Nora and I slid into a pew in the ornately decorated temple. Beautiful mosaics covered the front of the worship space. Nora’s friend Lilly awaited the beginning of her bat mitzvah service. Other friends sat close by, most of them, like us, unaccustomed to the special ceremony we awaited.
This ceremony is not a separate service organized to honor the participant. Instead the 13-year-old leads the regular worship of the day. As the service began, Lilly read the Torah in Hebrew, the rhythmic words filling the temple. Her parents shared stories and words of encouragement. Between the readings, her brothers, grandparents, and two cousins shared blessings called aliyah.
Then Lilly preached, well, at least that’s what I would call it. The Jewish term is d’var Torah, explicating the passage of the day. Lilly shared about Noah, his faith, and how her faith had deepened as she studied for this day. She explained that Noah had been spared because he was a righteous man among a culture of sin. She talked about the challenge of remaining righteous at school when most of the students cheated on their work. I couldn’t help but think her teachers must be smiling.
I found my eyes welling with tears, feeling pride in the work she had done to reach this day. She wasn’t even my daughter, yet I felt moved by the richness of the ceremony. The rest of the day was filled with more celebrating, a lunch at the temple, then a party later in the day.
What really captured my attention was the collaboration of all the facets of her life in affirming her. Her relatives stood and bragged unabashedly about this dear member of their family. Her friends honored her by their presence at the ceremony, much of which they probably didn’t even understand. Her teachers even attended. And while there, all heard Lilly proclaim her owning of her faith, which had been deepened by her study in preparation for that day.
As we shared her joy, I reflected that our tradition has nothing to compare with the magnitude of this celebration. When do our young people ever have a platform from which to express their faith to their friends?
What could I possibly do to affirm my own children in such a meaningful way? Or the children of our church?
Confirming their place
When Linda Adams, pastor at New Hope Free Methodist Church in Rochester, New York, attended a bat mitzvah for her daughter Carrie’s girlfriend, her response mirrored mine. “The entire worship service at the synagogue was organized around this one girl’s entrance into the adult faith community,” she said. “It was announced as an honor and a privilege, and was obviously something for which she had prepared a long, long time. Afterward, the party was as elaborate and joyful as any wedding reception I’ve ever attended!”
Linda compared this experience to the typical youth membership ritual. She concluded we are shortchanging our young people and our whole faith community by underselling a momentous occasion.
That fall, she ran a 12-week youth membership class on Sunday mornings. At the end of it, on the first Sunday in Advent, the young people who were joining the church planned and led the entire service. They led worship, prayed, read the Scriptures, ushered, and gave announcements and testimonies. At the moment of joining the church, the parents laid hands on their son’s or daughter’s head and offered a prayer of blessing that had been carefully prepared to be unique to that particular young person.
After the service, the teens and their families were invited to an elaborate dinner prepared by women in the church who loved the youth. No “plain old potluck” here; they created a banquet, with real dishes and tablecloths, beautiful centerpieces, and a decorated cake. The youth posed for a group photo. Then each family presented their son or daughter with a gift to commemorate the occasion and signify their mutual faith.
When Darlene Teague served as associate pastor of First Wesleyan Church in Central, South Carolina, she emphasized the transition from sixth grade. During that year, she gave each sixth grader an opportunity to either accept Christ as Savior or reaffirm commitment to him. She offered each child baptism if needed and the opportunity to join the church. This transition created a milestone that each young person could own as the time they publically declared their faith.
The ritual included the gift of an imprinted Bible and a formal welcome from the youth director into the youth group. A significant percentage of the children continued into the youth and college programs as a result. Part of the tradition included taking the sixth graders to Six Flags amusement park in Atlanta. Ritual and fun combined to create a strong positive draw to these youth.
Many kinds of milestones
In today’s culture, in which youth don’t leave home until closer to 18, even the Jewish tradition sees the insufficiency of launching a young person at age 13. In the Reconstructionist: A Journal of Contemporary Jewish Thought and Practice, Jill Jacobs and Mik Moore explain the bar mitzvah ceremony originated to mark a boy’s first reading of the Torah, an honor reserved for males over 13. At that time, boys of that age began full-time work and soon married. Since today these obligations come later, Jacobs and Moore suggest another ceremony they named Yetzi’ah (going out).
This new option includes calling on biblical role models to guide the young person in his or her new life. For example, Abraham obeyed God and left home not knowing his destination, as the youth will leave and must trust God. Such biblical role modeling could easily be incorporated into a Christian service of launching.
Pastor Elton Moose at First Church of God, Cedarville, Ohio, established a knighthood program for the young men of his church, based on the book Raising a Modern Day Knight by Robert Lewis. At age 13, as boys enter puberty, they become pages. After high school graduation the order of squire is bestowed, with instruction in setting life goals and preparing for temptations. As young men graduate from college or technical school and begin a career, they are knighted, prepared for moral integrity, good ethics and providing spiritual leadership in the community. This flow of events acknowledges the increased responsibility coming with each new stage.
Families and churches usually celebrate graduations. At San Clemente Presbyterian, graduates come forward and kneel for prayer. Parents lay hands on their graduates. While a soloist sings, the pastors pray quietly over each student. Pastor Tod Bolsinger ends the moment with a charge, while the congregants reach for their Kleenex.
The first time I attended a graduation of one of our urban high schools, I was amazed at the exuberance of the families. These students had beaten the odds; their class had shrunk to a fraction of its original size. For these urban families, many headed by single parents, some having never experienced a high school graduation, celebration should reign.
Celebration of real work
Since my family has been graduating from high school and even college for generations, I told my children I’d like to celebrate something else. I’d like to recognize something beyond these accomplishments, like finding a job that really fits them, serving in a ministry that really needs them, selling an invention, or creating a new teaching method.
Of course, some people don’t graduate. We could celebrate their employment. We typically wait until people retire to celebrate their accomplishments. Retirement parties create wonderful memories, and our churches should affirm this milestone. But laypeople could use some encouragement to keep them going during those long decades of working.
Some churches celebrate work on Labor Day, having people come dressed in their workday attire. At the Colchester (Conn.) Federated Church, pastors Davida Foy Crabtree and Ken Downes spent an entire year celebrating work. This focus embodies the idea that all work is sacred and everyone can be involved in ministry in the workplace.
First, they developed an inventory of the work of all the people in the church: homemakers, steelworkers, retired persons, plumbers, computer designers, and florists. A schedule designated one profession per Sunday. Then each week a pastor or deacon contacted all the people in the church from that one profession. They asked the workers a series of questions about the joys and challenges of their work and used that contact as a way of affirming their work.
The featured professionals for the week brought in symbols of their work that were prominently displayed on the communion table. Hammers and nails graced the table one week to be replaced the next with diapers and pots or hardhats or laptops.
During the worship service, all the people from that one profession were asked to stand. The pastor who had conducted the phone interviews gave a special prayer for the ministry of those people, incorporating information from the interviews. The workers were affirmed and honored for their contribution to the world.
Give the gold watch early
Honoring people’s work during their productive years can encourage them to stick with a difficult profession or position. The same is true of ministries within the church. Too often we don’t celebrate the ministry of volunteers or staff until they leave.
The McCoys joined our young church as charter members. Rosha taught our preschoolers and Ron served as our first treasurer. Later, family needs took them back to their hometown to live. Great sadness accompanied their departure. We created a plaque with a photo of the congregation and words of appreciation. Despite our gratitude for them, the “celebration” of their contribution suffered from the sense of loss we all felt.
With another key family we decided to be proactive. Carl and Sue significantly ministered to youth and children. We held a special meal to celebrate their ministry, sharing a graph that visually demonstrated the upswing of our church due to their efforts, and presenting them with a plaque. Everyone could truly rejoice without the pain of loss hanging over our heads.
Besides it being the right thing to do to encourage the couple, I was glad we had done so later when they left our church. That transition was painful, and their departure would have been difficult to merge with celebration. We did pray for them as they left, but I felt thankful we had affirmed them during the peak of their ministry with us.
When Clark and Janet Faulkner left their church in Brooklyn to serve the East L.A. Light and Life School, church member Debby Mead planned a glorious celebration of their transition. She collected a box of essentials for their new life, such as a New York Yankees cap, suntan oil, and a plastic palm tree to plant in their yard. This approach combines heartfelt appreciation with a sense of fun, an undervalued commodity in churches.
Creative celebrations like this can bring new life to our churches and minister to people in unique ways, maximizing every possible moment. The impact of Lilly’s bat mitzvah lay not in some creative innovations inserted by Lilly or her rabbi. Instead the power of the ceremony came from her standing in the stream of centuries of tradition, performing an honor valued by generations of her family. The ritual and ceremonies of our own tradition bring their own richness and rootedness as we, too, connect with our forebears in faith.
My fellow Cincinnati pastor, Dave Hansen, says the genius in celebrating significant passages is not in our innovations or commentary, but in the ritual itself. “Coming from an Episcopal childhood, I see that many evangelicals do not trust the power of basic rites and ceremonies-even baptism, communion and marriage. They feel like they need to talk, talk, talk and be real ‘creative,’ which means, in the end, that they trust their talk about baptism or marriage, not the ceremony.”
These rites of passage provide unique opportunities to walk with people. Whether we create new liturgies or rely on comforting, familiar rituals and traditions, our presence at these moments will long be remembered and appreciated, as we represent Christ to our people.
Meanwhile, I have a bit more than a year to plan Nora’s “going out” ceremony.
Kathy Callahan-Howell is pastor of Winton Community Free Methodist Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.
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Celebrate salvations. The angels throw a party when someone repents, so try a spiritual birthday party. During worship we put a white rose on the altar. A sister church puts a fish in their fish tank, since Jesus said we’d fish for people. Plan a “harvest” party for non-farmers. Share other things recently harvested: new friendships, new jobs, new homes, forgiveness from God. Dedicate the house. Move the party to the newly purchased or rented home. Bring housewarming gifts. Pray over the house, for protection and blessing, and that the home would be gracious and welcoming. Singleness is praiseworthy. The Bible affirms the value of the single life for its clearer focus on God. Affirm the single-mindedness of those in your midst. Pray over engagements. The period of engagement should allow the couple to further clarify their choice before making it permanent. Bring the couple forward for prayer. This helps the congregation take seriously the need to support the couple in this process, as well as encouraging the couple they aren’t doing this alone. Coo over new grandparents. At First Presbyterian of Golden, Colorado, they celebrate people becoming grandparents and entering a new stage of life. Photos of the grandparents and the new baby are projected on the video screen and a rosebud on the communion table symbolizes the birth. -KCH |
Make It FunMany churches give flowers to the ladies on Mother’s Day, but what do you do for Dads? Gene Maegly of Asbury United Methodist Church in Highland Heights, Kentucky, dreamed up this variation. On Father’s Day, they line the altar rail with tomato plants. The fathers come forward for special prayer, and then each father takes a plant. The first one to present a ripe tomato in the church office is honored with a prize: a big glass bowl, a head of lettuce, and salad dressing. No attempt is made to make this celebration anything other than a lot of fun. -KCH |
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