This blog is heavily geared toward the theme of transitioning from a working person to a retired person. There are other transitions as well. One of them is moving away from being clergy person to being just a "person in the pew".
A couple asked us last week if we would substitute for them as ushers, because they were going to be away. We agreed, though we have not ushered in this church before. It is a job which involves giving out bulletins, providing microphones to speakers, opening and closing doors, taking up the offering, etc. Several church people looked at me with big smiles on their faces, as if it were somehow quite unexpected to find me in that role.
And that got me to thinking. I've done every job in the church there is to do,--teach, preach, play the piano-- but I have always avoided the ushering part. While I might have taken the offering in the past in a pinch, it would definitely not have been within my normal group of church assignments. But we accepted the invitation to usher because it seemed somehow fitting. If one is truly a person in the pew, one can expect to be asked to do that sort of thing. The fact that we were asked would suggest, in some strange kind of way, that we have indeed arrived!
Truthfully, though, there are elements of being a clergy person that one can never really shake, no matter how hard one tries. It's the kind of thing that grabs you at the core, and never completely lets you go!
But I am happy to say, that for today, it is surely true,
that I became fully, just a person in the pew!
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