Church basement ladies in training

Here’s a perplexing question for you: At what age is a woman officially considered a “church basement lady?”

While our church has kitchens on both its basement and main floors, technically, on Sunday, we were “church main floor ladies.”

This past Sunday, my “gal pals” at church and I asked ourselves that very question: “At what age is a woman officially considered a ‘church basement’ lady?” As we have for several months now, Sharon, Jo and I have filled the fourth-Sunday-of-the-month slot to serve coffee and the always-popular donut holes following worship. The job not only includes setting up the post-worship “buffet” but the clean-up, too. 

Our trio works well together. We roll up our sleeves and do what has to be done, whether that’s filling coffee pots, filling glasses of water, loading the dishwasher or wiping down the tables. 

Over the past several months of taking “our turn” on the calendar, we’ve learned how to operate the massive coffee machine, the dishwasher, have been instructed not to immerse the coffee pots in water, have plenty of creamer on the counter and make sure to hand in the donation bag at the worship center or to one of the pastors.

This past Sunday, we were blessed with several rounds of faithful “church basement ladies” offering up some of their “well-seasoned” advice on how to do this or how to do that, what not to do and what has to be done.

Although we’ve been told dozens of times before by dozens of “church basement ladies,” we took all of their advice in stride. If I’m being completely honest, we had a few whispers amongst ourselves, something that mimicked, “This isn’t our first rodeo, ladies.”

I’m confident that there will come a day when a trio of younger “gal pal” worshippers will step up and take a turn at serving coffee and the always-popular donut holes post-worship services. They, too, will likely warrant someone to tell them all of the “do’s and don’ts”, where items are kept, how to run the massive coffee machine and dish washer, and where they’ll need to turn in the bag of donations to.

I also imagine these future “church basement ladies in training” will one day be whispering the same thing amongst themselves, too: “This isn’t our first rodeo, ladies.” I guess it’s just all part of the training of becoming a “church basement (or main level) lady.”