O he used to call me Tubby.
And it’s true that i am chubby,
Cause I can’t tie my shoes no mo.
Well, I cornered him one night–
Put him down, in fear and fright,
Like a bag full of trash on the flo.
It was just the way he said it.
Justice served, I take the credit,
That he don’t call me Tubby no mo.
The middle-aged preacher complained to an old friend, “We are doing all we can to attract folks to our church, but attendance is still declining.” The old guy said, “Have you thought about soliciting the poor of the parish?” The minister said, “Jim, you know that’s not practical. Many of our members would leave. It would ruin the church as we know it.” The old guy said, “Is the objective of your church to increase membership, or to be in ministry?”
God cannot magically make the right thing happen. The task is up to us. What God can do is give us the insight, courage, strength and endurance required to make it happen.
Angels are indeed among us. Demons are among us as well. Demons aren’t invisible, but they are inconspicuous. There may be two or three of them around you in a situation without your even suspecting it. The angels can save you, but not by hand-to-hand combat with the demons. Instead, the angels point out the demons to you. Once you see them, you can drive them away. How? Just throw the Good Book at them. You don’t have to make a direct hit. Just getting close to the Word is enough to make any demon throw down his pitchfork and run.
While all the other churches in town were growing and building new facilities, membership and attendance at the West Side church remained about the same. They somehow managed to meet a limited budget each year, but they were never able to launch a building campaign. They needed to spruce up their church, as it was becoming just a bit diwn at the heels. Lacking funds, they resorted to prayer. Each week, prayer for a new facility was part of the worship service. The pastor exhorted the congregation to pray daily for a new and modern building.
Then came the miracle. One Sunday morning, as thje sun dawned,k it shone on a beutiful new church that had replaced theui old church. It was liike a miniature cathedral, far grander than any other church in the town, built of stone, with a square crenellated bell tower. Within, there was not only a lovely little chapel but also a row of Sunday school rooms and a section with handsomely appointed offices. Part of the miracle was that the furniture in the old building had been moved to the new structure.
It was the talk of the town, the county, the state, the nation and the world. All lauded the appearance of the new church as an example of the power of prayer. For several weeks after the the event, attendance at Sunday worship quadrupled. The Financial Committee, on the expectation of a significant increase in membership. began to consider hiring new staff and expanding the pariing lot. Weekly attendance contnued to grow until one Sunday. around a year later, when the ushers reported a slight dropoff. It turned out to be the beginning of a trend, a progressive decline in attendance, as the novelty of the new place wore off. Eventually, the church leadership was forced to confess that attendance was about as it had been a year ago, before the lovely new church had suddenly materialized.
The Financial Committee had shelved its plans for hiring staff and turned its attention to facilities maintenance. Although the new building was perfect when installed, after a year, there were some matters needing attention. Replacing windows broken by vandalism had always been necessary, but the windows in the new building were more costly. Moreover, when the new complex sound system needed repair, the service was expensive. The pipe organ that had replaced the old electronic organ needed maintenance, which the manufacturer said was normal. And so on. In all, the congregation would be called upon to increase their annual financial contributions substantially in order to keep the new building in shape.
The congregation complied. The pastor and church leaders assured the parishioners that the stunning beauty of the new facility would lead in the long run to steady and sure growth. This proved to be incorrect. Every year, the church gained some members, but every year, it lost more than it gained.
Ten years later, faced with continuously eroding membership, the congregation voted to sell the magnificent church to another congregation and use the funds to move to a more affluent part of town. This plan failed because no one wanted to buy the building. In time, there was one offer. The wildly popular Angels of Prosperity TV ministry sought to establish a respectable image. The offer amounted to only five cents on the dollar, but it was that or nothing. The congregation accepted and then voted to disband. Its members dispersed to other churches in the area.
There are certain direct similarities between a church and a busuness, not the least of which is responsible financial management. Overall, though, a church is quite different from a business because they have entirely different purposes. The purpose of a business is tio earn a profit; the purpose of a church is to ptomote the Kingdom of God.
There is another practical difference, which is in the wayhe two organizations relate to potential customers. The business solicits everone. Customers are limited only to those who cannot afford the products or services of the business, but beyond that, there are no restrictions on potential customers. A church, in contrast, is sekective about those to whom it attemps to market its services. They need to meet certain guidelines so as to be both socially and economically compatible with the congregation. As a consequence, few churches attempt to attract the poor to membership.
The modern church is in this respect quite similar to the pagan temples of ancient days. The temple was an industry, demanding the service of priests, attendants, musicians and maintenance workers. The Jewish temple must have had special persons to handle the wastes from ritual sacrifice. Monotheists who decried the great gods of these temples threatened also the livelihood of all these employees. So it is today. Threaten the churchkl and you threaten the livelihood of many.
We who profess Christianity sing, “I want to be like Jesus in my heart.”
We do want to be like Jesus, but we can’t.
There are two obstacles.
The first is that Jesus makes inhuman demands on us. For starters, ”Love your enemies.”
The second is that we have to earn significant amounts of money to survive. Jesus didn’t. He had no wife, no children. He needed to provide only for himself, and his wants were few. His sole possession at the time of his death was his robe.
It is different for us. We are responsible for our own survival, and many of us have dependents.
Imitating Jesus is especially difficult for preachers. Whether a preacher has a family or not, he expects to live in a house and wear decent clothes.
Jesus and his disciples were mendicants. Preachers are mendicants also, though in a ritualized fashion. They persuade the congregation that giving to the church is doing God’s will. A large part of God’s will is that the preacher live, at the least, comfortably.
Most preachers are consequently unable to imitate Jesus by bringing good news to the poor, which Jesus said was his primary mission. The donations that preachers require for their living are beyond the means of the poor.
The poor are out of place in almost every established church. They look and talk out of place, and sometimes they smell out of place. We are glad when they leave, and we hope they won’t return.
Is this state of affairs wrong? Perhaps not, but it is not imitating Jesus.
Prior to the 1929 stock market crash. my dad was a successful stockbroker in Houston. As a result of the crash. he and my mother lost their house and all their other possessions. My father chose to stay in Houston. My mother and I sought refuge on my grandparents’ farm, not far from Red Cloud, Nebraska. Today I think of the farm often. It draws me. I have a sense of belonging there.
My cousin Mary Lea and I are the only persons on earth today who remember that part of Webster County. I am the only person who truly remembers the farm, because Mary Lea lived a half mile down the road and rarely visited. The farm house had neither electricity nor indoor plumbing. In this respect it was like the other farm houses in the area and like the one-room country school I attended. While I lived there, I was quite unconscious of the primitive nature of our existence. It was the norm for everyone we knew except for my aunts, uncles and cousins who lived in the city and would come to visit from time to time.
Throughout the drought and depression years of 1930-1936, terrible for the grownups, I roamed the woods, slid down straw stacks, smelled the odors of the barn, and rode old Prince out to the corn field as he drew the wagon. I bathed in wash tubs and used the outdoor privy, or an outdoor chamber pot, like everyone else in that farm country. I read and studied by the light of kerosene lamps. At Christmas our tree was lit by real candles (for a few seconds, just long enough for everyone to see the lovely sight, then quickly extinguished).
The north-south road that divided the farm was important. Often I trudged out to the road to climb the cottonwood tree on the other side of it. Safely sheathed on my belt for this adventure was the one-dollar hunting knife I had bought by mail order. Once a day I would trudge out to the the mailbox on the road. In the morning, during the school year, I would go out to the road to begin a one-mile walk to school (go ahead, roll your eyes if you want to, but it’s true). Actually, during three of the six years during which I attended Pleasant Hill School, I would get a ride from the teacher as she passed the farm on the way to school. The school is gone now, but its location is marked by the cemetery across the road from where it once stood.
By 1936, my father and mother had saved enough money to be able to make a fresh start together in Houston. In 1938, my grandmother Boner died and my grandfather came to live with us in Houston. He died in 1941 and is buried outside of Kirwin, Kansas, next to my grandmother. Their four children inherited the farm. They sold it and divided the proceeds among them. Later the State of Nebraska bought the farm. It is now the Elm Creek Wildlife Refuge. .
I have since lived in Texas, Nebraska. Massachusetts, Maine and New Jersey. Once in a while, as I reflect on the places where I used to live, I have no desire to revisit them beyond the usual curiosity we all feel about such places– with one great exception: something inside draws me, and has always tugged at me, to revisit the site of my grandparents’ farm. Between 1936 and 2009, I was able to do so only three times, with only a few hours available on each occasion. Then in 2009, after long planning, my son and I were able to spend two full days exploring the site. Every structure that once stood there is gone: the house, the barn, the privy, the chicken coop, the windmill, and the fences. The area is almost completely overgrown with tough, twisted little trees, thick brush and weeds. We discovered no artifacts. Deer, turkeys, racoons and red-winged blackbirds live there now.
The chief link to the past, little changed from when I departed in 1936, is Elm Creek. Rising from a spring north of the farm site, it flows diagonally from west to east across the property, plunges under the railroad track and then turns southward toward the Republican River, forming the southeastern border of the property my grandparents once owned. While I lived there, I never heard that stream referred to as “Elm Creek.” It was just “the creek.”
Elm Creek flows today as it did throughout all the drought years. I have come to realize in recent years how the creek sustained my grandparents, my mother and me. We lived an almost normal life while farmers who lived on unwatered land were one by one forced to abandon their farms. Elm Creek was the source of ground water for the pump on the back porch of the farm house. It was where my mother used to take me wading. Along the way I watched the swift current tug at the watercress. Each wading expedition ended where the creek dived under the raillroad trestle. I would climb the embankment beside the trestle to the track above (it seemed a lot higher in those days than it does now). My grandfather grew alfalfa and corn in the fields near the creek, and he always planted a big vegetable garden near its banks. Mary Lea used to play at a spot farther south along the stream, where it is bridged by a road. She called it a “crick” then and calls it a “crick” today.
Today Elm Creek is a source of reassurance for me. Its being there today suggests that the farm house, the barn, the windmill, the chicken coop and the privy were really there once, as I remember them. Of course the railroad track is there today as it was in the 1930s, but it has been since renewed several times. The creek is the same.
As I said at the beginning of this reminiscence, I am quietly drawn to that patch of earth and to the creek flowing through it. Do I wish to go back there and build a retirement home near by? By no means! I am indeed retired. We live in Dallas and do not wish to leave our friends. Even if I had a fortune, I would not build a second home near Elm Creek. The land has no need of me. The crops in the surrounding fields look healthy, more so than they used to in the long-ago era of small farms and horse power. No, I will never physically go back. I am content to haunt the place, a ghost standing on the trestle, listening to the creek burble beneath. I feel frustrated, though, whenever a fisherman wades by. I want very much to tell him this story, but he cannot hear me, even if I shout.
Religion, or the Lack of It
Today, millions of people have become convinced that life can be well lived without religion. If we call this a disease, its symptoms are that in Europe, less thatn 10% of of the people attend Christian churches regularly and, in the United States, membership in mainline Christian denominations is steadily declining.
What’s the Reason?
Non-believers generally observe that the lives that Christians lead are no different from the lives that other people lead. Non-bbelievers thus perceive no advantage resulting from conversion to Christianity.
What’s the Root Problem?
The root problem is that, whereas Christian discipleship should involve the imitation of Jesus, the church instead redefines Christian discipleship as attendance at worship.
Do Church Leaders Understand This?
No. They recognize low worship attendance as the disease, not just a symptom.
How, Mistakenly, Do Church Leaders Respond?
They focus on increasing worship attendance, for example by building large, comfortable church buildings and, as another example, by replacing traditional worship rituals with modern “contemporary” rituals.
What Should They Do Instead?
First, leave the pulpit and take the Gospel directly to the people, as Jesus did in 33 AD and and as John Wesley did n 1750 AD. Second, preach the Gospel to the poor as well as the rich. Third, replace the church with the home as the basic vehicle for promulgating the the Gospel.
Will They Do This?
Not any time soon. The Church is an enornmous industry, providing a living to preachers, professors, musicians, builders and a host of associated workers. This arrangement creates a high standard of living for those nvolved, one that no one cares to sacrifice.
What Would Really Make a Difference?
Change will occur only as Christians in general live their lives in imitation of Jesus.
Although they’re good, they can be mean–
Like love and hate, they strike unseen.
Just to be safe, I’m here to say
I’ll never damn a gamma ray.
