December Home Visits

When I first heard about the seminary here in Ambridge, one of the things I was told was that they used to require all of their students to participate in door-to-door visiting in the neighborhood, and I told myself, "If that is still the case, I'm not going!" The church I grew up in was heavily involved in this kind of "witnessing" and some of my deepest feelings of spiritual inadequacy as a teenager grew out of the fact that I simply did not have the kind of extroverted personality that caused me to strike up conversations with total strangers on the street corner and lead them to pray "the sinner's prayer."

Well, such visiting was no longer a requirement for the school, so we moved to Ambridge. And for most of the first decade, no one at my church ever brought up the possibility of me needing to go knocking on doors of people I didn't know. But then we started KidzLife, and somehow it made sense to take some time on a Saturday and try to visit the kids' homes, either to give out invitations for upcoming events, deliver Easter baskets or Christmas presents to kids who didn't make it to one of our parties, or just to get an opportunity to meet the families of the kids. And I've been doing it at various times, for various reasons, with varying degrees of regularity now for about three years. Except for a survey last summer there has been no "cold calling"--we've stuck to families who've had some contact with our church or children's program--and there have been no dramatic conversions (of the type I heard so much of as a teen) to report. But every time I do it, though I feel anxious, disgruntled, or unqualified going into the experience, I always come away from it feeling positive, energized, and thankful for the opportunity.

This past Saturday was no exception. We had a ton of things planned for the family (our regular Saturday chores plus a few holiday events), so it was really inconvenient to take this break in the middle of the day and head down to church to meet with the team and spend an hour or two visiting. On top of that, the main reason for this week's visits was to invite people to our church's Christmas services, which I felt a little funny doing since our family always travels to Virginia for the holidays, and we've only been home to attend our church's Christmas service once. With us not doing KidzLife this semester (which has generally been my main connection to the families of these visits), I was feeling even more cut off and unqualified than usual. And it was snowing, for the first time this year--nothing particularly beautiful or nasty, but just COLD!

But I went. I was teamed with someone I didn't know well (but who fortunately was more of an extrovert than I), and several of the houses we were assigned to were people I didn't know, people others had made contact with through the summer survey. On the other hand, I had a good time getting to know my partner (who DID have some connections to the neighborhood, both because he lived there and because he'd covered some of these same houses in the summer survey), we had an incredible number of people we actually got to talk to (on a typical visiting day it seems there have been far fewer people at home or who answer the door when we knock; I didn't know, but my partner informed me that there was a "Big Game" on that day, so it was a good time to catch folks at home). Best of all, I happened to encounter a lot of the kids that I had met either through my drama class this fall or through Arts Camp last summer, including a case where several were together playing at the one house we visited, another case where the two sisters were the ones to answer the door (giving us the opportunity to wish one of them a Happy Birthday), and one case where we just happening to run into a girl with her mother walking down the street! Everyone we talked to was appreciative of the invitation and many said they would plan to come to one of the services or the Christmas dinner listed on the invitation.

Definitely God was blessing us, the folks praying for us back at the church were doing a great job, and God wanted ME in particular to be out there in order to encounter those kids and give them a face they recognized to go with the invitation. And once again, I was glad I did it!

Surviving the Apocalypse

Well, we did it! Three nights worth of puppet shows adapting Revelation in a single night. It was incredibly rough, we were short by about four puppeteers (requiring a lot of running around and simply holding up the puppet who was speaking, without having a chance to actually get your hand in and move the mouth; my worst moment was juggling the woman clothed in the sun, her male child, the red dragon, AND one of Michael's angels at the same time), but we made it through. Thanks to all who helped, thanks to all who prayed, and a special thanks to Pam, who managed to find and execute a number of key musical cues (what's heaven without music?)!

I'll have more to write as I reflect on this. For now, I have to try to re-organize all my puppet materials and devote those energies to the puppet class I'm teaching for the Center for Hope over the next few weeks. And puppetry may make an appearance in Arts Camp later this summer. (I don't think we will do much with it in VBS, though we'll probably bring back Paolo the Parrot in some form.)

The most discouraging part of our final program was attendance. We had been drawing fewer and fewer kids as the end of the year neared, but based on other closing programs (when we mail out invitations and encourage the kids to bring their whole family), I was anticipating we would have a fair turn-out. We had only six kids. Clearly we need to take some time off (and with some key team members away or otherwise engaged this fall, it is looking like we will have a half-year hiatus for the ministry) and re-evaluate what we are doing and who we are trying to do it for. Hopefully the neighborhood survey we will be conducting this weekend will help us start to analyze what is going on. We shall see...