Half of today was consumed between Morning Prayer, saying Mass, and then participating in the fellowship after the Mass. Attendance at the Wednesday Mass is kind of soft because it's summer: only seven of us today. But I'm sure the rafters are crowded with the angels and archangels.

The other half of the day was mostly filled up with two print projects: an ad for The Whole Note and a very complex flier to publicize the SMM Capital Campaign. Interesting how it only took me half a day to get a pretty good result--my skills with Adobe Creative Suite have really improved in the last two years. I left a hard copy for Fr. Harold to look over before his vacation. I'm also getting feedback from one of the Wardens.

It falls under evangelism, but in an ideal world we'd have volunteers doing this. On the other hand, asking volunteers to do this kind of thing can be tricky. Even if you find someone with the right expertise and a willingness to take direction, projects often take a lot longer when volunteers are involved. Just the sheer effort of coordinating the project between the various players can take months in the church environment when it would only take days in the business world. In seminary they teach you that volunteer recruitment and management is one of the most challenging and important tasks in running a church. Unfortunately, they gave us very little training in this regard.

Anyway, I was thinking about this volunteer issue yesterday evening as Betsy and I took a walk by The Messiah. I could see that many of the bushes and shrubs on the Avenue Road side of the building need some TLC. Probably some kind of Saturday Work-party is in order. I'll have to discover what the volunteer culture at Messiah is like. It's actually a relief that everytime I look into the details of the place I see things that I would like to address or change. That's good, because I'd hate to arrive and have a hard time coming up with things to do!

Tomorrow I'm having a lunch meeting with Megan Jull. She is the Lay Pastoral Associate at Messiah. By all accounts she has done an amazing bit of pastoral work there in the last year or two. She has amazing passion for the place and has developed deep pastoral intimacy with many (if not most) of the people there. So I'm sure we are going to have a great conversation.

-t