The Small Place

In the last few months my Sunday morning worship time has been in the small tucked away off the main road churches.  Most of them have stood there for a very long time.  Many of them have cemeteries which tell their age much as gray hair and wrinkled skin mark me as one who has lived for a spell.  They are always intriguing places to be.  To stand in a place where several generations have worshipped is an experience which fires up the imagination and creates a desire for the real stories which could be told if churches could talk.  

Most of these off the road churches are hardly half filled and most look as much to the past as to the future.  But, there are always exceptions.  In this day when the mega church has such a hold on the people around it, there is great pleasure in seeing a young preacher standing in the pulpit of a nearby about to close church preaching the Word and daring the people to dream dreams they had forgotten how to dream.  And, it is even more exciting to see the lively caring fellowships which have taken root over the years in those forgotten churches.    

I cannot but have hope for the small church whose people worry about having enough in the plates to keep going.  The small church may not have the glitze and drama of the large church, but it has real people who know about living with one another through the good and bad times, who have a long history of faith in the risen Christ, and who believe above all else that God is going to show up in the ordinary things of their lives.   I would rather sit with those folks than the ones who go to be entertained in the places where the power brokers and social elites gather. As the old song says, "Gimme that old time religion, it's good enough for me."