Sunday school coordinator, not hero

 

Here I am sitting down with my Keurig espresso, about to tell a brief, not-very-profound story about something that happened on Sunday, but then I thought, first I need to back up and explain what the Treehouse is (before typing which I need to look up whether it’s capitalized), but before that I need to explain what exactly I do as part of the children’s ministry team—which I’ve mentioned here various times but never explicated.

{That’s a fifty-cent word I just found on Merriam-Webster. You’re welcome.}

{Also “children’s ministry team” is probably capitalized, but that feels pompous and tiresome, so}

Thus, in the vein of “What Is VBS?,” I offer the following background to a story that doesn’t actually matter, unlike children’s ministry, which is a rather significant part of my life.

For last FFN we bought a badminton set—something I’ve always wanted.

Our church is big and prolific, so we have a ten-person children’s ministry team consisting of three full-time staff: 

• Lisa, our church’s children’s ministry director 
• Rebecca, her administrative assistant
• Our church’s cross-cultural community liaison 

 And seven volunteers:

• An early childhood Sunday school coordinator
• An elementary Sunday school coordinator (that’s me)
• A first-service children’s church coordinator
• A second-service children’s church coordinator
• A nursery coordinator
• A coordinator for disability ministries
• And our newest team member, I’m not sure what her title is; maybe kids’ connection coordinator. Her job is to facilitate relationships among elementary-age children.

I’m the elementary Sunday school coordinator. On a typical Sunday, my family and I arrive near the end of the first worship service (we have two services, with the Sunday school hour for all ages in between). We set up the large, carpeted Activity Room (“the big room”) in preparation for 80-90ish kids, first through fifth grade. 

When the kids arrive, they sit on the floor in groups by class and do the opening activity Rebecca and I have prepared. Then I call them to order, have them tidy their area, do a brief teaching time, and dismiss them to their respective classrooms.

After they vacate, I clean up the big room, count and record the number of leftover activities, and file them away.

After that, I go to the Treehouse.

I’m done with my regular duties by about halfway through the Sunday school hour. My early-childhood counterpart, Carrie, is on duty for the whole hour. She’s on call to help kids go to the potty, find more crafts when the classrooms run out, sit with misbehaving children, and all the other miscellaneous things a hall full of three-to-six-year-olds need. So her home base is the Treehouse, an open area with a picnic table and supply closets, between the early childhood classrooms and the bathrooms, decorated to look like…a treehouse. And that is where Lisa and Rebecca I usually join Carrie for the last half of Sunday school.

We spend some of our time prepping crafts or organizing curriculum. We spend at least as much time chit-chatting with or without the assorted people who walk by, about such things as modest formalwear, the cost/benefit of college, ear infections, young children’s fashion sense, gaps in the volunteer schedule, and raising teenagers.

Which brings me to this past Sunday, when we were discussing such things and Lisa suddenly pointed under my feet and cried, “Get it! Stomp on it!”

I was prepared for a spider, or possibly some form of beetle-like creature. I was not prepared for a millipede monstrosity.

So I reacted as any Christian woman of courage would do, and pulled my knees up to my chest and squealed.

Carrie (she was on duty, after all) saw from across the picnic table and moved toward the danger, stomping it into oblivion and then disposing of it with a tissue and her bare hand.

Like a hero.

If you’re in a burning building with one or the other of us, me or Carrie, which one would you want? 

In my defense, we had lots of these many-legged fiends at our old house, particularly in the basement, which happened to be the only quiet place to put down my third and fourth children for their naps. And I remember going down there once and seeing the horrible serpentine creepy-crawly skittering across the wall, and then seeing my sweet baby sleeping in his pack-n-play, and I dove and destroyed that enemy so thoroughly it probably left a dent in the wall. 

So I’m not a complete coward. As the heroic astronaut said in Project Hail Mary, I just need someone to be brave for.