Sunday Morning Bible Study
On Sunday, we will commission the 2014-2015 year of Sunday Morning Bible Study (SMBS) leadership. On August 17, students promote in time for the new school year to start. Bible study on our campus is so integral to being Baptist that we almost take it for granted. Someone is there through staff and volunteers to take our children, order quarterlies, mop floors, and provide doughnuts just so we can hear a word from God. These two hours on Sunday morning—at 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m.—are holy ones.
In her book, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, Anne Lamott writes about starting a Sunday School for kids in their inner city, urban location. Their church was temporarily meeting in a senior center during new construction. When they returned to their renovated church, the Sunday School had grown so large that they needed even more volunteers. She writes, “Finally, three adults came to help, all middle-aged white women. This was sort of frustrating, but one of the immutable laws of being human is that the people who show up are the right people. We met every few weeks. We figured out that the only things that worked were a short Bible story, the juice boxes, and art, and so we stuck with those.”
As Lamott describes, the teachers and workers change as much as the students. By learning to teach others, they understand the Bible in its depth that can only be understood in relationship with others. As in the case of most students, change happens while the Doritos are being trashed and the Kool-Aid is being spilled. As your pastor, I’ve seen our SMBS work behind the scenes. The relationships extend all the way to hospitals and funeral homes, sitting patiently unnoticed in a surgery or picking up an elderly friend in time for church.
Lamott writes, “Holiness has most often been revealed to me in the exquisite pun of the first syllable, in holes—in not enough help, in brokenness, mess. High holy places, with ethereal sounds and stained glass, can massage my illusion of holiness, but in holes and lostness I can pick up the light of small ordinary progress, newly made moments flecked like pepper into the slog and the disruptions.”
These holy ones, who work each week to prepare and deliver the word of God, guide us through the messy disruptions of our lives. This Sunday, join me as we give thanks to God for another year of very good work.