Flying Buttresses and Empty Pews

If you haven’t been there yourself, you’ve probably seen the pictures: enormous, beautiful cathedrals built to hold hundreds of worshipers that, now, will see maybe twenty people occupy the pews on a Sunday morning.  The great worship houses of Europe, which once overflowed with people, now sit empty and the people who live in the surrounding villages (and cities) look disdainfully on the buildings and have little patience for anyone who calls themselves a Christian.

“Been there, done that” describes their attitude pretty well.

Could it happen here?

We have, at most recent count, 47 churches in our little town of Dumas.  [Or, one church for every two Mexican food restaurants.]  On any given Sunday morning, an average of less than 10% of our population attends one of those churches.  An interesting topic for discussion could be: “In one hundred years, what will the church scene of Dumas look like?”  Will any of the congregations that now meet still be here a century hence (should Christ tarry)?

There is, of course, no way of knowing.  We are notoriously bad at predicting the future.  For instance, it being 2014, we’re supposed to have flying cars and hoverboards and an American League team in Miami by next year.

On the negative side, it would be easy to prognosticate that, ten decades from now, the churches of Dumas and America will be just as empty and ineffectual as the churches of Europe and England.  We have compromised where we should have stood firm and argued with each other when we should have been united and preserved what should have been abandoned and set fire to what we should have kept.  We’re seen as wishy-washy, old-fashioned, and irrelevant.  We’ve been hoping Huey Lewis was a prophet and it would one day be hip to be square but we just keep getting more square (in the world’s eyes) while we have a sort of hip dysplasia that keeps us anchored to our pews.

On the other hand, praise God that our God is greater than we are!  When Elijah sulked in a cave, wishing for death and whining that he was the last faithful man in Israel, God came to him and said there were still seven thousand people in Israel who were faithful to the one true God.  Not only that, there was still work for Elijah to do!

Elijah did the work he was called to do.  He established a school of the prophets and appointed Elisha to take his place.

And you know what happened?  Israel continued to decline, the people continued to abandon God, and eventually the kingdom fell and everyone went into captivity.

But God used Elijah to sow the seeds of faithfulness in those who would listen.  Eventually, God sent Jesus, the Messiah he had long promised.  Those seeds Gods planted through Elijah helped to make the soil ready for Christ’s incarnation.

So, I keep asking myself: what about me?  Am I going to keep fighting a rear-guard action, just waiting for the church to collapse, or am I going to let God use me like an Elijah: to prepare the people around me for the word of God?

Speculation about what the church might look like in a hundred years may have a place, but what is even more important is this: how will I let God use me today?