THINGS NEVER MENTIONED IN SEMINARY:

Sunday was our annual congregational meeting following worship in our Fellowship Hall. Nominating & Building & Grounds committees (small committees though they are)were to host the coffee hour. One white-haired saint of the church made a point to mention a week ago Sunday, that she hoped there would be something more than just donuts, if you expect people to stay.
Well, now she had a point. When the Deacons met on Wednesday (1 is on Nominating committee, 1 is wife of Nominating committee member), the annual meeting was mentioned and someone mentioned donuts. I simply commented that perhaps we could use something a bit more since it would be lunch time. One offered some Trail Bologna (good Amish country cold sausage) and cheese and crackers. Great.
I began to think of the kids and knew you have to feed the crowd to make it more enjoyable and way of gathering. What good is the meeting when everyone's stomach is growling and all they're thinking is: how much longer 'til this is over and we can get lunch?
So, I made three salads - egg, salmon and chicken on Saturday.
On Sunday morning, I went through 3 loaves of bread (2 white, 1 wheat)and made an assembly line smearing salad on slices of bread and topping them with another slice, then cutting the slice diagonally into triangles and cutting the triangles diagonally into smaller triangles. After, I filled a serving plate, I went on and made American cheese sandwiches, cutting them in the same way. Next the PB & J with the same process. I put the cheese and PB & J onto a serving plate and the salmon salad sandwiches on their own seperate plate.
(The day before I made folded over index cards and a multi-colored pencil to write the name of the different sandwiches so people knew if it was chicken or tuna or what the salmon was!)
In a half hour I had all the sandwiches made, having gone through three loaves of bread and wondered if there was enough. I bagged up the left over salads, thinking they could be smeared on crackers.
Right after worship, I had to go to the office and run something off the computer which took some time. By the time I got upstairs, most of the sandwiches were gone. I got a triangle of American cheese. The trail bologna had vanished. There was some Swiss cheese, crackers, veges and dip and cookies still left.
Had I not made the salads and sandwiches, there would've been many hungry people. The kids gobbled up the cheese and PB & J sandwiches.
I sent one woman whose daughter is disabled and whose grandson lives with her, home with some egg and chicken salads.
There was still some left for LH and I to have a sandwich when we arrived back home.
I don't recall it ever mentioned in Seminary, that sometimes you have to literally feed your people, with homemade sandwiches!!! Even then, the meeting lasted less than 1/2 an hour! (which I suppose is OK that there weren't any major issues or concerns weighing heavily on people's hearts - outside the big gloomy ones of aging membership, no new members, tight finances, but we have 5 young people in the confirmation process, kids involved in Tone Chimes, choir and a small youth group and younger members who stepped in and have taken over some of the activities the older women and folks could no longer do without so much as a complaint! So there are signs of hope along the way!)
It's just one of those things that never got mentioned in Seminary...
I'm sure there are many more! Care to share what never was mentioned in Seminary that you ended up doing?