SATURDAY MORNING WITH CRANKY DON JOE | The Church Committee Has Been Planning a Pancake Breakfast Since Easter

By Cranky Don Joe

My name is Cranky Don Joe. Cranky DJ to a lot of my neighbors.

I am not an expert. Which immediately makes me more qualified than half the people on television.

Now before anybody sends me an angry email, calls the pastor, or starts an emergency prayer chain on my behalf, let me make something perfectly clear. I love my church. I love the people in my church. I even love the church hospitality committee, individually. Collectively, however, they possess the unique, terrifying ability to transform the simplest culinary task known to modern mankind into a bureaucratic project requiring the planning horizon and budget of the Panama Canal.

Friends, we have been planning a pancake breakfast since Easter. Not the Easter that is currently coming up on the calendar. The Easter that left us months ago. The flowers have bloomed, the flowers have died, the arctic mosquitoes have returned to Minnesota, children have finished entire school years, my electric bill has doubled, Larry has become an international soccer expert, and I am fairly certain one of our committee members has celebrated another milestone birthday. We are still actively discussing pancakes.

Pancakes. Not international nuclear disarmament. Not a sweeping constitutional amendment. Not whether our local transit system should finally retire every orange construction barrel before the first blizzard hits. Pancakes. Flour, water, eggs, and heat.

The first meeting seemed harmless enough. Somebody stood up after Sunday service, leaned against a pew, and said, "Wouldn't it be nice if we had a church pancake breakfast this summer?" Now, in a rational, functioning world, another human being would respond, "That is a wonderful idea, let's pick a Saturday morning." Meeting adjourned. That is how ordinary citizens solve ordinary problems.

Instead, our committee chairman smiled in that calm, deeply reassuring, heavily medicated way that only committee chairmen can smile and uttered the five words that have delayed more human progress than catastrophic blizzards: "We should form a committee."

Friends, I felt the physical temperature in the fellowship hall drop ten degrees. I have learned something during my decades on this earth. Whenever a person says, "We should form a committee," what they really mean is, "I would like to postpone making a basic executive decision until several highly respectable people can help me completely avoid making it."

The newly formed committee met the following Tuesday. Attendance was excellent, the decaf coffee was plentiful, the frosted cookies were available, and human hope was still temporarily alive. The chairman opened with a beautiful prayer, perfectly appropriate. Then came introductions, also appropriate. Then came the formal approval of the previous meeting's minutes, which was highly interesting considering there had never been a previous meeting in human history. We approved them unanimously anyway. That is how dangerous our optimism was.

The chairman then unveiled what he proudly called "a preliminary strategic planning framework." Friends, I have purchased used automobiles and financed real estate properties with fewer legal documents. There were colored agendas, matching three ring binders, budget worksheets, volunteer interest forms, parking lot flow diagrams, emergency medical contact sheets, a draft timeline, a revised draft timeline, and something titled a "fellowship hospitality philosophy statement." Philosophy? We are serving hot cakes to neighbors, not negotiating a global border treaty.

Then came the first great ideological debate: what specific brand of syrup do we use? Now, if you are new to the grueling world of committee life, you probably believe this discussion lasts three minutes. Bless your sweet heart.

One gentleman believed only genuine, grade A pure organic maple syrup honored the spiritual dignity of the occasion. Another insisted high fructose pancake syrup was more economical for the parish coffers. A third suggested offering a hybrid choice of both. Then Brenda raised her hand and asked about the sugar free options. That opened a heavy wooden door that should have remained permanently padlocked until judgment day.

Suddenly we weren't discussing syrup anymore. We were debating modern nutrition, personal health, financial stewardship, parish budget priorities, regional diabetes awareness, the agricultural economy of the Midwest, and international maple production trends. At one point, I became reasonably certain we were about to subpoena the Canadian Ministry of Agriculture.

Then Larry raised his hand. Naturally. Whenever Larry raises his hand in a confined space, I instinctively look for the nearest emergency exit.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Larry began, adjusting his posture, "before we select the fluid viscosity of the syrup, shouldn't we first establish our overarching syrup distribution strategy?"

Distribution strategy. Friends, pancakes have been consumed by human beings for centuries. Civilizations have risen and fallen, massive empires have completely disappeared from the map, and people have somehow managed to pour sweet liquid onto a starch circle without developing a corporate distribution strategy.

Larry then pulled out a napkin and proposed three separate syrup stations: one regular, one sugar free, and one premium. Premium? Larry, it's a church breakfast in a basement, we are not boarding a transatlantic flight to London. The chairman nodded thoughtfully and said, "I think Larry raises an operational point." Of course he does. Larry always raises points. Unfortunately, they are rarely attached to actual ideas. By the end of the evening, no syrup had been selected, no date had been approved, and no batter had been purchased, but we had successfully voted to create a temporary Syrup Evaluation Subcommittee.

Friends, never trust a committee that creates another committee. That is exactly how Western civilization collapses.

I went home that night and told my grandson we had spent two and a half hours discussing syrup. He looked at me with the genuine concern usually reserved for medical emergencies. "Grandpa," he asked, "why didn't somebody just walk over to the grocery store and buy the syrup?"

I stared at him for a long, silent moment. The innocence of youth is a beautiful thing. "Son," I finally said, "if people simply bought the syrup, there wouldn't be another mandatory meeting next Tuesday." And in committee life, another meeting is always the ultimate objective.

The following Tuesday, we gathered again in our designated folding chairs. I arrived ten minutes early, not because I was eager, but because I wanted to witness the beginning of human history. Surely, I thought, we have already settled the syrup crisis. There cannot possibly be another conversation about syrup on this planet.

Friends, I drastically underestimated the stamina of the committee.

The Syrup Evaluation Subcommittee proudly presented its formal findings. They had conducted what Larry described as "informal consumer research," which apparently meant cornering six unsuspecting people after Sunday service and asking whether they preferred maple or artificial flavoring. The vote had ended in a dead heat, three to three. Larry stood at the podium looking disappointed. "We are going to need a much larger sample size before we pull the trigger."

A larger sample size. Larry, we are feeding sixty elderly neighbors, not conducting clinical trials for the National Institutes of Health.

Before anyone could recover from that psychological blow, Brenda raised another catastrophic question: "What about the butter?"

The room became completely silent. Not thoughtful, just terrified. Because everybody in that basement understood exactly what had just happened: we had escaped the syrup trenches only to wander directly into the Butter Wars.

Salted versus unsalted. Whipped versus solid block. Individual plastic tubs versus large communal vats. Real dairy versus plant based alternative butter spreads. One brave gentleman quietly suggested margarine. Friends, I have not seen an audience react that aggressively since somebody accidentally called the Minnesota Vikings a "consistent, structurally sound playoff team." The chairman wisely intervened before punches were thrown. "Perhaps," he said, "we should establish a temporary Butter Review Team."

I nearly stood up and walked into traffic. Not because I opposed the review, but because I wanted to escape before they created a Toast Advisory Council.

Larry, of course, immediately volunteered to chair the Butter Review Team. Naturally. Larry volunteers for absolutely everything except carrying the heavy folding tables. He explained that our butter placement would drastically affect what he called "guest flow."

Guest flow. Apparently, people attending a local church breakfast are now expected to navigate the fellowship hall like panicked passengers changing planes in Atlanta during a thunderstorm. According to Larry's hand drawn diagram, guests would collect plates first, proceed to pancakes, continue to sausage link deployment, turn left toward the butter zone, merge carefully into the syrup corridor, avoid cross traffic near the orange juice station, and finally arrive at the coffee urns without creating what he labeled "operational congestion points."

Friends, we are serving breakfast, not evacuating Manhattan.

The chairman thanked Larry for his "valuable operational insight," while I quietly thanked the Lord for granting me the patience to avoid a misdemeanor charge.

Then we moved on to napkins. Now, if you believe napkins are simply pieces of folded paper designed to wipe grease off a chin, you have clearly never attended a parish meeting. Should they be plain white? Seasonal pastel? Custom printed with the church logo? Two ply? Three ply? Environmentally friendly recycled fiber? One person genuinely suggested cloth napkins. Cloth. For sticky pancakes. At this point, I began wondering whether we were opening a five star luxury resort or serving batter to seniors.

Meanwhile, poor Mrs. Henderson, who has been flipping pancakes for church events since Richard Nixon was in the White House, raised her hand. "Why don't we just use the exact same napkins we used last year?"

Silence. Complete, agonizing silence. You would have thought she had suggested replacing the sanctuary altar with a two lane bowling alley. Larry adjusted his reading glasses, cleared his throat, and said, "I think we should remain open to contemporary innovation."

Innovation. Friends, pancakes reached physical perfection centuries ago. Nobody has ever eaten a pancake, wiped their mouth, and thought, "This meal would be dramatically better if the napkin reflected contemporary Scandinavian design principles."

Then came perhaps the greatest sentence ever spoken during any administrative meeting in human history. The chairman cleared his throat and said, "I think we may need another meeting to finalize the napkin matrix."

Another meeting for napkins. I briefly considered checking whether my membership could be transferred to another denomination before the syrup hit the table.

My grandson asked later that evening how the progress went. I told him we had made tremendous strides. "We decided on the color of the volunteer sign up sheet."

He looked at me, confused. "Did you decide when the breakfast actually is?" "No." "What about the menu?" "No." "What about the actual pancakes?" "No." "What did you actually decide, Grandpa?" "We are using blue ink on the sign up sheet."

He stared at me for several seconds. Then he asked the kind of profound question only a child can ask: "Grandpa... are adults okay?"

That question has stayed with me all week. Because somewhere between childhood and adulthood, many of us develop a curious, pathological belief that every single simple decision deserves extraordinary discussion. Maybe we think we're being thorough, maybe we believe we're preventing mistakes, or maybe, just maybe, we just enjoy being together in a room more than we realize.

I complained all the way home, I complained while making my evening coffee, I complained directly to Larry on the phone, and I even complained to myself in the mirror. But then I caught something I had completely missed during all those grueling hours of debate.

Mrs. Henderson wasn't sitting there because of the pancakes. Larry wasn't drawing diagrams because of the syrup. Brenda wasn't arguing because of the napkins. They were there because they cared enough about the community, and about each other, to give up their Tuesday evenings for something that would only last two hours on a Saturday morning.

I still maintain we could have planned the entire breakfast in forty-five minutes flat. But I also know that a forty-five minute meeting wouldn't have included nearly as much neighborhood laughter. It wouldn't have included Larry's completely impossible traffic diagrams, it wouldn't have included Brenda insisting that cloth napkins elevate the dining experience, and it certainly wouldn't have included watching six perfectly reasonable adults spend twenty-five minutes debating whether the butter should be placed to the left or the right of the pancakes as though the future of Western civilization depended on the outcome.

Next Tuesday is our final planning meeting. At least that's what the chairman promised. Larry has already hinted that we may need a post breakfast evaluation session to review guest flow. Naturally. This is the exact same man who once proposed creating a formal written agenda for an informal backyard conversation.

Until next time, Cranky DJ

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