Church life slows down in the summer. Bible studies go on hiatus, worship services combine, and office staffers cut out early. We are in Ordinary Time, counting the Sundays since Pentecost, but the half-filled pews evoke dwindling embers more than a church on fire.
It is no time to start a stewardship campaign. Everyone, including Jesus, seems to be on vacation.
Even for me, an island pastor in a tourist town, summer ministry is mostly about maintenance. Every Sunday, faithful churchgoing tourists dutifully boost our attendance, but our actual church members are gone. As the summer gets longer, the excuses get wilder:
"I'm working three jobs."
"I have to take my kids to camp."
"It's my one day to run errands."
"I have to catch a wave while the conditions are right."
But just when the summer malaise seems to settle into the sanctuary for good, the whistler shows up. One Sunday every summer, this elderly tourist in T-shirt and sandals slips into the back pew and waits for the first hymn. With unnerving accuracy and power, he matches the pitch of every song, every choral response and every musical interlude with a crisp, clear whistle.
Spellbound for an hour by his unique gift, I am reminded of an essential truth: church is defined by the people present, not the people missing. We pray for the sick and the traveling, we grieve the loss of our loved ones, and we talk about the unchurched. We feel their absence, but we -- the souls who are present -- are the ones who give the church its incarnational glory. Straggling and bleary-eyed, the people who show up form a powerful whole. They are the body of Christ for that appointed time.
