I hesitate to even put these thoughts to print; I don’t want to speak and ruin the enchantment of the thing. But, that’s kind of my job. As I write on Monday morning before the office stirs, I’m thinking about Sunday morning. It was a meaningful time, for me and for many of you judging by the comments I heard in the narthex. I’m glad. It was intended to be full of meaning and beauty. That comes from the effort of many people coming together. Bill, Sharon, Gigi, and the choir are all talented and work hard to add to worship. Lola works hard to keep everyone in the loop and on theme, which Lela and Nelson exemplified wonderfully. Chris is always working hard behind the scenes to make it seem like everything just works.
I could say more, but for the sake of brevity, I want to focus on one particular aspect of what I think went right yesterday. Simply put, working with Tim Bounds works. He puts a tremendous amount of effort into crafting worship so that it is an act of giving and prayer instead of a show or a concert. But on a personal note, he makes me better. I have noticed over the few months of working with him that my work is better because of working with him. Not that I didn’t work hard before, but somehow it feels like more. I hope that our relationship is similar for Tim.
Business gurus call that kind of thing “synergy.” When you work together, supporting one another, you produce more than the sum of the parts. If John is a 1 and Jane is a 1, then together they make 3. More than it should be.
The apostle Paul wasn’t a business guru, but I think he was playing with the same idea when he would talk about the body of Christ. When we truly share our ministry together, when we listen and amplify, build up and share, then we become more than we logically should.
It feels like that here. It feels like there’s something stirring and like things are multiplying (like bread and fish) to more than seems possible. When four of us go down to the Ecumenical Storehouse, somehow ministry happens. When you go and visit together, feel the difference. When we all join in singing the Alleluia, there is more than just the sum of our voices. There is something of the Divine among us!