Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Luminaries of God’s Love.
by Brian Burris
When I was asked to submit an article and pictures for the ‘Luminaries of God’s Love’ project of Maritime Conference, I immediately thought of Pictou United’s weekly ‘Service for Shut-Ins’ program. In my opinion, it is the best example of how we at Pictou United share God’s love by reaching out to those seniors in our congregation who can no longer attend our regular Sunday services.
This program was started around 1980 by Ruth McKinnon in memory of her husband, Bill. A nurse and one of our church’s most active members, she saw a need to make our shut-ins feel that they were still valued members of the congregation, despite their age and infirmities. With that in mind, each week bulletins and tapes of the services were distributed by a different member or family.
In 1990, Granville Miller and his wife, Fern, donated a high-speed duplicating machine in memory of Fern’s brother, Lloyd Campbell MacPherson. This made the job of preparing all the tapes much easier for the church office. And while this machine is still used today, most of our shut-ins are provided with computer-recorded CD’s , a great advancement in the technology used, and one that enables us to more quickly record and edit the services.
Each year, a list of volunteers is posted, indicating which two weeks of the year we will be responsible for delivering the tapes/CD’s and bulletins. Some of our shut-ins are still in their own homes, but most are in either the Oddfellows Home or the Shiretown Nursing Home. Besides delivering the tapes and CD’s, the primary purpose of the program is to visit and spend time chatting with our seniors. Since we often read the bulletins and other church letters to them as well, we usually spread the visits over several days.
Over the years, our shut-ins have found this a wonderful program. They look forward to getting their copies of the bulletin and the service; but of particular importance to them, though, is the time we spend with them, the stories and memories we share, the listening we do, and the prayers we say together.
So many want to hear about our own lives: who we are and where we live; what we do and what our children are like. They want to hear about our travels and what we saw. And they love to tell us about their own families, especially their grandchildren. They point with pride to their pictures and family treasures. They want so much to share—but, most of all, they want our time.
And they want to hear about their church: what changes have we made; how is the Sunday School doing; do we like our minister; do we still have coffee hours; do we have a Christmas tree up; is the choir as good as ever; etc. You can tell how much they want to be there with us. But they can’t, so we try to do our best to take the church to them.
Something else that we do for our shut-ins is to form a choral group and go around singing carols to them one evening just before Christmas. For all of us it is a very special time together—one where we share our holiday cheer and remind ourselves of Christmases long ago!
At Pictou United, we believe the ‘Service for Shut-Ins’ is more than just a ‘service’; it’s a way of honoring those who did so much for our church over the years. We believe our shut-ins are still there with us at every service, still part of our living history, and still vital members of our church family. We believe that we have a duty to be there with them and for them in their senior years. And we believe that they are, truly, ‘Luminaries of God’s Love.’
This program was started around 1980 by Ruth McKinnon in memory of her husband, Bill. A nurse and one of our church’s most active members, she saw a need to make our shut-ins feel that they were still valued members of the congregation, despite their age and infirmities. With that in mind, each week bulletins and tapes of the services were distributed by a different member or family.
In 1990, Granville Miller and his wife, Fern, donated a high-speed duplicating machine in memory of Fern’s brother, Lloyd Campbell MacPherson. This made the job of preparing all the tapes much easier for the church office. And while this machine is still used today, most of our shut-ins are provided with computer-recorded CD’s , a great advancement in the technology used, and one that enables us to more quickly record and edit the services.
Each year, a list of volunteers is posted, indicating which two weeks of the year we will be responsible for delivering the tapes/CD’s and bulletins. Some of our shut-ins are still in their own homes, but most are in either the Oddfellows Home or the Shiretown Nursing Home. Besides delivering the tapes and CD’s, the primary purpose of the program is to visit and spend time chatting with our seniors. Since we often read the bulletins and other church letters to them as well, we usually spread the visits over several days.
Over the years, our shut-ins have found this a wonderful program. They look forward to getting their copies of the bulletin and the service; but of particular importance to them, though, is the time we spend with them, the stories and memories we share, the listening we do, and the prayers we say together.
So many want to hear about our own lives: who we are and where we live; what we do and what our children are like. They want to hear about our travels and what we saw. And they love to tell us about their own families, especially their grandchildren. They point with pride to their pictures and family treasures. They want so much to share—but, most of all, they want our time.
And they want to hear about their church: what changes have we made; how is the Sunday School doing; do we like our minister; do we still have coffee hours; do we have a Christmas tree up; is the choir as good as ever; etc. You can tell how much they want to be there with us. But they can’t, so we try to do our best to take the church to them.
Something else that we do for our shut-ins is to form a choral group and go around singing carols to them one evening just before Christmas. For all of us it is a very special time together—one where we share our holiday cheer and remind ourselves of Christmases long ago!
At Pictou United, we believe the ‘Service for Shut-Ins’ is more than just a ‘service’; it’s a way of honoring those who did so much for our church over the years. We believe our shut-ins are still there with us at every service, still part of our living history, and still vital members of our church family. We believe that we have a duty to be there with them and for them in their senior years. And we believe that they are, truly, ‘Luminaries of God’s Love.’
