Locked Up

It is interesting to think about the things we lock up. We lock up the things we care about… the things we consider precious. And we lock up the things, and people, we don’t approve of or are afraid of. We put locks on things when we want to keep them in or keep them out. If there is a lock on it, it is probably considered important by someone.

I remember my first day at work at the church in Harrison, Ohio. Locks were the first thing I noticed and the things locked and unlocked told me much about the church. First I discovered that the pastor’s office was both unlocked and unlockable. Nothing important there. I soon discovered in the culture of the church, the pastor was unimportant. In every meeting I attended it was obviously assumed that the pastor was the dumbest person in the room. The pastor was the hired Christian that existed to do the “Christian” things the church members were much too busy and important to do. The pastor was generally disrespected and his office, and its contents, certainly weren’t worth locking and protecting.

The pastor’s office was unlocked but the kitchen was securely locked. I discovered that when I started looking for a cup of coffee. The kitchen was locked and I didn’t have a key. I soon discovered that it was the most important room in the building and, I not only didn’t have a key, I was not going to get a key. The kitchen contained things much too valuable to be entrusted to the idiot pastor.

The kitchen had an interesting history. It was in the kitchen that many wars had been fought and huge emotional investments made. Every year, the local baker, Byron Rupp, had come early on Easter Sunday and made donuts for everyone in attendance that day. They say that as the sweet smell of his amazing donuts cooking in the kitchen wafted up from the basement into the sanctuary, the whole congregation began stirring in their seats and many an Easter sermon was shortened because the preacher’s mouth was watering so badly the sermon could not be continued. After worship everyone gathered in the fellowship hall and ate donuts and drank coffee until it felt like Jesus had returned and brought the food. Many felt that communion would be much more meaningful if it were celebrated with Byron’s donuts and coffee. There were some great memories made in that kitchen.

The kitchen was also the sight of some almost bloody battles. The church was “famous” for its chicken dinners. Thousands of dollars were made by these dinners and several friendships were strained by these dinners. Anyone observant of human nature could have predicted these “chicken wars”. When you get a bunch of women in a shared kitchen something dangerous is going to happen. Before you call me sexist, I am only making an astute observation of the obvious. Most cooks, male or female, tend to be just a bit territorial when it comes to the kitchen. Add to that the fact that nobody can fry chicken like I can. I’m serious… I fry the best fried chicken in the world. And most chicken fryers feel the same way. Stuff us all into one kitchen and watch the fur fly. We can’t help but tell each other how it should be done, critique each other’s work and be pretty vocal about it and warfare breaks out.

Thank God they had stopped doing the chicken dinners before I showed up. I am a great believer that churches should never sell anything to the public. My thoughts are: why should people who don’t give a hoot about the church be expected to help finance the church and selling things to the public just reinforces their perception that the church is only interested in their money. If you are going to prepare a dinner, invite the public and make it free. Stopping the dinners would have just been another change to the church for the old timers to hate me for. Fortunately, before I left the church some of the lay leadership started cooking Thanksgiving Dinner for those in the community alone or in need and served hundreds of free meals every Thanksgiving day for years.

Every church I have served has had a kitchen police force of one. In the church I grew up in it was Mary Lou Henry. Every time I see Dana Carvey do his “Church Lady” bit, I think of Mary Lou. She locked the kitchen and oversaw it every moment the doors were open. She counted the silverware. I know because one Monday morning when I was working at the church as an Associate Minister, she showed up in the office, highly agitated, with a note for the weekly newsletter. It read: “Someone has taken a slotted spatula from the church kitchen. You must return it immediately.” The note sounded just a bit hostile and unkind to me, so I suggested another solution to resolve this horrible situation. I would invest the $1.25 and go buy a new slotted spatula for the kitchen. I’m thinking she didn’t like my idea since she slapped her note on the counter and stomped out the door in a major huff.

The Church Lady (kitchen police chief) at the Harrison church was Edna Ohler. Edna carried a key chain with more keys than the jailers the prison where I had worked and ruled the kitchen (and the church) with an iron hand. Everyone chuckled at her antics but nobody crossed her. Everybody knew you didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Edna. So, of course, I did. Somehow we worked out our differences and became great friends. But I remained locked out of the kitchen until the day Edna died. They gave me a key but then just quit locking the door. With Edna gone it just wasn’t as much fun anymore.

Copyright © 2016, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved

Bill McConnell is the Interim Minister at Norwood Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is a Church Transformation consultant and a Christian Leadership Coach. He is a frequent speaker at Church Transformation events. His latest book on church transformation is DEVELOPING A SIGNIFICANT CHURCH and is available at Westbow Press.

He can be contacted @ bill45053@gmail.com. Connect with him on Facebook @ William T. McConnell or on Twitter @billmc45053 or visit his Amazon Author Page @ Amazon