MaryBeth LaMont

The church’s recycle bin is full. My desk drawers are empty. My two filing cabinets have yet to be shared with the recycle bin. Almost 24 years of ministry gone from the desk drawers; nearly 44 years of ministry yet to be sorted through and mostly recycled.

The files were, for the most part, not sermons. I saved very few of those. Sermons have little literary value. It is the spoken Word that makes them sermons, not writings. Sermons repeated years later do not work; the community has changed and the times have changed. A living Word needs to be preached.

No, most of the files have to do with records of events and people. Much teaching material, some useful, some no longer applicable have found their abode in these files over the years. Some things were filed because they may come in handy at a future date; they didn’t. Some were discussion notes or lectures for forum discussions, classes, and campus presentations.

A lot can accumulate over the years. I carried out the desk files to the recycle bin. For the filing cabinets I will wheel the container to just outside the offices. As I sort and dump, I can’t help but wonder how much ever got through to anyone or how much impact, for example, did my various presentations on Luther and Anti-Semitism have or a discussion led based on the life and person of Luther’s wife, Katie von Bora.

An entire drawer is filled with files from when I was a Stephen Ministry leader training Stephen Ministers for lay caring ministry in a congregation as an extension of the church’s pastoral care. It is filled with information that is still useful on dealing with those struggling with depression, grief, illness, and divorce among other issues. What to do with those? In the right hands, they could be most useful, in untrained hands, downright dangerous.

The musical Lion King has a song titled, “The Circle of Life”. One might understand it as almost a recycling; a putting the old onto something new and continuing onward. As I enter the final phase of ordained ministry, I can’t help but wonder if any has been, is, or will be recycled in some form. Has it, is it, and will it touch someone who then makes it theirs and passes it on in a new form?

Okay, you may already be thinking this: God will see to it. That answer is the easy way out Sunday School answer that really, at least on the surface, is a bit vague. God will what? With whom? How?

It has not been emotional for me to sort through all this. But I haven’t gotten to all the funeral sermons and files yet. So far it has mostly been something leaving me in thought to wonder.
Something, however, has crossed my mind in all this. Maybe you are in some ways a bit of recycled material from me, other pastors, and other influences large and small in your life. Now it is up to you as this new product to not let any of this go to waste; pass it on. Recycle some of yourself. Such recycling is not reserved for pastors. Parents are most likely the main purveyor of recycled material which in turn gets recycled again for generations. Likewise, teachers.

As one with great frustration in learning algebra, somehow, I still remember the FOIL system. (factoring: First Outer, Inner Last). Something, despite all probability to the contrary, got through. I look forward to sharing this prowess with my grandchildren to impress them with my “knowledge” of Algebra!

The oceans may be full of material that should have been recycled. The church and humanity itself seem to be the place that God recycles. We just have to trust that it is so and keep plugging away.