I grew up in a very small, rural, southern, baptist church. I can remember my childhood days of all-day gospel singings, dinner on the grounds, hide-and-seek in the cemetery, and armed battles with the berries from the holly bushes. I can even remember a time when we didn't have bathrooms but rather small outhouses made of concrete blocks and having to be aware of snakes when we went to the bathroom. The people there were genuine. They treasured family and they loved Jesus. A piano was the only instrument played and they talked and sang about heaven, a lot. Most of the songs, were about the cross, heaven, and enduring this worlds trials and heartache, or victory in one day obtaining that crown. Of course "Amazing Grace" was a staple for every service.
Sunday school for me mostly consisted of fantastic Bible stories, memory verses, and memorizing the books of the Bible, a skill that i still use often to this day and one that seems to have been lost among our latest generations because my kids and most others their age still fumble through their bibles endlessly when asked to turn to the book of Obadiah.
Our church was small, usually less than 100 at it's best of times. Every Sunday, we brought whomever had birthdays that week, to the front of the church during the service and sang "Happy Birthday" to them. Sunday's were mostly filled with smiling faces, many related, closely or distantly. It was a family and everyone seemed to have their favorite spot to sit in the church. It was noticeable if someone decided to sit somewhere out of the ordinary.
I spent my entire childhood attending that church and every Sunday brought a fiery sermon to my ears. It was always the kind of sermons where the preacher had to keep a couple of handkerchiefs in his hand to keep all the slobber wiped off his chin as he belted out what God had called them to say that day. I don't think that I remember a sermon that didn't have some reference to Hell in it. Our small pack of kids would wait anxiously for the preacher to get to the "altar call". We knew that those few verses of "Just as I am" being played signaled that it was almost time for a new game of "freeze tag" to ensue in the parking lot with one of the bushes beside the church building serving as the "base".
Church was small. It was simple. People loved each other even though, just like anywhere else, it was full of its share of gossip and maybe more so because it was so small that everyone knew everyone's business. As many churches in the Baptist faith at that time, it had more than its share of legalism and I wasn't even aware that the racism that I occasionally heard spewed was contrary to God's word until later in my life, but that was the culture of the rural southern church.
It was all well-intended, though. My parents we're bringing me up in the same ways that they had been brought up. Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6) was their core belief. They loved me. They just wanted to protect me from growing up and giving into the lures of the world just as many others that had came through the church and eventually wandered off without ever looking back to the church unless it was for a funeral.
I had a small core group of church friends that were close to my age. It was probably no more than 10, probably closer to 5. We grew up together in that church. I even found my first few romantic crushes there once I became old enough to realize that girls had a bigger purpose than being easy freeze-tag targets. As I grew threw my teenage years, I began to get a little envious of my friends in school who attended the "big" churches. We lived in a small town, so even the largest church wasn't that big on today's scale, but back then, it seemed to be huge. They went on cool trips. They had choir tours. They had Tuesday night bible studies and sang with guitars. They had this guy that spent all his day dreaming up fun things for them to do. He was called a youth pastor.
We had our own good leaders in our small church. They wanted our youth group to grow and they cared about the kids. They tried some things but our church was just so far away from the center of town, it just couldn't attract like the big churches in the town.
I stayed in that small church until I got out on my own, in college, and began to make my own decisions. Church wasn't much of a priority then. I would attend to appease my parents and my own conscience but I knew that at some point I would begin to search and seek my own direction. Most of my friends from church had done the same.
After those years, the church remained about the same, never really growing. Small youth groups continue to move in and out, most following the same path that I followed. Attending because their parents attend, but moving on to another place once they can make their own choices. The little church's traditions remain strong to this day and so does their faith. In many ways, God has blessed them. They are still family there and for the most devout members, nothing keeps them away from their church.
There is some concern amongst their membership and leadership though, as to why they aren't growing, the older members are still getting older, and there aren't many younger members anymore. There's a genuine fear that 20 years from now, the church will cease to exist. My dear mother who loves Jesus dearly, and loves her church just as much, shared with me her concerns that her beloved church isn't growing and slowly dwindling. She seemed heartbroken. They had all been so faithful for so many years. They had loved Jesus with all they had, worked so hard to keep up the church. Why didn't it grow? Why did all the kids abandon them? What could they have done? What could they do now to ensure that their beautiful church in the wildwood would survive the next 20 years?
It's so easy to cast blame as to why. It's so easy to blame the culture. It's easy to blame the kids that left and never returned. It's easy to blame the large churches in better locations with their contemporary services, and praise and worship music, and drums. It's so easy to blame Satan himself.
As I've learned the past few weeks however, in my reading of David Platt's book, Radical, it's our own culture that's to blame. We have built our churches to recognize success only by the numbers on the board, where attendance and membership is the measuring stick along with the size of the steeple.
We all tend to get caught up in the numbers to measure our spiritual success. Unfortunately, we are all wrong. God can use the small churches just as he can use the big churches. I can tell you today, that my core group of friends that I had in my youth at that church were discipled in those days. We were taught about the grace and goodness of Jesus and His sacrifice for us and I bet that we all can recite the books of the Bible from memory and can turn to the book of Obadiah in a flash. We may have all went our separate ways but we left that church changed for the better and as far as I know, we are all still serving as part of other churches helping to create other disciples for the future.
I wanted to reach out to my mother and tell her that Jesus doesn't live in the numbers. He lives in our hearts. God used them and their church in magnificent ways and the rewards will not be known in this life.
When I had children of my own, I knew immediately that I wanted them raised in church. I wanted them to be taught and discipled and to know the truths so that when they hit their late teens they would have a good foundation when they set off to find their own way and develop their own beliefs. Did I choose to take them back to that little country church for that? No, I didn't. Those times were gone. My children needed to be taught and trained in a way that prepared them to be salt in our current culture. I didn't want to protect them from everything, I wanted to prepare them to endure everything and so far, I can say that I'm blessed and thankful for the work that God has done in their lives. My children are bold for Christ, much bolder than when I was their age.
I can only pray that my grandchildren will be blessed enough to have parents that will be bold enough to put aside my wishes and dreams and do what's best for their children and their discipleship.
Romans 8:28 tells us that God is working through all things for those who love Him. I wish I could just wrap my arms around all those old men who have already passed away who used to yell at me for stepping on graves in the church cemetery or giving me dirty looks when my car stereo was too loud when pulling up in the church parking lot, and just tell them. Thank you! Your faithfulness to your church made a difference in my life which in turn made a difference in the life of my children.
Success in our spiritual life cannot be summed up in numbers on Sunday. It should be summed up in the disciples that have emerged from that church. The faithful members of that small country church should know that just because the "kids" didn't decide to return to that little country church doesn't mean that the church did anything wrong. Maybe it was that they did everything RIGHT.
