By Amy Butler
Warning: this column is purely a pastor’s summer rant. While I often feel alone in these sentiments, I strongly suspect that other pastors out there share my feelings. Thus, I’ve recorded them here just to see if, by any chance, anybody else might share similar thoughts.
I’m not going to lie. Every single Sunday during the summertime I dutifully don my robe, process into the sanctuary, sit in the pastor’s chair, fix a holy look on my face, try to give the distinct impression that the organ prelude is lifting my soul to the highest reaches of heaven, and then look out over the congregation.
And that’s when my heart sinks.
Every. Single. Week.
Where is everybody?
Has the Rapture come and I didn’t make the cut? Is there some exciting thing going on in town that I was supposed to attend but somehow missed the message? Was there some congregation-wide vacation to the Bahamas planned and no one invited the pastor? Did we cancel church and I forgot?
As I sit up front trying to act like I am deep in thoughtful spiritual reflection, my initial dismay is soon replaced with rigorous mental mathematical gymnastics. I start to look out over the vast wasteland of empty pews and tally the numbers. I search my memory for who I recall might have mentioned that they would be out of town on vacation. I run a flashcard-like exercise of the faces of the missing. Sometimes I even start actually counting — on my fingers, if my brain can’t handle the overload — how many people WOULD be in worship if all the people who are missing came back on the same exact Sunday.
(P.S. It’s a lot, I remind myself. Seriously. I can make you a list if you don’t believe me.)
Truthfully, I sometimes miss the prelude altogether because my mind is so busy spinning with the questions of summer church attendance.
I’ve done enough thinking about this summer crisis that I finally realize my dismay over this issue is really not theological, as I am pretty sure admission into heaven is not wholly dependent on summer church attendance. Honestly, my concern is not even logistical, as in the hope-filled tradition of our faith I can say with full confidence that, come mid-September, those pews will be full again. I’m sure of it.
What’s underneath all of this, really, is that I miss everybody.
Worship is the place where I touch base every single week with my church family — people who are dear to me on a human level and people who embody for me the rigorous spiritual challenges and gifts of following Jesus. And when I don’t see them, I feel their absence in deep and substantial ways: I miss greeting the folks who sit along my regular route when we pass the peace; I miss the hugs that knock off my cordless mic every single week; I miss kids running up to me with joyous greetings of, “Pastor Amy!!” (Who else greets me with such enthusiasm, I ask you?)
Though I shouldn’t be surprised by now, it seems that every single summer that disappointingly echo-ey sanctuary still takes me by surprise — and I wonder again where on Earth everyone has gone. It’s at least somewhat comforting that with years of good therapeutic work under my belt at least I can now sit up front on summer Sundays and remain largely convinced that the absence of worship attendees is most likely not about me.
But I confess that I still can’t quell those feelings of distinct disappointment every week. It’s hard to keep the energy of worship and community life going when everybody is gone; it seems to me that the strong sense of shared discipleship becomes diluted when we don’t worship together regularly. Thus, I will here declare (in case anyone was still confused at this point) that church attendance is important no matter the season of the year, and that summertime is not a legitimate excuse to skip.
Beyond that declaration, however, I just can’t for the life of me think of a solution to this ongoing problem. So I’ve decided to leave on vacation for a few weeks and spend some deep and meaningful time contemplating possible answers….