Monday Musing - It Finally Happened!

Now, don't get too excited. It's probably a more exciting thing just for me and not anyone else.

If you have talked to me at all about how I got involved in things at PUMC post-pandemic, you will know that Laity Sunday 2020 I was looking forward to sitting in the congregation and enjoying other people doing stuff for the service and having it not be me. I never got that moment in 2020. Or 2021. Or 2022.

However, after 12 years of participating in some way (9 of those years essentially running the service) in a Laity Sunday service, I finally got that opportunity to do what I normally do in a service, but not do anything extra.

Don't get me wrong - leading or participating in a Laity Sunday service was never a burden. It was never an imposition. I enjoyed being able to share in what the people of the church have done and can do. But sometimes, you want to be able to see someone else's vision of what being the laity in a church is. And learn from it. Which is what I got to do yesterday.

I got to hear a perspective that I was familiar with and some of which I have been working with - that of our Sunday School and youth/young people. But it is important, from time to time, to be reminded that those are the people we need to ensure that they realize they too are part of the laity. Laity isn't just for adults. Or people who have done classes. Or who are in Adult Sunday School. Or who are in committees or run committees or have particular roles within the church.  I haven't really experienced it at PUMC, but there have been some places where it is encouraged to have the children seen from time to time, but never heard or hardly heard. If they make too much noise, they aren't welcome. If they wiggle around during the sermon, they're not welcome. But the children, the young people, the youth, the teenagers, and anyone above all that - they are welcome. There are things that they can do - not because it is "assigned" to them because of their age but because it is a mission and they are certainly all part of the mission field.

Random sun photo from 11/12/2023