Serendipity is defined as “the gift of being able to make delightful discoveries by pure accident.” Horace Warpole
God uses many methods to touch our lives, and I think He can do it serendipitously. Randy and I discovered this during our first months at our new churches in 1976. Our discoveries began the morning Randy left to take his things to the office at the church. We discovered that neither church had an office for the minister. They also had no assistant to type bulletins and answer the phone, no phone, no nursery, no choir or director, and no committees of any kind. These were not delightful discoveries!
While Randy was off making his discoveries, I was discovering things on my own. I discovered an old mimeograph machine in the pantry, complete with paper, stencils and a supply of ink. I remember wondering why that would be in the parsonage!? I also discovered that there were no young families in the church, thus no need for a nursery. Ah, serendipity!!
As we begin to compare notes, we ascertained, quite correctly, that the office of the church begins and ends in the parsonage. The church and parsonage phone number was one and the same. It makes you very conscious of how you come across when you answer the phone! I was suddenly promoted to assistant to the minister, typist, and my favorite job – choir director! We did discover that we had a pianist in both churches!
I quickly discovered that Randy needed a place in which to read, study, write sermons, counsel folks, and hold small meetings, so we cleaned out the front room of the parsonage. I could type, use stencils and the mimeograph machine, so on every Saturday, I typed the bulletins and ran them off for both churches. We folded them together on Saturday nights while enjoying the ever popular TV show, Hee Haw!
We discovered that most of the young families were attending another church while keeping their name on the roll of our churches. That would not do, so Randy set about visiting each family and inviting them to come back and try their home church. I manned the nursery that Sunday just in case they took him up on the invitation. That day, we had four young couples with children who came and needed a nursery. They in turn invited friends. As word spread, we had more each Sunday until before I knew it, there were plenty to share the nursery job! Who knew we had so many young families there? Serendipity!
We discovered that many of the members could sing, they just had never been asked about forming a choir! We started with five, and we might not have been good, but we were willing! We grew to 12! Serendipity!
Members began to feel pride in their church and enjoy our Sundays together. It wasn’t long until we had rejuvenated the ever popular Methodist covered dish lunch! What a wonderful thing to discover folks with which you can make a church family! I love them to this day!! Thank God for serendipity!!