WORSHIPING HERE: PART III

This section is the third and last about the cost and value of “worshipping here”.

Cost

It will take almost $56,000 in 2007 to provide the material support for “worshipping here.” These costs include flowers, wine, bread, insurance, candles, and a whole host of other things. How can this cost so much?

When you serve communion to more than 500 persons per week, as we did in 2006, it costs a little more than $1,500 for the wine and host. When you have people worshipping in our buildings we have to have insurance in case of accident or injury. In 2007 insurance will cost us a little more that $14,000.  But this cost is only part of the picture.

Value

What is the value of “worshiping here”? The past couple of weeks are a great time to answer that question.  When we begin our Sundays gathered for the Eucharist, there is value here.  When a child comes to service, claps to the music, places his worries on a seashell, and receives communion, there is great value here. When we see the altar crowded with young children singing new songs of worship, there is great value here.  When we gather later on a Sunday morning to worship and to sing in the words that have come down to us through the generations, there is great value here.

When we celebrate the earthly lives of two parishioners, comfort the families and bury one parishioner in a churchyard that is almost 200 years old, there is great value here.  When we welcome fi ve young children, through baptism, into this covenant community and into a relationship with God, there is great value here. All of this has happened in the past couple of weeks and is repeated again and again through the year.

In all this, there is a value here that far outweighs the cost.

Being Here, Worshiping Here, Serving Here

So where does this leave us? We are blessed with a lovely campus and we will care for it in our “being here.” And we will “worship here” as the first purpose of this or any church.  Yet for a covenant community there is one more important element and that is “serving here.” That may consist of parishioners going to Honduras or Liberia. It may be pastoral care for our parishioners and their families.

It may be Sunday School for the youngest among us or Senior Ministry for the older among us. “Serving here” is the caring and support of our parishioners, families, neighbors and the world. To truly be a community where “No One Stands Alone,” serving is essential. Next week we will begin our look at the cost and value of “serving here.”