I felt compelled to make available to every person Assembly Proposal 84 and the accompanying President's and Moderatorial Letters. The following week, I passed out the Q&A Answer Sheet that was drawn up by the General and Synod Secretaries.
We now have a three-page document that includes another President's Letter, ASC decisions in light of EMU and other responses to Proposal 84, and the new wording of the Resolution!
Question: Should I again cut trees down and make sure every worshipper has a copy of these important documents?
On the one hand, people want to know what's going on in the church. On the other hand, they complain about too many notices in the church bulletin and too many inserts!
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My Church Council Secretary and I discussed how to handle the recent Letter and accompanying pages. We decided to duplicate full copies for each of our congregations and a sufficient number of the same for those who have expressed and interest or have felt strongly unsettled by Proposal 84. Additionally, this morning I am doing my best to summarise all three letters down into a simple A5 insert for the church bulletin.
Please note: Most of our church folk are now in the 70+ age bracket, many of them with a Grade Six or Form Two education. Our photocopier is on its last legs. Our church budget is so small that those on roster to do the church bulletin are bringing their own paper!
We have to make a call re. how much printed material is passed out in church and what gets read out. Every month we get a Letter from our Synod Secretary addressed to our congregations. They are always long and rambling. What shall we do? What should we do with all the other Proposals that came from Assembly and all the other Presidential, Moderatorial, Synod and Presbytery correspondence that are addressed to the members and ministers (and sometimes Councils) of the church?
Some one at worship committee recently suggested that we abandon the sermon and prayers on Communion Sunday worship because the service is too long. I suggested that maybe the notices could be cut down and he looked at me quizically - Oh no! People still want to know what's going on!
I do, however, notice that when it comes to the notices, my 80+ members are usually spending their time finding the page numbers in the Bible and hymn numbers in the hymnbook. They find it convenient that the church bulletin and all its inserts make good book marks!
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We have tried another tactic, handing papers out to people after church to take home with them. Or putting them on the table in the hall for people to look at over their morning cups of tea.
Unlike the person I mentioned about who loves to "get the gos" of what's going on in the UCA, most of our church folk come to church to worship, to have fellowship, and often complain about bulletins, letters and inserts as "information overload". Then they turn around and complain about our church about what they've read in the local newspaper!
How much? How little? Whatever I do, I can't win!
John M.
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