The Confirmation Class provided some great interaction for me with the teenagers at Zion United Church of Christ. Two gals had been the long-time teachers for the classes during the Sunday School hour. And they were great.
Fortunately, these two gals continued their ministry for several years after we arrived. I visited the classes regularly and took leadership during the annual retreat weekend. The classes rotated every two years, so I developed two different adventures using the entire building in the hunt for the greatest gift ever given one year and the presentation of the Ten commandments the second year. An old bible filled with clues guided the teens through the building in darkness to search for new clues and the discovery of small treasures at each stop. One year the trek was led by ‘Indiana Jonah’ and the alternate year the teens were led by a great, great, great descendent of Moses.
One year the greatest gift ever given (Baby Jesus) was found in the bell tower
the alternate year, with incense burning and strobe lights flashing, the ten commandments arrived from the balcony in the form of softball size whiffle balls. The two leaders loved the ten-commandment delivery the most. One year a very athletic group of teens tried to return the whiffle balls to heaven before being commanded to keep the commandments. We had lots of fun and I hope the teens felt welcome and accepted. The retreat also included a teens vs adults volleyball game in the gym.
Another confirmation class event was the tower climb in the spring of the year. We ascended the steps, crawled up the ladders and scrambled over the ‘two by fours’ through the hatch onto the top of the tower. The view was spectacular from that vantage point. We also were high enough that Lehighton looked flat instead of all up and down hills. We always double checked to ensure the automatic tower bell ringing was shut off before we started the climb. Standing in the bell chamber with ringing bells would have rendered us all as deaf as Quasimodo.
The summer bible school ministry became a Market Place experience complete with a beggar and Roman soldiers.
I had different staff support consisting of teenagers each year to present the opening in an auditorium filled with children. We wrote the skits ourselves as a team effort. You can see that I had complete control over the teen staff.
Of course, there was the usual Sunday School ministry with classes for all ages.
We started the tradition of gathering every year at the beginning of Lent for ‘The Burning of the Palms’.
If you’re not from the Ash Wednesday world, you might not know the Ashes that are used to make the little cross smudge on people’s foreheads traditionally comes from the incinerated leftovers of the previous year’s Palm Sunday palm fronds. The season of Lent calls into question a Christian’s devotion and piety, taking the memory of last year’s joyous celebration and quite literally rubbing it in our faces. Ash Wednesday smudges are a tangible metaphor of the weakness of our spirituality: one moment a blaze of glory, the next only a burning ember. We talked about our relationship with Jesus and distributed dried old palms to everyone. The classes gathered to take time for prayer and thought. Each person placed the palm into the grill to dispose of something they wished they hadn’t done or said. The fire didn’t last long but the smoke did. As the ashes cooled oil was mixed with ash creating a paste to be used to put a smudge cross on everyone’s forehead. I actually used some ashes from a previous year to ensure they were not too hot for little foreheads. I don’t think anyone noticed that little deception. The burlap I was wearing illustrated the rough material the Christians wore in the early years of the faith as they sat in the dust tossing ashes on themselves in penance for their sins. Of course, there were snacks after the worship experience came to its conclusion. I know it is the first year of the tradition in these picture because we took the burning outdoors after the first attempt for safety reasons.
Of course there were off site activities like bowling and trips to Coca Cola Park to watch the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs ‘AAA’ Phillies minor league team.
And every year the children presented a Christmas pageant.
Zion Opera Workshop was a long standing annual musical production accompanied by a full orchestra. While we were at Zion I remember the group preformed, ‘The Music Man’ ( I was the sheriff), ‘South Pacific’ (I was the French house boy) ‘Guys and Dolls’ and something else in which I was type cast as a clergyman. There was some fine talent in that group and the house was packed for three shows every March.
One other initiative was “The Living Last Supper” we presented on Maundy Thursday the last year before I retired. The presentation is a tableau for Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’. Each of the disciples broke pose to express his thoughts about what was happening to the little group around Jesus. The evening ended with communion served from the bread and wine on the table.
When the curtain opened on the tableau the congregation seemed to be drawn into the wonder of that first ‘Last Supper’. I only wish we had begun that tradition a few years earlier.
What impressed me at Zion was how enthusiastic the people became in reaching out to the community around the building. Our congregation was very food oriented, so the missions all involved food. We had a crew of some fifty willing workers who managed the Angel Food ministry which morphed into a monthly food distribution and hot meal after the national organization got in trouble with the IRS.
On distribution day we had a line of people wrapped around the building waiting to receive the food available that day. Much of our food came from Second Harvest. Other food was donated by local businesses and the members of the congregation added canned goods to the collection. We always had enough to fill bags for everyone in line.
Another group, in coordination with other local churches, embraced Family Promise. Each congregation took a turn to house homeless families and feed them for a week while the homeless adults received training and assistance in finding a job to support their family. We housed families every seven weeks or so. Members of Zion trucked the bedding and supplies from one church to ours, set up, prepared daily meals, hung out with the families and slept over night in the church building. I was one of the sleepers. I am still rather good at sleeping.
Crop Walk to raise food for the hungry was an annual community wide event on the Lehigh Canal tow path that members of Zion participated in. People walked or biked the trail to raise the money to feed the hungry and for Zion folks there was pizza at the end of the trail.
During the summer months our kitchen was opened to provide school lunches for the families who qualified for free lunch. In Lehighton, every family in the school system qualified for the free meals. My friend Barry and I were experts at making grilled cheese sandwiches by the end of the first summer. Teams were organized to cover every weekday during summer vacation including folks from other churches and community organizations. We fed a lot of people during those lunch hours.
The congregation was full of servant minded folks who wanted to care for their neighbors. These dedicated folks had a definite impact on the Lehighton community. And the enthusiasm carried over to Sunday morning worship.
See you next time.