For the past 9 years, our family has been holding a worship service for the residents of the Heartland Assisted Living Center. We call it the Heartland Church of Christ. However, we are not what some people call a one cup Church of Christ (more on that in a moment). For the first few years of our ministry, this was something our local congregation paid us to do but when that money ran out, we continued to hold the worship because we couldn’t see ourselves giving up on the residents and just leaving them without a religious element in their lives each Sunday. So we’ve continued the worship and it is a blessing for those who come each week.
The way it works at Heartland is we gather together at 1 p.m. for worship. We have an opening prayer. I lead some songs, or attempt to lead songs. A friend of mine from the world famous group Acapella used to lead singing for us. Imagine the disappointment it caused when I had to take over for him. I think our church members at Heartland are pretty resillent, they’ve continued to come despite my singing. Well, after singing, we either have a short Bible discussion or the Lord’s Supper, we don’t have a set schedule for those two items. Can you imagine the trouble that would cause in a traditional congregation? Some people are quite rigid in their traditions and schedules, we refuse to be. We then may end with a song and a closing prayer with requests and praises from the residents. Sometimes the song is ommitted if I feel my singing has been way below par that day.
After the service is over, we talk and put up the hymn books and communion supplies. On occasion, there are a few leftover cups of juice and since we bring our juice in a styrofoam cup from the congregation we worship at two hours earlier, we oftentimes drink what juice is left over. However, sometimes our residents don’t drink all of their indiviudal cup and so we have to be careful, for sanitation reasons, not to drink what the resident has left in the cup. To make sure that never happened, I would only drink full cups that had been left over, and we’d dump the cups that were half full, just in case someone had already drank out of them but didn’t get all the juice.
On one Sunday after worship, I threw away the empty cups from the communion tray. There was only one full cup left. I picked it up and started to chug down that 1 oz of juice from the “full” cup. As I did so, my 9 year old son said, “Don’t drink that!” After filling my mouth with the tasty grape juice, I put the cup down and asked him why, after all, it was a full cup and no one had taken a drink from it.
My son then explained, “I took all the cups in the communion tray and poured all the leftover juice from each cup into that one.” I let out a big “Yuck!” and remembered Beatrice and her hacking cough during the middle of our singing, “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder,” and other sniffles and sneezes throughout our worship time.
I made my son promise he’d never do that again. I hope he’s kept that promise over the years, cause I still drink the leftover juice sometimes. However, worship at Heartland will always be one of the highlights of my week, germs, or no germs…I am definitely blessed by the residents we serve at Heartland each week.