As a Pastor's Husband, I've become quite observant at spotting gender assumptions in church settings (i.e. male=pastor, female=pastor's wife) - and therefore I'm often quite cynical. Hey, most of my most-read postings are rants on the subject.

Recently I took a couple days off from my day job as a computer guy to join my wife at one of her district events. This is where a few hundred pastors from out denomination get together for business meetings and some preaching sessions.

This time, I'm happy to report an event done right. Not once was I called a pastor, and not once did I meet a person who didn't get it.

Rather than rant on a list of things done wrong, I'm going to rant on a list of things I saw done right. Since this is all positive, I'm going to name names.


1) No gender assumptions
Every time at a church event the word "spouse" is said, my ears perk up. I'm often just waiting for something like "Pastors go here, and spouses can go to the makeup and hairstyling booth over there!".

Not this time - I got the sense the sense that people were actually aware that pastors were both male & female. There was never an assumption in documentation, speakers, attendees, or registration.
Very refreshing!


2) The building
The church we met at was Brightmoor. It's easy to find, even though my GPS (with the 2008 update!) didn't have their exact address, just the road.

The building is my style - very functional, not high on frilly aesthetics. It almost doesn't look like a church. Good signs all the way around the building pointing me to which entrance I needed. (You'd be surprised at how many churches forget to put up signs for visitors. )

Inside, there was a manned (with 2 people!) reception desk front and center at the entry way to the sanctuary. Yes, I had questions for them. The first one was....


3) Ditching the kids
"Where do I drop off the kids?" was my first question from the info booth people. Often I'm given something like: "go down there, turn at the 3rd door, go for a while, turn left, then ask someone for directions from there."

At this church it was - take that hallway to the desk. The desk was the check-in for the nursery & kids. I seriously couldn't have missed it. This was the easiest to find nursery I've ever seen.

The check-in assigned the kids a number- which they happened to use the last 4 digits of my phone number. They printed off 3 stickers with the kid's name and ID number: 1 for the kid's back, 1 for the diaper bag, and 1 for me to keep. Very slick process.

The kid drop off process didn't involve me filling out a form, standing in line, or waiting at all. Just answer a few basics (allergies? special instructions? etc), print & stick, and off they went. It took under a minute total - the fastest nursery drop-off I've ever seen when visiting a church. These folks have their stuff together!


4 - Inside the building
It turned out that the building was both a church and a full Christian school. The session was of course scheduled during mid-week daytime hours (thus convenient for pastors- who work weekends) - and therefore also during school hours. Despite the potential chaos that could hold, there wasn't any. Yes, I noticed, and yes I was impressed.

There was a playground area outside, but that day it was raining- so it wasn't in use. There were several large windows obviously pointing toward the play area. Easy to keep an eye on the kids. Nice detail.

Outside the sanctuary, above most entry doors, there was a TV showing the service inside- complete with audio turned on low. Given that this was a business meeting, it was very nice to be able to deal with kids outside of the meeting room and still be able to hear most of what was going on. This was another nice touch that I highly appreciated.

I will admit to standing on a chair to reach the volume buttons to crank it up a little. Nobody at the time seemed to mind, and darn it, I wanted to hear what was going on over my sounds of my kid…


5 - If I had to nit-pick...
And of course, I do. :) The only real negative point I had was that there was child care during the morning and evening preaching sessions, but none during the mid-afternoon business meetings.

There was a small group of families in the back (us among them) trying to keep the kids quiet while the rest of the attendees were talking & debating different resolutions and voting on them.

At one point, I was out in the hall with a cranky 1 year old., watching on the above mentioned TVs. My wife had the 4 year old, and she was attempting to go the microphone to make a comment on a resolution being debated. With wiggly 4 year old in tow. For a couple reasons she didn't make it to the microphone, but it would have been interesting...

So yes, it would have been nice to have child care for the business meetings too. We survived without it though.


6 - The Strange World of Pastors
I'm a computer guy. A working stiff. I've been to conferences, TechNets, various training classes, and the like. I know what a typical large gathering of people looks like, and what to expect.

Get a few hundred preachers together though, and some odd things happen.

Ever see a pastor turn down a chance to speak? Me neither. Every time someone spoke in the services, it was always a mini (or full!) sermon. Someone would be asked to pray over the bread for communion. The prayer would turn into a 5 minute condensed sermon. Someone else would be asked to pray over the wine (grape juice). Another mini-sermon. Introducing the next person. Another mini-sermon. Then the real speaker gets up, and it's a full sermon this time.

Don't get me wrong, this is all good stuff. There were some very smart people making some very insightful points. It's just a huge contrast to the business world - out here it's full of people who would rather NOT be speaking, even though a microphone is in their hand.

So in summary - not all church events are depressing and draining. Some are very well done. I personally enjoyed going because 1) I was with my wife, and 2) I was at a place called "not work". Stay tuned for some other posts on events that happened at this event!