Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

Sometimes I wonder if what we really want in our churches are seat fillers.

Seat fillers are an LA institution. When the season of televised awards shows rolls around, certain production challenges arise: among them, what to do with unsightly empty seats that occur when people get up to go to the bathroom.

Enter the seat fillers.

An acquaintance who scored tickets to one of the lesser awards shows described leaving his seat and coming back to find it occupied by a beautiful and impeccably dressed woman. Not an award show veteran, he wasn’t sure how one handled such a problem gracefully. But she popped up without a word, leaving as quietly as she had come.

She was a seat filler -- an attractive human who may or may not have been paid to keep the audience full while our friend used the restroom. At a big show like the Oscars, no payment is required. People vie for seat-filling gigs, work connections, buy new tuxes, all for the chance to be in the glittering theater for the big event.

One of my most loyal parishioners missed my installation to be a seat filler at the Oscars. We all understood. It’s an LA thing.

It makes us sad when our churches feel empty. When people get up and wander off -- to nursing homes, the suburbs, New Age spiritualities, megachurches, Sunday morning soccer leagues, or their final rewards -- they leave unsightly empty spots in the pews. We wish they were here, but if we can’t have them back, we would very much like for someone to fill their spots. Someone attractive and impeccably dressed, who already knows how to behave in church, who can navigate the hymnal and sing on key. Someone who will keep things full without demanding changes or adjustments in the system. We want more people, but we are much less sure about new people.

The problem, of course, is that God gives us neighbors, not seat fillers. More people means new people, and usually different people -- people who are not always properly dressed, and rarely know their way around the Book of Common Prayer. Worse yet, our neighbors may frame their spiritual needs in ways that don’t match very well with the Sunday morning experience we have on offer. They may not vie for the chance to fill our empty spots. Yet they are God’s gift to us, and we are meant to be God’s gift to them.