Day 17: The faith of my ancestors

 

I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees. 

What was the Lorax? 

Any why was it there? 

And why was it lifted and taken somewhere from the far end of town where the Grickle-grass grows? The old Once-ler still lives here.

Ask him, he knows. 

I worry about the the church. When I was growing up, 70% of people were members of a religious organization. Today, that number is under half. I see it in my church, in churches I visit. The church is growing small and it's getting older. 

My church is maybe half the size it was in 2019. The pandemic seemed to accelerate a shift that was happening gradually and many churches find themselves too small to support staff or buildings and are making hard choices about what that means. My church isn't there but it struggles with being a small church when it's been so used to being a big church.

Personally, I've wrestled with the issue of how to be faithful in the face of this trend -- evangelism? A new approach to church? New ministries? Or...a quiet acceptance that the world is choosing another way?

I was at our synod's elementary school retreat. Kids from churches from all over California gathered in the Redwoods for a weekend of camp songs and Jesus stories and prayers sung to superman, the Addams family and Johnny Appleseed. I sat for a while with a retired pastor and we chatted about the future of the church while we watched the kids prepare skits and make neon lanyard keychains. He said something that day, that has given me deep hope.

"There is always a remnant faithful."

The ark.

Lots family.

The 7,000 who didn't bow to Baal in the time of Elijah.

The exiles returning from Babylon. 

The 12 disciples in the upper room.

Sometimes the faithful, must persist for hundreds of years of darkness to hold on to the faith. They must practice and teach, read and pray while the world burns around them. 

But God does not forsake them and from the remnant, God rebuilds.

Perhaps there is as call to do things differently. To be church differently. To worship in different places at different times. But perhaps, the call is to draw on the courage and faith of our ancestors and continue gathering dispite our small numbers. To break bread. To say the words. To remember the promises. To hold onto the faith.

For in that, we have the seed and a seed can be planted in the fullness of time.