When I came back from Northern Ireland on Sunday, I was floored by the amount of work that had been done on the office renovation project at church.
If I had to gauge my “pre-construction” expectations on a scale of 1-10 I would have put it at about a 4. I just wasn’t sure that the people of the church really were excited about the building project and they weren’t ready to jump in and do the labor.
As has happened many, many times before… I was dead wrong! All this week there has been a constant stream of people coming to do one project or another. All of the old walls are down and hauled away. The old carpet… Gone. Old furniture… Well, it’s still there!
Can I help?
I felt guilty all week because every time I asked to help I just got starred at. It’s a common misconception that all pastors are white collar and don’t know how to do anything. OK, so I don’t know anything about cars… But I can do a thing or two when it comes to home improvement! I’ve swung my fair share of hammers, sledges, and more. I would call myself “acceptable” at electrical and dry wall. I am pretty good with a paint brush. I can do a lot of things… But often I just get handed a blank stare…
So today Bob and I just showed up ready to work. The “white collar guys” got handed the task of keeping the jobsite clean. I’ll admit, it’s an important job. But I’ve been on enough job sites to know that this is what they do to keep people busy who they don’t think can do anything.
I’m hoping that this week I can move up in the world from broom pusher and shelf mover to cement mixer. Perhaps, if I do really, really good… They’ll even let me carry dry wall.
Change in status
Life is funny when you make a big change. Prior to being a pastor most folks would look at me as blue collar. I’d get asked to help with folks cars, help people move, help with building projects, get called when something broke, etc. But as soon as I started being a pastor everyone looks at you differently. It’s assumed that you don’t know anything about building stuff or cars or anything other than theology. At most, I am given tons of credit for being good with computers…
The same thing was weird in Northern Ireland. I was the old guy when I am used to being the young gun. People used words like “wise” there while back home I get “nice opinion.” So… In 5mile 29 was old, but here in Romeo 29 is young.
If you get to thinking about it… This goes on forever. People assume that because I am in youth ministry that I am inexperienced and too green to do “real ministry.” On and on and on. They say you can’t judge a book by it’s cover… But no one in the real world seems to go by that.
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