set in, I think it was a wonderful experience. One of my only disappointments was that we didn’t get a chance to spend time together in worship on Easter. Obviously, this is a reality most Sundays for us, but it was more difficult to deal with on Easter.

One of the nice things about the nature of our work is that, when everyone else is busier, we are generally not so much. Although Christmas is a big deal, it’s not that busy for pastors—it’s generally just one extra sermon and one extra evening of work. We have the blessing of taking days off in the middle of the week, so we can go grocery shopping when stores are empty, eat as a family at lunch special price, and catch up on TV when it’s still almost new. We can go in late or come home early when necessary—or to balance a late-night meeting or activity. We can still enjoy Saturday events as a family. Although we have our challenges, every family does. We have similar challenges to any family with two working spouses. And we get the joy of growing in our relationship with Christ and others and getting paid for it!

Wes: So something ridiculous happened to me during Holy Week. In the midst of all of our business and prep and trying to get things done while still spending intentional time with the family and still spending life-giving time by ourselves and still working on regular spiritual disciplines and still just trying to simply survive in the midst of all of the chaos,

our church

was struck

by lightening.

Monday morning, while our office administrator, Tanya Spain, and I were working away on Easter prep, a lightening storm hit our community. We didn’t think much of it other than that we were grateful that we were inside. Then came the thunder clap that was so deafening that I… Okay, I’m going to level with you. I jumped about three feet off of the ground. And I may or may not have yelped a little bit.

I look over to Tanya’s office, across the building, and she is standing holding her ears. Apparently the thunder clap was—get this!—accompanied by a lightening bolt. A lightening bolt that traveled through wires, frying everything on the West side of the building, and sending an enormous spark through the outlet right at Tanya’s feet.

This is what started my Holy Week.

Honestly, after that, everything else was a walk in the park. With Jess’ mom here playing with James, and so many wonderful people from the church jumping in to serve in different ways, everything seemed to go off without too much of a hitch.

Other than the lightening of course.

What was the most interesting part of it for me was the responses from so many both within and without of the church. I had people spanning the spectrum, giving me interpretations of what God was doing through the lightening strike. On one side, I heard that this was obviously God calling us to spend all of our efforts and money pouring new life into the old building and sanctuary, saying that we need to absolutely drop all plans for a new building and new ministries and focus exclusively on getting back to our roots. On the other side, I heard from a number of people that this was God obviously giving us permission to just demolish the old building and move on to bigger and better things.

It’s just amazing how God can speak near-contradictory things through the same incident, isn’t it?

So I spent Holy Week (and the week and a half since) trying to hold onto Christ’s declaration: “Behold, I make all things new.” I’ve been trying to remember and remind that God is doing a new thing in Kyle UMC while at the same time calling us to be good stewards of the gifts God has given us. It’s been interesting and fun.

So how was your Holy Week? And, since it’s taken me so long to write my part of this, how has your last week and a half been as well?

Oh, and yes. For those of you who are wondering, I did yelp. Like a scared little girl.