January 23, 2015
By Eddie Pipkin
Every year, the week before Advent begins, I drive to the church storage unit with the Director of Children’s Ministry for the local congregation that she and I serve, and we load my ragged old Honda Odyssey right up to the roof with all of the Christmas decorations.
Then the week after Epiphany, it all goes back in the boxes and back in the van and back to the storage unit. And at that point, I am really, really done with anything related to taking decorations up and down. We get to the storage unit, which is a hodgepodge of old bits and pieces of ministry, file boxes, discarded furniture and out-of-date sound equipment, and it’s time to wedge the Christmas trees, wreath boxes, and the giant nativity back into that cramped and crowded space. Our packing of the items into containers has been a little haphazard and rushed, and boxes are partially taped, with fake evergreen branches and loose strings of lights hanging out. My partner in storage adventures (who is a highly organized and efficient person) says to me, “Don’t you want to take a few minutes and repack these boxes and rearrange some of these stacks of stuff so that it’s better organized and doesn’t fall over and kill somebody?”
And I, true to my nature, say, “Nah, I’ll come back and do that later sometime.”
So, in it goes—stacks more precarious than ever—tottering, leaning, and a nightmare for the next poor sap who rolls up that door.
On the drive home this year, it dawned on me what a spot-on metaphor this broken process is for ministry and the way we let things pile up, accumulate, get unorganized, and wobble on the brink of disaster because we don’t periodically take the time to clear up and clean out. We rush