The Easter Sunday Service is a big deal at my church and a challenge for the Technology Team. We would typically bring in guest musicians to assemble a 21-piece orchestra, a large choir, and our usual praise team singers. This required at least 40 microphones and two audio mixers that had to be preset and tuned since there would be no time to make adjustments during the very limited time for rehearsal. This was compounded by the demands of the other special Services for holy week.
One year we had a very complex Good Friday Service that required us to move all our backline sound equipment to the balcony. The space was jam packed with musicians, instruments, singers, etc. A silent vigil ran continuously until Sunday morning. There simply was not ample time to move everything back and get it all setup in time for Sunday. This created some fallout organizationally and elevated the need for proper planning in the future.
Fast forward one year.
I was working on a Saturday a few weeks before Easter when the custodian showed me a memo he had received regarding Service prep. He was very upset that it required him to split his work into several sessions which meant a lot of driving which he simply did not have the money for. The schedule was ridiculous. He was to clean only one third of the sanctuary at a time and was not to be in the building while my team was setting up. This was literally broken down into a multi-page schedule hour-by-hour showing when and where he could vacuum, dust, empty trash, etc.
When he complained about the schedule, he was told that Peter was very upset last year, so this is what is required so that he is not further upset. The custodian was between a rock and hard place – he needed this part-time job, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep it.
I told him that the problem last year is that we needed to test the sound system for an hour or two which tends to be very loud and cannot be interrupted. There were lots of cables strung on the floors while we were setting up, but I am sure if you knew that ahead of time, we could work through it together.
Then I dropped the bombshell. This year we were not having a special Good Friday Service nor an all-night vigil. We had an entire week to setup for Easter Sunday so my team would likely be done before this elaborate schedule even started!
Sometimes laugher is the best medicine and that is exactly what I set out to dispense. I can elevate the silly to ridiculously high levels of absurdity.
I was hauling stuff in and out of the sanctuary while the custodian was vacuuming it. With each trip I would go over to him, signal for him to shut off the vacuum and suggest that we further breakdown the schedule in some crazy way. I got him to laugh so much that he would try to retreat from my next zingers. He joined in with the fun which of course spurred me into being even more over the top.
None of our comments were mean spirited nor directed at anyone. It was just good humor done in the fellowship of helping someone through a stressful time.
While finishing up his work I approached him waving my arms shouting out another absurdity. He yelled, “stop, stay away, I can’t take it anymore!” When I delivered my punch line, he dramatically fell down doing the proverbial “rolling on the floor laughing” as I continued to flail my arms.
Unknown to either of us until several months later, his supervisor stuck her head in the door to see what was going on. She reported to the Pastor that Peter was so upset about the schedule that he was now taking it out on the custodian. Since I heard about this through the grape vine, I never did find out what happened nor had the opportunity to set the record straight. You see the church has an iron-clad policy about negative addictions. We are only to have direct communications with others – hearsay, eavesdropping and rumors simply are not to exist. If I brought up the topic, I would be admonished for perpetuating the type of behaviors that have been attributed to the demise of the church. That is fine and dandy, but I wonder what negative addictions stemmed from the eavesdropping that took place that one spirit filled day with my friend the custodian.