What's Going On? Trick or Canning Sorting Sunday
Every year on October 31, Mountainview sends out a battalion of volunteers to collect food from every home in Grimsby. Prior to that, a grocery bag with a note on it is passed to each home so that people can purchase and put aside the food. That evening is beautiful mayhem in our building as food is carted into the fellowship hall and then pre-sorted. This is probably our best impersonation of an ant-hill with us worker-ants coming and going and coming and going carrying food.
Every year on November 1, GBF, for whom we are collecting the food, comes in and guides many more volunteers through the more thorough sorting according to expiry date. The food is then boxed and put on pallets and taken to storage.
This year we noted (back in April or so) that October 31 is a Saturday and so our building will be very full of food on Sunday morning. We immediately saw the upside of this in that all our congregation will get to experience the incredible volume of food that comes in… it spills over into classrooms, hallways and the foyer. We also saw the challenge in that the building would definitely not be available for Kids Ministry and that even the foyer might be a maze of food. Knowing that other churches have done Serve Sundays (where the “service” is serving the community) we wondered if we could do that here with our service being helping GBF sort. We could have made the sorting wait until Monday but saw that doing it on Sunday gives more of us the opportunity to help and experience this mission.
When we passed this idea to the elders, they cautioned against eliminating the worship service and encouraged us to plan a slightly shorter service focused on service. So, this became the plan.
I just recently came to know that this plan was not well received by some among us. We have a tradition of honouring Sunday as a day set apart for worship and this doesn’t fit that. Over the years, our concept of Sunday observance has changed. Our oldest members will tell you how they were not allowed to ride a bike or go swimming on Sunday. I grew up not being allowed to play organized sports. The challenge for us is to figure out what is the core of Sunday observance and which things are personal habits or local traditions. Traditions are important and they carry emotional energy. So, when we see them ignored or changed, that hurts. However, we ultimately want to do our best to keep in tune with Jesus. Our sense, when we decided to have Sorting Sunday, was that one of the best ways to follow Jesus is to invite people to do something that feeds the hungry in our community. We see this as honouring our calling in a special way this one time and so have decided to stick with the plan to sort on Sunday.
Now, I understand that if you have a hard time with this, one blog is not going to change your mind. So, all I am asking is that you recognize that for some this seems like a good way to follow Jesus while for others it does not. When this happens what we need to do is honour the unity of the church and come together to have an open and honest conversation. I have laid out here a brief form of what staff and council were thinking. I invite you to get in touch with me or a council member with your point of view. We may even see fit to gather as a community to have a discussion about this. Let’s keep the conversation and connection going!
Pastor Erick
