DUTIES OF A LAY LEADER [Su, 1-31-21]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

DUTIES OF A LAY LEADER   [Su, 1-31-21]

A Lay Leader in a Methodist congregation is an official position, the one person who represents the whole congregation. When we baptize someone, or welcome a new member, it is the LL who leads the rest of us in our part of the liturgy, promising to support the one baptized, welcoming the new member.

To a pastor, the LL is a combination of colleague, friend, counselor, reminder, helper. It’s a special relationship.

A Lay Leader’s congregation representation can go far beyond the walls of the church building. When I baptized an accused murderer in the county jail, Prof. Lee Steinmetz went with me, so that Charles would know this wasn’t a private ceremony. In Lee, the whole congregation was present.

My first LL was Jim Lybarger, at Cedar Lake, IN. I was commuting four-hours roundtrip each day to seminary. Jim took it upon himself as LL to visit regularly, with his wife, in all the homes of the members. This was in the 1960s, when just dropping by to chat was both acceptable and expectable. In a congregation, the pastor was supposed to do that, but Jim knew I didn’t have time, so he did it.

When we lived in Iron Mountain, MI, the LL of the church we attended was a MI state trooper. Scott Ritsema was one of the most intentional and thoughtful Christians I ever knew. As a police officer, he was required to be armed at all times, so when he came to worship in t-shirt and jeans---his Sunday clothes—he wore an ankle holster. When he served communion, he first knelt down on one knee behind the lectern. Most thought he was praying. He was actually removing his firearm. He didn’t think he should serve the body of the Prince of Peace while packing heat. His practical theology was Niebuhrian realism, but his ideal was the biblical Jesus.

When I was the interim pastor at Oolitic, IN, my last appointment, after we had moved here to Bloomington, LL Larry Berry started each worship service with the best joke he had heard that week, before he turned the service over to me. I don’t think that’s in the usual job description for a LL, but it seemed right.

When I pastored at Arcola, I had two LLs, consecutively. Jane Jenkins was a pleasantly elegant woman who had started as a secretary at a near-by manufacturing plant and worked her way up to VP in charge of personnel. She was a woman of the world, traveling all over for her job. I knew I could call on her in the middle of a service to come up and help me with serving communion or anything else necessary. Of course, the perfectly turned-out Jane always complained to Helen after the service that I only called on her on the Sundays that she had not dressed appropriately. Sometimes a LL represents the congregation to a pastor through the pastor’s spouse.

Byron Bradford was a high school teacher and football coach. He was comfortable in front of a crowd. More than once when I was on chemo, I got sick and had to leave before the worship service was over. I just walked out the side door of the chancel, knowing Byron would see me go and come up from his place in the congregation to lead the rest of the service as though it were planned.

Elmer Unger in Hoopeston, IL didn’t actually do anything as LL that I recall specifically. He fulfilled his role of representing the congregation not so much by action as by presence. Whatever or wherever the church was doing, Elmer was always there, not out front, not obvious, just there to support. One of our members was driving down Main St. with her six-year-old grandson in the car and they saw Elmer walking along the street. “Look, Grandma,” he said, “there’s our church.”

So many different things a LL does to be the embodiment of a congregation, and Trina Mescher of St. Mark’s UMC here in Bloomington, IN did them all. Up until this Friday just past, when she died so suddenly and so early from a heart attack. Wherever you are now, dear friend Trina, please put in a good word for the whole congregation that you served so well as Lay Leader.

John Robert McFarland