Janie B. Cheaney: Vital connections

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, February 19th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. WORLD commentator Janie B Cheaney now with a word of encouragement for some of the unsung heroes of the local church: the women.

JANIE B CHEANEY, COMMENTATOR: Over the years I’ve worn many hats in the local church—even being the unofficial social director for a church plant. Sounds glamorous I know, but think of it as a mix between a cafeteria monitor and a military company clerk. I’d never considered organizing picnics as part of my skill set, but someone had to do it. The slack was just lying there, so I picked it up. Like most church plants, we organized our schedule around the Methodists or Seventh-Day Adventists who let us use their buildings, sometimes deciding that it would be best not to jostle delicate relationships by invading the kitchen. So, I was the one who reserved recreation halls and park pavilions, wrote the checks and picked up the keys. I was the one who hollered over the clamor that dinner was ready and advised young parents not to let their kids hog the deviled eggs.

That’s not all. I also taught Sunday school nonstop for over a decade. I organized women’s Bible studies and often led them. I reviewed the video series and arranged for the DVD player and printed out the worksheets. That church went through many ebbs and flows and times of balancing on the edge of extinction, during which I might have come on too strong and stepped on a few toes. When the third full-time pastor in twelve years arrived, I judged it time to move on. For one thing, I was tired. For another, my days of autonomy were coming to an end. As a full-time caretaker at home, I would need to be served more than serving.

My former church is finally on a stable footing with long-term leadership, steady growth, and a building of its own. Few of the current members remember me, and I sometimes wonder if all I did made any difference. Did the meals and picnics and kids’ catechism drills help lift that bulky body off the ground?

Only God knows for sure, but I recall a conversation with our second pastor about the possibility of being named as a deaconess. That didn’t happen—the denomination wasn’t ready to take that step. But I recall telling him I considered myself a deaconess anyway, along with other women in the church. We were part of a fellowship going back to Salome and Joanna and Mary Magdalene, those women who followed Jesus along with his apostles and provided for them out of their means. They also must have cooked and washed and served the practical functions that held that band together. That’s what women do. I told our pastor: men provide the leadership; we provide the connections.

I’m talking with some of the older ladies at my current church about starting an informal Bible study. Of course we need more time in the Word, but we also need more time together, to help spin those threads. The things that glue our church together, says one of my friends. Exactly, I agreed: women are the glue. The nursery helpers and meal-train volunteers and baby-shower organizers may not get a lot of attention, but thank God you’re out there, ladies: making connections one tater-tot casserole at a time.

I’m Janie B. Cheaney

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