Joan Arnold's New Call by Evan H. Shu

When news spread through the Old South community about our church school director's impending retirement, a common reaction was surprise: "Joan Arnold is much too energetic to retire," a number of folks said. Perhaps "retirement" is a poor choice of words — "second calling" might be more appropriate. For it is not so much that Joan Arnold has spent almost 50 years in Christian education that leads her to leave it at this point, but rather it is because she has found another passion to pursue. As Joan says, "poetry has taken over my psyche and my soul."

This passion is a relatively recent one as Joan confesses she was not even a fan of poetry earlier — rather more of a short story enthusiast. But in the spring of '95, "I had been diagnosed with breast cancer," she related, "and I woke up in the middle of the night facing the demons of my mortality, and there was this thing rattling in my head. So I went down to my computer at 3:30 in the morning and this poem came out." And this kind of thing kept happening again and again until Joan knew this call was for real. She has already been studying in her spare time with published poets, Valerie Nash and Michelle Faith and recently her poem "The Secret" won the "Outstanding Work" award in the Marblehead Arts Festival Poetry Contest this past summer. If she can get financial aid and is accepted in one of the schools offering a low-residency degree for a Masters in Fine Arts, she would now like to go back to school and continue her work in poetry, which would require at least a 26 hour a week commitment. "Besides", she adds, "after nearly 50 years in Christian Education, it's time for me to try something different."

But to see where Joan is now going, it is important to look where she has come from. In the interesting way that our lives often work in a circle, her award winning poem "The Secret" was based on an early childhood experience that itself helped lead her to her first calling. Joan herself describes it this way.

"When I was a first-grader living in what I call small-town America (Lancaster, Pennsylvania), my mother was hit by a streetcar just four days before Christmas and was critically injured. In order to protect me, my father did

not tell me of the accident at first. However, I read about it in the newspaper and believed my mother was dead. It was months before I would see her and learn that she would recover. The anguish and insecurity of that situation and then later the gift of a Bible to read when I was in fourth grade turned me towards the church in spite of the fact that my family did not attend. Each Sunday, I got on a bus and went into town to visit at a different church until I had seen all of the ones that intrigued me. Then I made my choice -- St. James Episcopal. Later, when I was a boarding student at the Madeira School outside of Washington, D.C., Dr. Peter Marshall (of "A Man Called Peter" fame) from the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, came on Sunday evenings to lead a group in religious exploration. I then decided to be confirmed but would stay with the Episcopalians and joined St. John's Church across the street from the White House. These ecumenical roots later led me to the UCC in the chaos of the 60s when this denomination was taking a truly activist stand. Because of my personal history, my heart still goes out to the young person who comes to church without a family. You may be assured that that child is searching for God whether or not he or she recognizes or verbalizes it."

Of that near half-century of work in Christian Education, we are privileged to have had Joan almost 17 years here at Old South. Over that time, she took over a church school of some 45 children and built a program that teaches some 70 to 80 children a year. And in that time, she has seen many changes. "I feel like I have worked in two different churches", she said. Pre-1991, "we had the money we needed and we could breeze through" and get what we needed — but the difficulties of our church finances in 1991 were "a psychic jolt" to the staff with layoffs and program cutbacks. While it has been very difficult, there is much good that has come of it. "We have a new sense of unity. Our staff is more cohesive as we are all working together, working maybe time and a half again as hard, to make this work."

Joan tells us that the desire of church school parents has remained the same over these years: they want to give their children a religious education, and some want help in raising their children. But with so many families with two career parents, their lives seem so much more hectic. "Church is now just one of the many things in their children's lives, not just one of the few things as it was in years past," she said. "I try to give the children the best education in the short amount of time we have, but parents need to understand it is only a part of what is needed."

Children are in church school for only 1 1/2 hours a week (down from 2 1/2 hours in previous years.) Joan believes strongly that the Church school can only be a support to a child's whole Christian education. "Christian education must be taught in the home" she said. (See below.) In addition, she thinks that children who come with their parents every Sunday to church have a great advantage. "They see their parents commitment to the church and to the faith and to their growing up as a person of faith. Therefore, it becomes part of their family structure: this is the way I relate to Mom and Dad on Sundays; it is not a choice, this is what we do. They learn a lot more about the bible, but they also learn about what it means to watch Mom and Dad at prayer; they listen to their parents sing hymns; they might have had a argument in the morning be-fore they came to church about what they are going to wear or some such thing, but there is something very healing about worshiping with your parents. I think it is a wonderful thing to give children that structured life on Sunday.

Over Joan's tenure at Old South church, one of the things she is most proud of is that she has been able to get a solid program going all the way from the nursery level up through Senior High. "A lot of people don't realize how important the early childhood years are," Joan related, "If you are not strong there, you are not going to be strong anywhere." She is also very pleased with the youth program that she helped to get going with the Church of the Covenant 8 years ago. "I see the seeds of greatness there." She tells us to look for more fruits of Outreach and Leadership to come from that partnership. She is very pleased with the current curriculum from the "Whole People of God" (a United Church of Canada effort that is used by some 70% of the UCC Mass Conference churches.) "It makes the children think and it makes them work, and they are really responding to it."

Finding a replacement for Joan has not been an easy process so far for the church, and that person will have big shoes to fill. We are lucky that Joan has committed to stay on until we find the right person. Still, this year has been a nostalgic one for Joan as she often reflects about the "last time" she does many things. "I will miss the kids dreadfully. . . It is such a privilege to be able to be part of a child's life and make contributions to that child's life and to see that child grow and mature. If I had only been here 5 years, I never would have been able to see that." She talks about various children that she has seen come through the Sunday School who are now clearly making big contributions to our church and our community. She talks about various children who have shone in our Christmas Pageants over the years. Other Pageant memories, Joan? ". . . there was the year that one of the main props for the pageant was a candy bar. Right before curtain time, when we were giving props a last minute check, we found one of our lead actors had eaten the candy bar! There was a mad scramble backstage and a slight delay of the start of the pageant while we got a substitute. . . One year had upset stomachs and green faces following a hastily eaten lunch on top of stage-fright . . . I see the pair of tweezers in my desk for last minute splinters and the "mooing cow" thing-a-ma-jig in my desk for animals who think better of the whole thing at curtain-time. . . I hear giggled whispered well-wishes for "broken legs" - and then, the lights dim and angels, shepherds and even kings have stars in their eyes!" (Click here for more of Joan's pageant poetry.)

Joan tells us that she will miss the excitement and culture of coming to work in Boston. She added, "I will miss the staff here immensely. We are a very close staff. It's unusual to have a staff together for so long. I am not sure the congregation knows how hard this staff works." She is grateful to Jim Crawford for both giving her support and letting her have the lead to run the program. "I will miss Sundays terribly" — the adrenaline rush, the need to be ready for anything — "I go home exhausted, but it is still my favorite day of the week, because that is the day I can be with the children, she said adding, "however, I won't miss not being able to go to worship. That is the hardest part of the job - keeping and teaching the faith without being able to fill your own spiritual cup."

Just as Joan will miss many things in her new calling; it is clear that Old South will miss her deeply as well. But it is wonderful on the other hand to know that God's plan for each of us may have a number of twists and turns in it, and a new calling for each of us may be in the works if we listen clearly enough. For Joan, it is clear that she has listened, and we wish her all Godspeed as she pursues her new vocation after having done such a wonderful job for all of us with the first one. +

Within the context of spiritual growth, what are the most important areas which you feel are in need of improvement or enhancement?

One, the time constraints for Christian Education as we now practice it are severely limiting. Many of our families have weekend homes away from Boston or share the children with other spouses on some weekends. Therefore, the children are with us in some cases every other week or every third week. This magnifies our problem. We make up some of the difference with retreats. We need to look into helping our families lead their own religious and study programs at home.

Secondly, the number of committed every Sunday volunteers is an ongoing problem not only here at Old South but with all of my colleagues in their church settings. We are all breaking our church year down into smaller groups so that volunteers don't have to make such a large time commitment. That does sacrifice the ongoing relationships with teachers that I think is vital for kids in the fractured world of multiple commitments that they face today. The in-depth every week relationship with a committed Christian outside of the family is not possible under those circumstances.

Also, there are societal issues at work that concern me:

a) One of the biggest problems we face at Church School is the competition with organized sports that meet on Sunday mornings. It is very difficult for families to cope with, but it cuts a terrible hole in the Christian education program for individual children that we in the Church School cannot repair; and b) The cynicism that is woven into the fabric of American life is alive and well in the children. This includes their outlook on Jesus, God, and the role of religion and prayer in their lives. I pray that we make a difference in ways that are not always clearly visible. +

Christian Education at Home. Why don't we write up some sample home worship programs the way we used to but in an up-to-date `90s fashion? It might take hold now because we are hearing that we have a lot of believers who are not "belongers". We can still stay in touch and have a part in people's religious lives by helping them become comfortable with prayer and "God talk" at home. We could even have some family ownership services at church, but I feel our prime responsibility is to help people to create a worshipful setting in the intimacy of their own homes where they can explore God and God's purpose in their lives with the people who love them and whom they love the most. What better setting for Christian education? I view our Sunday morning time as an introduction to that. We are becoming comfortable with struggling to pray out loud, with talking about what we think about God and what we aren't sure of. All of that is freeing to all of us. That is the big advantage of information Sunday morning family time together. +