Commitments

Over the past three or four years, I’ve been involved in the Alpha program at our church. Alpha is sort of a “Christianity 101” course, over 11 weeks, with dinner, a video, and small group discussions, along with a retreat and other such bits. It’s a good program (especially the discussion bits), but the three month stint is exhausting, both for the program leadership and facilitators (as I’ve been) and for the folks doing the dinners (as Margie’s been).

Last spring, concerned that we might have run Alpha into the ground at our parish, we did a joint course with a nearby Lutheran church. That was riotously successful, pulling in a hundred people (compared to the 40-50 we’d been doing), but only a handful were from our parish.

With all the sturm und drang at our parish this year (between construction, and our rector leaving, and all the Episcopal Church brouhaha), some parishioners decided we needed to push forward with some sort of similar program at the parish this spring. Nobody felt up to doing Alpha (particularly as the guy who’d been runnnig the show is — well, no longer actively participating in our parish life since the General Convention), and the construction at the church made it nigh impossible anyway.

So, instead, we’re doing the Forty Days of Purpose program over the course of seven weeks (coincidentally coinciding with Lent). It’s a shorter program, and we’re only doing desserts (Margie stepping up to the plate once again), but we think it will do a lot of the growth and fellowship and personal exploration thangs that Alpha did for us, especially as we’re running it a lot more like Alpha than the folks at Saddleback probably have in mind.

Evidently we read the congregation right about it, because we have about 115 people signed up for the class kick-off on Monday night.

Anyhow, I’ve been in the thick of things in the program leadership for this (desperately struggling not to be the leader, but doing all I can to help), and we’ve been meeting once a week since, oh, December, getting this thing organized. It’s been a madhouse behind the scenes, but I think we’ll actually be pulling it off.

In the midst of that, I also have my Vestry duties (for those unfamiliar with the jargon, a vestry in the Episcopal Church is the elected council that actually runs the parish — the board of directors for the church corporation, both metaphorically and literally). That took me off on retreat a couple of weeks back, and there’s our monthly meeting tonight.

And that brings up the prospect of yet another commitment …

A search committee has been appointed (volunteers all, and more than we could fit on it) to run the search for a new rector, a task we anticipate will take 12-18 months. (We’ll be hiring an interim rector in the, well, interim — sat in on the interviews for the likely candidate last week, which was yet another commitment.) The search committee is widely recognized as (a) highly rewarding as a personal experience, and (b) a big time (say it with me) commitment.

While slower in the beginning (since we have a profile committee doing the work of developing the parish profile, to basically convey to prospective rector candidates, as well as ourselves, who we are and what we’re looking for), it’s expected that the search committee will be meeting on a weekly basis, more or less, during the whole process.

Now, when this was being originally discussed, I admitted to some level of interest in it. After all, jeez, being in on the ground floor of hiring our next rector? Damned exciting, if you ask me. Rewarding. Interesting. A major experience, and a way to contribute my own talents toward the shaping of our parish.

But it looked like a heck of a time commitment. And, basically, that’s what turned me off. I have a life, after all, though sometimes it doesn’t seem that way.

And, besides, I was on the Vestry. And we were only going to have one member of the Vestry as a representative to the committee.

So, during the retreat, we looked to see who was volunteering to be that representative.

[Cue crickets chirping in the background.]

Hmmm. Well. Time for some “prayerful consideration” on everyone’s part to see if someone is willing to volunteer by tonight’s meeting.

And an alternative perspective — the search committee rep will basically be doing just that. I.e., getting a pass on other duties and responsibilities as a Vestry person (aside from the monthly meetings). I.e., no other committees to belong to, no other assignments, no other tasks.

Just that one big one.

And, I admit, I’m tempted. Especially since the alternative for me will be, I suspect, a leading role on the stewardship committee (i.e., the folks who figure out how to raise money, make phone calls, and other things I’d rather gouge my eyes out with a Magic Marker than do). It wouldn’t be, net, less work by any means. But it would be work that I think I’m more tempermentally up to doing.

I don’t know.

I’d need Margie’s blessing (so to speak) on it. We chatted about it last night, and will reach a decision before the meeting tonight.

We’ll see.

Jeez. Who thought being religious would be so much work?