I have feelings about my fine china
Related: what is the Church asking younger generations to keep hauling around?
When my now-husband and I were planning our 2003 wedding, we registered for gifts as many couples do. We had a lot of fun scanning items and Target and Bed, Bath, & Beyond, imagining our upcoming life together filled with practical items like towels, sheets, and small kitchen appliances.
What was less enjoyable was picking out fine china.
We're not really fancy plate people, but we had been told that you must register for china. With a medium-sized wedding guest list, people need plenty of choices for what to buy you. There was also an undercurrent of you’re not a real adult unless you have twelve five-piece place settings.
Let me tell you about our china.
It’s pretty. We have used it maybe five times in twenty-two years of marriage. Most of it is still in the original packaging since we received more place settings than we’d ever have room for at our table. And we have had to haul it all to a new home six times.
What we eat on regularly are my beloved $.73 plates from Ikea that I bought six years ago. They are lightweight and go in the dishwasher, and it is no big deal if we accidentally shatter one.
I know how this sounds. Woe is me that people bought me presents! (I’m embarrassed as I write this.) And I am grateful that our wedding guests wanted to contribute to our marriage in this way. But the reason I bring it up is because many churches have metaphorical china - traditions that are beautiful to many, meaningful to some, and must be carried on, even if newer generations don’t relate to them and maybe even find them onerous. We have to do these things, people who are invested in these traditions say. Will we even be [insert church name here] if we don’t?
This is one of the reasons congregations are having trouble filling out volunteer and leader rosters. Younger people don’t want to use and handwash the china when $.73 Ikea plates are much more practical for their lives and allow them to spend their limited energy on the things that really do matter to them. In other words, why would we sit in a monthly committee meeting in which nothing much happens when we could be meeting immediate needs in the surrounding community? Why would we spend months planning an event that only serves people in our congregation when we could be using that time enjoying our quickly growing kids, working a job that helps shore up our fragile finances, or volunteering with an organization that has a more outward-facing focus?
Almost every church has its metaphorical china, and at one time it probably served a faithful purpose. Over time, though, the original impetus got lost and the traditions are carried on out of a sense of duty or plain old inertia. Take the time to consider, then, what your congregation’s china is. Once you’ve identified it, get curious about it. What is meaningful about this particular tradition? How might you carry that meaning forward in ways that better fit your current congregation? Whom might you be freed up to be and what might you be freed up to do as disciples of Jesus if you redirected some of the resources currently dedicated to maintaining the tradition?
Maybe you won’t end up totally replacing all of your traditions, but you might just pack away some of what distracts you from pursuing God’s dream for your congregation.
Our church staff was JUST talking about this in terms of the building: use of space, old and outdated materials/furniture/"stuff" junking up the place, and closets full of junk. The physical space work speaks to our spiritual and emotional space as well. Grateful I'm part of a congregation who is open to having such conversations. Thanks for this post!