Bear Paw Meanderings
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If you are a Presbyterian the minister’s house is a manse. If you are an Episcopalian, the residence is the Rectory. If you are a Methodist like me, your minister’s house is called the Parsonage.
It was in discussing our parsonage that I found that most of my church is not marching to the same drummer as I am.
First, with an elderly and shrinking congregation, the large question that looms on my mind is whether we can afford to provide a residence for our minister. Would we be better off to provide him or her more money and let him or her find their own lodgings?
That thought has gone through my mind for quite a long time now.
In addition it seems to me like we spend a huge amount of time and energy doing things at the parsonage that we need to be doing at the church building itself.
We have sort of gone of the mind that whoever the minister is, they are totally helpless when taking care of their own lawn for example.
We weed eat, cut down trees, mow, put up decorative plots and generally spend a lot of time making the outside of that cookie cutter house in the south end of Havre look good!
And we cut down everything we can. At my house we let things grow because we know how long it takes to grow anything on the prairie. So, I have built a back yard forest and gardens at my house. Yet my church friends seem bent at the parsonage to take it back to the bald prairie with nothing growing up at all. That probably is not true but that is how it seems.
Inside in the basement there is a shower drain that is higher than the shower stall. So, of course we must fix that although so far it is in the talking through stage. Nothing has been done yet. What bothers me is how have all the other ministers gotten along with that drain? Did this just happen or has it been something that has been happening for years and years?
Take the kitchen. There is a bright sort of dining nook and back of that is a small kitchen. My church friends want to make that one big open room as is the concept now. I seem to be the only one who says leave it alone as maybe some people want their kitchen to be private from the rest of the house. I know at my house, I do.
I am not going to get my way on that one unless my church members are unable to dig up the money to remodel that kitchen. That could very well happen.
What really rankles me has nothing at all to do with the present church membership. What really rankles me is that had a perfectly wonderful craftsman bungalow home next to the church. It was a showplace of a house.
But it was next to the church and ministers of the time did not like to live next to the church. So, we tore down our beautiful craftsman bungalow and bought our south end crackerbox.
And I have not been the same since!
So, how did our bungalow look? That is simple to say because there is a sister house, the very same plan, at 900 Fourth Avenue. That is how our parsonage looked.
I will never be the same since and it is still bugging me all these years later!
