Welcome to my annual “Don’t-Forget-About-The-Church-While-We-Break-For-The-Summer” message! 

It’s a universal message because clergy have universal concerns at this time of year.  Concerns like: 

How badly will finances slump over the summer?  

Do people understand why we “take the summer off”?  

Will people actually come back in the fall?

Let me answer each one of those really quickly because I think we all share them.    

Finances.  Will they slump?  Not if we don’t let them!  If you are not part of our automatic debit program, Vanco, make sure to keep you financial giving to FCC up to date.  This will mitigate the panic that our finance people can experience in the fall when we see they see the numbers go askew.

Why do we take this break?  A couple of reasons.  Like most suburban cities, Melrose empties out in the summer with people going to the Cape or up to Maine.  Even the Summer Union Services of the past have been hard to maintain.  Rather than fight this reality, we take advantage of it as a way of giving our church a rest instead of than fighting to maintain things through July and August.

Additionally, church staff is encouraged to only take vacation time during the summer and not during the program year (my agreement with the church specifically includes this clause about vacation and continuing education time).  Consequently, church staff is necessarily away and rather than hire pastoral, musical, and office staff coverage, we create this period of rest for the church as a whole.  

Lastly, will people be back in the fall?  You’d better!  There will be a lot going on and we will hit the ground running with all hands on deck to lift our next program year off the ground in September.

I hope that you take advantage of this summer change-in-pattern at our church for what it is: a respite-time when you can reconnect to stillness and remember that being is, in the end, more important than doing.

Have a wonderful summer everyone!

–Rev. Dominic