I have been working pretty steadily since I was eleven years old. I was the world’s worst newspaper delivery boy, spending more time reading the paper than getting it to doorsteps. I was a short order cook at a bowling alley. I worked the line in a Ford plant. I have been a lay minister, a journalist, a security guard, a janitor. I’ve run hotels, been an accounts payable and an accounts receivable clerk, a civil servant and much, much else. I’ve worked in radio and television, at newspapers and magazines. I’ve had a theatre company, produced short films and made documentaries. I’ve been around.
What I learned from all those years of different careers is that people work really hard but rarely effectively. That there are customs and habits in every work environment which are rarely questioned. People forget why they’re doing what they’re doing; it quickly becomes an endless process of just doing stuff, filling in time sheets and collecting the pay. I’ve watched people shove new technologies into old methodologies and then complain that the new thing is pointless. I’ve watched departments so intent on winning some ancient battle, they duplicate and triplicate the same work. I’ve watched people actively subvert the effort of others for the sake of their own glory.
And heaven help the manager who comes around and tries to effect some change, who actually questions the habits of a work environment. The revolt is instantaneous and often successful. It is tough to beat the comfort zone.
Historian, author and lecturer Diana Butler Bass, speaking at Rosedale, Toronto, in late February, told the story of a woman who had been in the Ladies’ Guild at an Episcopal church for 35 years. For all those years this woman had prepared the sanctuary linens and vestments for worship. Every Sunday, early to church, ironing. And she was tired of doing it, wanted to pass the task on to the next generation. When asked why this job needed to be done, the woman responded, “Because, I’ve been doing it for 35 years!” Not a compelling answer.
A task had become a chore. A chore done by rote and perhaps even resentfully.
Intentionality. That was Butler Bass’s mantra during her weekend in Toronto, courtesy of Rosedale and Knox College. Think about what you are doing.
It is the lesson she learned while writing her landmark book, Christianity for the Rest of Us, in which she profiles 50 vibrant and growing churches in the United States. The smallest of these churches is based in a town of 1,000 and has 35 members; the largest has 3,500 members. Butler Bass observed that Protestants love doing things but they don’t necessarily understand why they’re doing those things.
Each of the congregations she studied learned, over time, to do one or two or three things well. They asked why they were doing things: they questioned the basics. Why is our liturgy in the order it is? What is the meaning of this prayer or that prayer? Why do we sing? Why do we sing the way we sing? What is the purpose of our mission?
In asking questions, congregations slowly learned something about themselves. They learned what was important to them, in their community, given their history and location and theology, and began to do the same things they had always done, but with renewed purpose. No longer by rote, no longer a chore.
It renews the spirit of doing. Butler Bass wondered if that poor Ladies Guild woman had renewed her spirit, she might see her task like this: That for 35 years, I’ve been coming to church before everybody else. I lay out the linens and the vestments on the ironing board and with each stroke of the iron I meditate on the worship that is to come, on the sanctuary in which I stand, on the various symbols on the garments. I meditate and prepare myself to participate in sacrament and worship.
Now there’s a task anybody would leap to perform. Intentionality – the true purpose of doing the things we do.
