By Ed Thompson
I have too much stuff. Specifically, I have too many books. It’s not that I’m not running out of space on my bookshelves. I’m looking at 24 boxes of books and papers, most stacked on the floor of my office with one sitting on the corner of my desk. While I was on vacation, we put new carpeting in the presbytery office. The installer told us we would have to take everything off our desks and our bookshelves to get the carpet down. So, on the Friday afternoon before I left on vacation, I neatly packed everything in 28 boxes. Even with the air conditioning on, I worked up a sweat.
In hindsight, that would have been a good opportunity to go through my books and weed out the ones I am unlikely to read and/or no longer need. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. When I moved back from Kansas, I was able to cull six boxes worth of books from my personal collection. I tried to give them away, and while a few pastors availed themselves of my generosity, most of those books ended up at the Salina Public Library’s used book sale. So, I can get rid of books; I just don’t do so very easily or very often.
As I stare at these boxes of books, I know this would be another good opportunity to go through everything and weed out the books I am unlikely to read and/or no longer need. I have to acknowledge that at this point in my career I am unlikely to ever do youth ministry again. It is far more likely that I would choose to work at Walmart, Lowe’s or Home Depot than do youth ministry. I may still be good at it, but it is unlikely to happen.
I also have to acknowledge that if I have not read Paul Tillich’s Systematic Theology in the past 38 years, I am unlikely to read it now. I still hold out hope, though, that I might crack open Reinhold Niebuhr’s classic The Nature and Destiny of Man, although I haven’t read that in the past 38 years either. Somehow, Niebuhr seems more readable, although I guess that’s a relative term.
I did take my wife’s advice to dust the bookshelves before I started putting anything back on them. So, there’s nothing stopping me…except the realization that I don’t really need 24 boxes worth of books and papers.
What’s holding you back or weighing you down? What kind of clutter has accumulated in your home or office? What kind of stuff do you have hidden in closets, stored in classrooms, piled in the attic or squirreled away down in the basement of your church?
The first church I served had a wonderful table in its kitchen. Put together by one of the members, it had a Formica top and could seat maybe 20 people around it. It made for a great work space. Lurking underneath the table, however, were hundreds, maybe thousands of empty Cool Whip containers. (Evidently Cool Whip qualifies as one of the major food groups in western Pennsylvania.) For some reason, these empty containers bothered me. I know we needed to have some for people to take home leftovers after a church supper, but while I knew they served a purpose, it seemed like we had enough empty containers to last us for at least a decade, if not longer. So, one day, I went on a rampage and filled something like ten garbage bags full of empty Cool Whip containers and carried them out to the dumpster behind the church. I think I left at least 50 of them behind, which seemed like more than enough for the rest of the year; plus, I stacked them up neatly.
By the end of the month, there were just as many empty Cool Whip containers, if not more underneath the kitchen table. I don’t know how they got there. Maybe they multiplied like rabbits. Maybe someone put an ad in the newspaper asking for donations of empty Cool Whip containers. So I know stuff accumulates. I know church members hate to throw things away. I can hear someone saying, “We might be able to use that old Sunday School curriculum or those old Vacation Bible School crafts or those old Christmas decorations again. You never know. “
Well, actually, you do know. You’re never going to use them again. I encourage you, THROW THAT STUFF AWAY.
As for me, my plan is to go through one box a day. I intend to discard at least six boxes, so I can get rid of the small bookcase that sits opposite my desk. Tillich’s Systematic Theology will be history. The youth ministry books, maybe not. After all, you never know.