Different Uses for a Church

It was Sunday, and on a Sunday our church is full of life. Meditation starts at 8:00, then the Our Whole Lives class at 9:00, warming up the place for the main events, Adult Worship and Children's Church, at 10:00. This particular day, there were both a class for potential new members and a Religious Education Committee meeting right after social hour. It's not always totally busy for me, but this week, it was.

I sat with the Religious Education folks, then went over to the Newcomers class, where I was scheduled for a cameo appearance. I had work to do coming out of the RE Committee meeting, so I sat down to do it after the class was done (3 new people "signed the book" to become members!). The Finance Committee had asked for a detailed justification of the budget for our prospective new Director of Religious Education. I created it and shipped it off to the other concerned parties for comment. Then I prepared my evening discussion class, "Co-creating the Church We Want" and went home to get a bite to eat.

Sunday evening is full: The youth group meets, the Social Responsibility Committee meets, there's and AA meeting, and the discussion I was leading happened to be meeting. I locked my purse in my office and headed off to the other side of the building to meet my fellow co-creators. The conversation was rich -- we actually opened up some things that seriously need wider discussion and resolution -- and I was feeling pretty wired by the time I got back to the office. A good kind of wired, the way I feel when a lot has happened and I need to process. There was some more stuff to do at the computer, wired or not, and it was about an hour before I was ready to go home.

But as I looked around, it became clear that my purse was missing. Money, ID, cards, keys, missing. I called the police. I called my landlady to let me in. Then I went home and called all the credit card offices. Someone had apparently already used one of my cards at several stores. Then the next day, it became clear that someone had broken into the other office and into the closet where we keep the safe, and maybe they had used keys they found to open the safe. But the money had left the building before they got there. I lay awake most of the night, trying to process, but mostly just freaking out.

I thought that yes, a church has many functions. We provide a place of calm and quiet for meditation, age-appropriate worship for young people and adults, instruction in dealing with life's persistent questions, conversation about how to be our own best selves both individually and collectively, opportunities for healing, and now, apparently, someone was thinking we were a sort of informal ATM.

Of course. A church collects money on a Sunday, so Sunday evening must be the right time to redistribute it to someone who needs it. I don't accept this idea. Especially when the person doesn't even have an account with us! Building security. Not my favorite concern. But there we have it -- if we don't want to be an ATM, we'll have to tighten things up. I like it that church is many different things to different people on Sunday and throughout the week. But there are limits.