Let's Talk About Cleaning After Service!

On January 28 (2018), we held a church member’s meeting after service at Killian Elementary School. During that meeting I brought an opportunity before all the members. We had an opportunity to move our Sunday services to Beautiful Church (our mother church). I outlined several pros and cons if we were, in fact, to move back into our “Mother’s building”.

The members voted (almost 100%) to move to Beautiful Church. But one thing happened on a Sunday night (after a Commitment Celebration) where Lucas Kao and I were at the BC-building late on a Sunday night putting some THC belongings away. We ended up seeing Mr. Hwang (Beautiful Church’s hard-working janitor) at Beautiful Church. We were shocked that he was at church working at this late of an hour.  When I asked how long he was going to stay cleaning up the BC-building, he explained that every Sunday he would stay at BC close to midnight.

We were shocked! And it was that week that my heart was moved. This was when I had the idea that once THC moved to BC on April 1, we should help with cleaning the facilities that we used on Sundays.

Here were the reasons:

1. Cleaning would reduce Mr. Hwang’s work load on Sundays.
2. Cleaning would be a display of honor to our mother church who allowed us to use their facility for our services. 
3. Provide an opportunity for us to cultivate a culture of serving. (Jesus desires to make His followers “servant-leaders”. See John 13. This is an opportunity to grow in this area)
4. Provide an opportunity for us to be faithful in taking care of this building in preparation for us to be taking care of our own building/equipment in the future (if the Lord allows).  

One of the things I did leading up to our April 1-move, was set up a “Transition Team”.  Which was a handful of church members that devoted 2 months to come early and stay later to the Sunday service and evaluate where we needed to improve our Sunday services.

On April 1, THC moved from Killian Elementary to Beautiful Church. Right away, the Transition Team began cleaning after service. It was at this time that the Transition Team discussed various ways for us to clean Beautiful Church after service. In the end, we decided that the best solution was to have the Family Churches do this on a rotational-basis and have Lucas & James serve as the “Cleaning Ministry Overseers”. This was a more preferred option rather than having the same group of people sacrificing post-service fellowship time. Lucas and James served in teaching the FC’s how to clean correctly.  

A schedule was made and now each Family Church has cleaned. Wanting to know how we were doing in this ministry, I emailed Lucas and James to see how we were doing in this area. I asked them if there were enough volunteers on a weekly basis, if people were serving enthusiastically, and what we could do to improve. They sent their responses to me and I wanted to take some time to address this issue.

Some of us have a general mopey/complaining attitude when we clean. This should not be the case. Especially if you are a covenanted member of THC, this should not be viewed as a burden. THC is your church and I want you guys to treat this building the way you would treat your own home. We want to take care of this building, be respectful of the rules in place (like not bringing in drinks to the main sanctuary), and show our gratitude to Beautiful Church leadership by cleaning up after ourselves.

My hope is that we see this area of service as a joy and not a burden.

You can have joy in scrubbing toilets and mopping. Joy is a mindset that we can choose to have. Paul told the church in Philippi:

“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4)
 
Keep in mind that Paul wrote this while being in a Roman prison.

You are serving your church when you clean with joy. You are honoring our Mother Church. You are taking a burden away from Mr. Hwang. This can be an act of worship if you mop those floors “as to the Lord”. You are growing as a follower of Jesus…if… you clean with joy.

I’m not asking you to fake joy. Not at all. I am asking you to clean with joy in light of the four things I mentioned above. In light of those things, you should be able to put your preferences to the side.

Remember, you come to THC not to be served, but to serve. If you are a covenanted member, you come to THC as a contributor not a consumer. This is your home. If a VIP doesn’t want to clean, that’s okay. A newcomer, totally understandable. In fact, we should be careful to not “guilt those people into this ministry”. If they want to help out, that’s fine.

But this blog is written to the covenanted church member. Those of us who are committed and invested in the health and future of THC.

This issue has been discussed amongst the Shepherds and I have decided to bring this before you, as members. There are some who have this idea that the cleaning ministry was entirely my doing. I understand this, to a degree, because those people are unaware of the role the Transition Team had in coming up with this idea.

 Now, I do think that I could have done a better job of communicating with the Shepherds and members in bringing forward this idea. After talking with Lucas and James (Cleaning Overseers) as well as the Shepherds. Here is what we have decided:

We will continue to do the Cleaning Ministry for the remaining weeks of 2018. But at the Dec. 16 Church Members Meeting – members who are present at the meeting will be able to vote on whether or not this will be a ministry that will continue in 2019 and beyond.

I will set the passing number at 90%. If 90% of the members vote for us to continue in this ministry, we will do so. But if it’s less than 90%, I will go back to Beautiful Church leadership and explain that we won’t be doing that ministry anymore. I will take personal responsibility before the BC leadership and explain that I moved ahead of the members of THC and will apologize to them. And I won’t hold any grudges against our church. The Finance Team will look into ways to continue to support Mr. Hwang whether that’s through increasing our rent to Beautiful Church or hiring someone to help after church on Sundays to alleviate his load.

I hope that both members and myself can grow in giving grace to each other as well as communicating our comments and concerns.  
 
Email me if you have any questions so that I can answer them at the member’s meeting.  
 
Your Pastor,

Mitchell Perez

mitchellrichardperez@gmail.com