Kelly read to twin 5-year-old girls Sunday afternoon in Renovation Community’s Parsonage back yard while paramedics unsuccessfully tried to resuscitate their grandmother across the street.
Seconds before I snapped this photo, I quickly told our 8-year-old to turn on the boys’ bounce house air blower. I hoped the noise would drown out the sudden loud wailing. Clearly, paramedics had just walked outside to inform the little girls’ mother, aunt, and great-grandmother that all medical efforts had failed.
Birthday Cake
On Friday our youngest turned 5. For months, he’s loved all things “Monsters” from the Disney movies.
I think of great ideas after-the-fact. But, unlike me, Kelly is an excellent and thoughtful planner. She ordered these cute Monsters cake toppers online to match her homemade cake with matching colored icing.
Then she made little cakes in a cup for a small family outdoor birthday party on Saturday.
Each cup had one of these topppers poking through the lid. 5 cake cups remained by Sunday afternoon.
Mama does a great job limiting our sugar intake. We had cake on Friday, Saturday, and plenty of leftover cake in the fridge on Sunday. So she suggested we take the remaining 5 little cakes across the street to our new neighbors.
Last week I met one of them and learned their story. Inside now lived two young adult sisters and 3 children, single moms raising their little kids together.
Our little gift would be a perfect opportunity to show neighborly love and teach our boys in the process.
We offered the treats and met a few more relatives there to unpack boxes, including the adult sisters’ grandmother and one sister’s twin girls.
As we talked by their front door, I heard their smoke detector’s obnoxious chirp signaling a low battery. So I ran home and returned with a fresh one.
Panic
20 minutes later, a fire truck pulled around our corner. From our front window I watched it stop in front of our house as that same young mother we’d just met now frantically waved and cried in terror. Her sobbing sister lay doubled over next to her on their front lawn.
I walked across the street and saw the grandmother collapsed in grief as she sat on the inside stairs. As the women screamed, I overheard a few barely-coherent words to the paramedics: “in the bathroom,” “not responding.”
The adult sisters’ mother, that grandmother’s daughter, lay unresponsive on the bathroom floor. And they feared she was already dead.
The little girls who’d excitedly eyed Kelly’s cake just minutes earlier now stood frozen in confusion as the adults around them screamed, while strangers in medical gear rushed through the front door.
I ran to Kelly, then ran back across the street with our offer: Could the girls come play in our back yard with us and the boys?
Their mother quickly accepted our invitation as the gurney rolled up the lawn.
Kelly slowly walked home with the girls while I ran ahead to explain to our boys: “our friends’ grandma may have just died but we don’t want to mention that to them…we want to be kind, share our toys, and help them have fun while they’re here.”
Welcoming the little ones
This Parsonage Mama knows how to welcome little ones. We brought out all the fun toys. The girls drove our 5-year-old’s new Power Wheels and the John Deere tractor I’ve had since I was 5. They pet our crazy dog who licked their faces.
Kelly pushed them on the swings and cheered them down the playground slide. And she comforted them when they said, “I’m sad.”
After checking with a relative across the street, she brought out a spread of snacks and bottled water. Then she gave the girls socks so they could jump in and out of our bounce house but protect their feet from scratchy grass.
When the girls tired from jumping, I turned off the loud air blower.
But that’s when the unmistakable shrieks of grief penetrated our backyard. So air once again loudly filled a now-empty bounce house.
But it was too late. Our young guests recognized the sound. These girls soon turn 6. They may not fully understand Death. But they knew their beloved grownups across the street were crying.
Toys and snacks lost their appeal. So my clever wife brought out the books. As a former 3rd grade teacher, she knows how to captivate a child’s attention while reading the printed page.
Family members began ringing our doorbell and coming through the Parsonage living room to check on the girls out back.
Meanwhile, I became a liaison between: a police officer on the phone with the county Medical Examiner; our funeral director (and fellow church member) on the phone with me; and shocked family who could barely speak.
I instructed the family on their rights regarding funeral arrangements and helped them start the process.
As the chaos subsided, I began a private conversation with the police officer who’s new to this beat.
Who am I? What is this church building that doesn’t seem to have a normal church operating inside of it?
Where to begin?!
I stumbled through my typical answers… ‘I’m a pastor. This is the church’s house. We used to be a typical church years ago but now operate like some weird rescue mission that’s also a church. The funeral home operates in our building and often cares for families who can’t afford standard funeral rates.’
As I ended the conversation with the officer, she thanked me for how our church serves our community’s hurting and for helping with crises like these.
Spotlight
Recently a friend sent us a financial gift with a text that read “Right now I can’t serve outside my family and I am serving vicariously through you.” This person used to serve some of Society’s most vulnerable people. But they resigned from that ministry to care for aging parents and a loved one with mental illness.
They once were a vocal spokesperson with literal spotlight opportunities to discuss their work. But now they spend their days at home, driving parents to doctors’ appointments, filling prescriptions, making meals, folding laundry, and listening to anxious feelings.
I thanked my friend for the financial gift and went on to encourage them in their own at-home ministry.
My work is different from their work now but it isn’t better, more meaningful, or more spiritual. It’s just different.
I didn’t always believe this.
Sure, I said I believed it but secretly thought otherwise…’the most important ministry happens out in Society’s farthest margins with the most hurting people.’
Seeing Grey
Youthful naïveté often gives us “black and white” lenses, eliminating the subtle shades of grey that permeate our world.
God rapidly “greyed” my lenses when He led me to a church position with a sprawling property.
Does stewarding an empty building always feel like meaningful ministry?
No.
Is that work important to facilitate the many other ministries that take place here?
Absolutely.
But God most drastically changed my perspective through watching my wife. This stay-at-home Mama’s faithful and quiet hospitality, gentle instruction, and passion for a tranquil home have taught me much.
Although she’s incredibly qualified for lucrative “spotlight” roles in the public workforce, she has chosen unpaid roles where she is rarely seen.
That officer saw me in a “spotlight” role Sunday afternoon. And she heard about other “spotlighted” work our unique church does.
Hidden Ministries
But that officer didn’t see what was hidden behind a Parsonage— an unassuming pastor’s wife, reading to two little girls on the patio and gently handling their confusing emotions.
She didn’t know that thoughtful mama would cook enough chili for both us and our neighbors tonight.
I’ve served many people over the years who live with severe dysfunction, addiction, chronic homelessness, mental illness, crime records, or all of the above. With few exceptions, a constant thread throughout their life stories is a sad childhood.
The grownups in their home: didn’t gently handle their emotions; neglected them; didn’t teach them how to care for others; and/or traumatized them.
Yes, someone should minister “out there.” Someone should help in those adrenaline-filled places of crisis, with the screaming women on their knees in a front yard.
And those spotlight opportunities can be good, allowing the speakers to reveal suffering that we must remedy.
But we need many, many more people who minister behind closed doors and on back patios.
We need parents who sacrificially fight for tranquil homes where little feelings are treated with care.
We need people qualified for spotlight roles to eschew them to raise up a next generation of emotionally healthy adults.
We need brave people to resign from successful jobs to care for aging parents.
We need more people to take that meal across the street, write that card, give that ride, change that diaper, fold those clothes, care for that deteriorating loved one, validate those feelings, clean that spit-up, or read to that child…
And do it for the glory of God, recognizing it is ALL important ministry, whether it’s “spotlighted” or hidden, in the home or out of the home, paid or unpaid, if you do it for Christ your King.
May you never believe your ministry is some kind of “second-class” ministry.
May you never believe the “real” ministry is somewhere out there.
May you be content to serve God even in the lowliest unseen places.
May you feel the same sense of purpose serving God in the home as out of the home.
Even if the entire world fails to see your quiet, faithful, and unassuming ministry to your Savior…
He sees it all. And He is smiling.