LIFE LESSONS
Something’s Missing Wil Triggs
Before Cheryce Berg took on director of children’s ministries, before Kids’ Harbor was called Kids’ Harbor, before Diane Jordan started as director of children’s ministries, before that position existed and the responsibilities belonged to the now defunct board of Christian education, Linda Murphy was teaching children in Bible school at College Church. She started 36 years ago. She was a faithful teacher who persevered through a lot of change. She has taught some of the parents of current students. That makes Linda sound old. But in all the ways that count, Linda remains youthful in her love of serving the church. One of the things she excelled in was the missionary stories she would tell the children. When Linda told of Amy Carmichael, it wasn’t a story from the faraway past. For a few moments down in Room 100, Linda became Amy— rescuing children, telling people about Jesus, celebrating the rescuing God. And if we needed someone to put on a robe to be disciple or put on a pair of makeshift wings to be an angel, Linda was always game. She jumped in with everything she was and is. This was not usually the only area of service for Linda. Back when the church had homecooked dinners on Wednesday nights, Linda was in the thick of it. And she was at most of our Tuesdays Together. Did I mention she's managing the Repeat Boutique? If you drive by church during the week, you might see her pulling weeds and caring for the beds around the campus or planting something new. She’s not falling off the grid. You’ll still see her on Sunday mornings in worship or talking with others afterwards or being in an adult community with her husband, Paul. A couple in our small group used to ask us, “How do you know so many people?” It wasn’t question they asked just once, but many times. They were new to College Church. After giving many years of their lives to another church, bad things were happening there, and so they followed their adult son to College Church. It was a rough adjustment. And the question they kept asking us shifted over time from a question to a statement of fact: “Wil and Lorraine, they know everyone.” They would say this to other people. We found this to be sometimes a little irritating. We didn’t know everyone. We still don’t.
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But I realized as I thought about it, that it was very likely that they themselves “knew everyone” at some level at their old church, the one they had left under painful circumstances. They lost “knowing everyone” when they left. It was perhaps a statement of sorrow that they themselves had lost the knowledge and relationships built over years of time at their old church. How to start over? They didn’t want to serve in the areas they had at their old church. Just being in those same positions brought back pain for both of them. They weren’t quite sure what or even if they wanted to serve. Even before the pandemic, they often stayed home, watching the service on the livestream. There were some health issues, and it was easier after only a few hours sleep to just watch, coffee in hand, from the bedroom or study. It took a lot of energy for them just to show up some Sundays. Sad to say, the failures of clergy and other church leadership have caused deep hurts and driven many people from churches. At least my friends didn’t give up on church altogether. What they were going through involved real pain, sorrow and loss. Still, you can’t meet anyone if you don’t show up. We invited them to serve with us, and when they did, they did great. It was in service that they got to meet people they probably would not come across otherwise. Certainly not from watching the livestream.
