I must admit that I'm used to being invisible. After all, I'm a Generation Xer. There's a huge generation of Baby Boomers in front of me, and a huge generation of Boomers' children behind me. As far as politicians and mass marketers are concerned, I'm invisible. They cater to the huge generations of people that I'm sandwiched between.

But churches are supposed to be different from politics and big corporations. Churches are supposed to notice everyone. So why do I feel invisible to my church? My church is typical of most United Churches: two thirds of the members are fifty or older. There are a small number of GenXer's and boomer children. (I think the Emerging Spirit calls them Generation Y.) Most of the GenXer's and the GenYer's at my church have young children, so we take a great interest in the Sunday School, which is doing very well. So the spiritual needs of the 50+-year-olds are met. The spiritual needs of the children are met. Yet my spiritual needs are not. Almost every Sunday, I leave church feeling empty and isolated. I long for spiritual guidance and meaningful discussion. I wish for some spiritual food to nourish my soul through the coming week. But I am invisible. How can the church help me when they can't see me?

I've been trying to figure out when it was that I first became invisible. I think I can trace it back to when I went back to work when my first child was seven months old. I was busy juggling a full-time job and being a mother. Someone from the church called me and asked me if I could bake squares or cookies (from scratch) for the Christmas bazaar. Now I've been a member of this church for over 12 years, and I've never once been to the Christmas bazaar, because it's always on a weekday, which is when church members with jobs can't attend. Our Christmas bazaar, as lovely as it is, is only accessible to retirees. So here I am on the end of the phone: I have a full-time job and a baby, and I've just been asked to fit some baking time into my schedule, to make something for a lunch that I can't even go to. I figure that my time, my needs, my schedule must be invisible to this church.

But I've always wanted to help out my church. I like to believe that it's in giving that we receive, so I try to focus on what I can give. So I baked homemade brownies at 1 a.m. And then got up early for work the next day. I thought that I would feel good about what I did. But I didn't. When I dropped by the church on my way to work that morning to drop off the brownies, I felt so isolated. I felt like an outsider. I guess I was gradually starting to fade away.

I think I became completely invisible a few months later. I'm on the Session, and I brought up the topic of communion at a meeting. We have an open table policy, as do most United churches. Our church has a nice nursery, and often there are a few adults who miss the communion service because they are in the nursery. I wondered if it would be possible to bring communion to the nursery for those that are down there. We all agreed that it was possible. We all voted in favour of taking the elements down to the nursery. It was even written into the minutes. And yet, in the three years since then, it has never happened. I've reminded the servers from time to time about the people in the nursery, and yet no one ever brings the elements down to them. And I teach Sunday school, so I'm not in a position to bring communion down to the nursery myself.

So I asked myself: did I dream that Session meeting? I looked through the minutes, and sure enough, I didn't dream the whole thing. I must be invisible. In every sense of the word, I must be invisible to my church. My presence is unseen, and my voice unheard.

So how does one re-enter the realm of visibility in a United Church? I'll have to experiment.

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