ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHING
July 22, 2021
A guest Etching from Dr. Joel Plaag
This is story is an excerpt from his upcoming book: “A Choir Director’s Notes,” by Dr. Joel Plaag, to be released in 2021. Used with permission.
Working on a virtual fall event for the church with other staff, we experimented with “breakout rooms” in the virtual meeting space. As we started our conversation, we had all kinds of complicated ideas as to how to define the upcoming online project. We were going to have classes and events and long discussions over the online platform. As we practiced creating these “rooms,” we found a discussion prompt waiting for us.
“What is the thing you like the most in the physical space you are right now?”
Though just a test prompt, one staff member and I, the test subjects in our technological maze, looked around our digital boxes on the screen like some sort of knock-off Brady Bunch group. We found items nearby and shared about them.
We were tired of social distancing, zoom and technology, and it seemed like another terrible exercise of fake human “contact.” Nonetheless, we tried.
Now I had no intention of detailing my insecurities, my fears, or my passions, how I got to this point or my opinion on God. Truthfully, I don’t necessarily like revealing too much of my personal life at work and I am drawn to others who feel this way. Yet here was an innocuous question – talk about an object. Not me, not my emotions, but an object.
So, we started. She showed me a painting that one of the youths had given to her. It was creative, thoughtful, and well-crafted by a youth that I didn’t know had an artistic eye. It reminded me of my favorite character from the animé Avatar: The Last Airbender.
I showed my lamp – built by a pastor friend. It uses a wooden base, light socket with a small tube bulb, and a Hemmingray glass insulator, the green globe used in old telephone and telegraph lines. For a while, the pastor had preached on images of light used in Jesus’ story, and in the process of this, created several lamps as part of the sermon series. I was moved by this gift because the pastor had created it himself, and because it represented a set of sermons. It indicated a level of thought and preparation and is a touching memory of our short time together in ministry.
As I explained this, my co-worker and I shared events in our lives that had meaning for each of us. We found out more about each other because we revealed ourselves just a little bit.
This is the way God works: subtly, gently, creating events and experiences that we have with one another. These events are shared and never occur in a vacuum. We discovered one another’s humanity accidentally, one moment at a time. A little innocuous question about the stuff in our current zoom location and, just by accident, we found a common bond. Together, we returned outside the breakout room. We had our answer as to how to engage our congregation members. Gently and quietly, we provided experiences to reveal more about ourselves.
