Cleanliness is key to godliness

They are the infrastructure of every church. They keep the carpets clean, the sidewalks shoveled and the coffeemakers working. Now they have formed their own support group, the only one of its kind in the country, to help them do their jobs.

The Minnesota Association of Church Facilities Managers is a professional association that runs the gamut in terms of faiths and sizes, from mega-churches with large, full-time staffs to neighborhood churches with volunteer janitors. They get together one Tuesday morning a month to "share our problems and ways to overcome them," said Keith Koenig, property manager at Hope Presbyterian Church in Richfield and spokesman for the group, which calls itself MACFM.

"It doesn't matter what your faith is or how big your facility is," he said. "All places of worship face the same challenge: What can we do with limited resources?"

The importance that the members place on the group is evident in the attendance at meetings. There are 58 members, and average turnout is 50. They want to recruit more members. (Anyone interested can go to www.macfm.org.)

"It's great for networking," Koenig said. "We can find contractors that other members have worked with and trust. We have vendors come in and talk about new products. We have lectures on [building] code changes."

They're also combining their buying power to get discounts on everything from supplies to carpet.

"Combined, we have more than 5 million square feet of property," said the president, Ken Reineccius, director of operations at Pax Christi Catholic Community in Eden Prairie. "That's a lot of buying power."

"Anyone who has dealt with that problem tells what they did and how it worked," he said. "There's an awful lot of experience here waiting to be tapped."

Don't wait 'til next time There's a once-in-a-millennium event coming up for Jews.

Birkat Hachama, or "Blessing of the Sun," happens every 28 years when the vernal equinox, as calculated by traditional methods, falls on a Tuesday at sundown. This year, Tuesday's sunset also marks the start of Passover.

Because the ways of measuring time have changed over the centuries, there's some dispute over how often Birkat Hachama and the start of Passover occur at the same time. But no matter how it's calculated, it doesn't happen often: about once every 1,500 years or so.

On the road to recovery The Rev. Frederick Campbell, a familiar face in the Twin Cities before he was named bishop of the Diocese of Columbus, Ohio, is recovering after having had his left leg amputated below the knee this week.

Although a native of New York, Campbell is a Minnesotan at heart. He was ordained at the St. Paul Cathedral in 1980 and, until being assigned to Columbus five years ago, had spent his career in the Twin Cities, serving at a number of parishes and eventually being named the archdiocese's auxiliary bishop. His brother, the Rev. Theodore Campbell, is pastor of Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Golden Valley.

Want to send him a get-well card? The address is: Catholic Diocese of Columbus, 197 E. Gay St., Columbus, OH 43215.