To the Congregation It all started, with puppets. Brown paper bag puppets. We were talking about the calling of the disciples in the six-year-old Sunday School class. In an attempt to invite participation in the Bible story while simultaneously including visual or tactile elements in the lesson, I decided we would make disciple puppets. All was going well. Everyone was participating, my co-teacher and I were cutting string for hair, the two girls decided they would make girl disciples, which I encouraged with pride, thinking of our Faith Development class. And then it happened. Seemingly from nowhere, a chant arose from the male end of the table. The chanting of a word distinctively, physically male. Despite all my training, I was flustered. What do you do when your students chant anatomy at the top of their lungs? I quickly went through all of my training: don’t tell them it is a bad word. Don’t suggest their bodies are bad. Don’t say we can’t talk about our bodies in church. Docetic theology flashed through my head. I tore through the many things seminary and Sunday School training had told me. Nothing. I had nothing. All I could remember was what not to do. A quick look at the door, and I thought about running. I tried to quiet them, tell them we weren’t chanting right now, offer them orange hair for their disciples. But they would not be deterred. They refused my redirection and took up crayons in protest. Before I could stop the madness, the disciples had become anatomically correct. That was the end for me. I resorted to the staple “Do what I say or I take the toy away” tactic and gathered the kids in a circle for the Bible story. I tried to muster some enthusiasm for an extremely long and abstract story where Jesus proclaims that those who love God are his true mother, brothers, and sisters. I was already grumpy about my inability to handle the puppets issue, and now I was trying to make a story that confused even the disciples relatable to six-year-olds! It felt like juggling, trying to keep their attention, explain the story, and translate my theological language into relatable, concrete concepts. My mind was a flurry of activity until a question came like a Kindergarten epiphany. “Wait, so Jesus is my brother?” Somehow, in spite of my flurry, the little boy next to me discovered the deeper truth of Jesus’ words. All I could do was say “Yes. Yes, exactly.” Seminary has taught me a lot about what to do in a classroom: how to prepare, to value the contributions of others regardless of age, to consider cognitive development and multiple intelligences. What it could never prepare me for was anatomy chants or the moment when a little boy realizes that Jesus belongs to him. In all of the training, the planning, the deep theological thinking, I forgot that there are always things we can never prepare for, things we will never be ready to handle. Hopefully, after enough time has passed to make the situation funny, we learn a better way to handle the chaos. Hopefully we accept the inevitability of chaos and release the need to be perfect every time. But hopefully we also learn that there is no better answer to Kindergarten epiphanies than a simple “yes.” There is no better response than awe—awe at how God speaks and what God brings out of the craziness. And in the end, chants and chaos become a welcomed adventure if they help you get to those moments when God turns an unsalvageable situation into holiness. Those are the surprises that make the job a ministry and make the ministry worth it. Holiness is what got me into ministry in the first place. _Heather Burke MDiv 2013 Minister to Children First Baptist Church, Conway, SC
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