Yesterday’s Game of the Day:
Webster Groves Nerinx Hall (Mo.) 4, University School of Milwaukee (Wisc.) 0

Today’s Game of the Day:
None; it’s Labor Day!

The offertory in an Episcopal church service is a ritual with separate and distinct touches depending on anything from the adoption of the correct rites to local customs.

In Mississippi, where I spent my childhood, the plate went down each pew individually to the end, then went back from whence it came.

Now, when I would visit my aunt in Texas, the offertory procedure changed a bit. The offertory plate would take a trip down the pew, then, at the end of the pew, the last congregant would pass the plate to the row behind him or her for the return trip. It was a time-saving move for the organist to prevent 10-minute improvisations on the offertory hymn.

In New Jersey, where my father completed his ministry, the usher would bring the plate to each pew and wouldn’t have to send the plate down the aisle because the pews had central dividers in the middle of them (a relic of the time when pews were rented to families). The usher could reach each almost every congregant individually.

Yesterday there might have been the first three-row plate pass in the history of the Anglican Communion. There was a full row in front of me, down which the plate passed. The customs of the cathedral was like that in Mississippi, where it’s bad form to pass the plate over the back of the pew. I found the plate heading right towards me, though. There was a good 15-foot gap between me (at the end of the pew) and the only other person in my pew, all the way on the aisle.

Now, there was only one person in the pew behind me. As I half-rose, half-reached to get the offertory plate back to the usher, the plate was intercepted by the congregant behind me, who took the plate with her over the back of my pew, put in her contribution, and passed the plate one pew forward, back to the person on the opposite end of the pew from me.

It used to be that this church didn’t have this many empty seats; it was an issue that the cathedral Dean addressed during his sermon. He proposed focus groups (yes, plural).

As I talked about a few months ago after witnessing the installation of our new Presiding Bishop, our denomination is not in the best shape. Neither is this cathedral; it has outsourced its church school to a corporation, cut staff, and has found itself having to borrow and dip into endowments in order to make some much-needed repairs.

But I think there’s hope. The way I see it, the improvised passing of an offertory plate across three pews is a parable of sorts as to what makes a church a church. To me, a church isn’t a building formed of wooden timbers; it’s only as strong as the people inside of it which forms its congregation, and their willingness to work together in a commonality which is sadly lacking in our society these days.