As a child of about 5 years of age, I remember sitting with my parents and my sister on folding wooden chairs in this big – at least in my eyes – hall of a Methodist church. In point of fact, this is my first remembrance of church at all in my pre-school years. Being preoccupied with something – my nose, my shoelaces, a fly on the dress of the woman in front of me – I was suddenly aware that my dad was not sitting with us anymore. I looked around; a little panicked until I saw him up in the front with a lot of other people standing behind the guy who had been talking for some time. Come to find out that this “talking guy” – soon to be identified as a preacher – had put a call out for people to join the choir. This was a new church outside of Memphis, Tennessee, and my parents were excited about being involved with something new, and different … and stabilized. Dad’s work with the telephone company and laying cable from town to town kept us unstable until such time as I was ready to start school. And what could give a family more stability than by joining a neighborhood church? In essence, Dad never came back to sit with the family; he was a choir groupie, and he was good at it. He had the voice for it, and he used it diligently for over 50 years.
This memory came to me one day when I was worshipping at a church here in Sacramento – sitting in a pew, not standing in a pulpit. At a time of introducing visitors, an older couple in the back of the church introduced their six year old grandson. As they wrapped up their brief introduction, the lad’s grandfather said with a note of pride in his voice, “Yep, sitting right where his father sat when he was this age.”
When our children came along, I was already out of the pew and into the pulpit; When Pam and I married, there was already the separation between pew and pulpit; neither my wife nor my kids nor myself have ever really had the experience of sitting in church together. On the rare occasion that it does happen, it really feels right and purpose–filled. As a preacher, I had the opportunity to observe those families who sat together, and prayed, and sang, and listened together. For a time, my wife gave up her spot in the choir, in order to keep a tight tether on our four in their younger years. Now, in my role as a non-parish pastor, I sit in pews and wonder why we have we lost the kids sitting with their parents. Have we become so acquiescent to children’s demands that we shrug our shoulders and say “whatever …!”
There was a woman in my first church in Arkansas who showed me a gold pocket watch which had belonged to her late husband. She showed me the tiny dents in the case, and then told me that those were teeth marks from her children. From the time they were small, she and her husband had them in church, and when they got fussy, she gave them the pocket watch to occupy their attention, to bite on, to look at their reflection on the bright metal, etc; later they were allowed to open the case and move the hands as they practiced their math, all the while seated in church with mom and dad. Later, the watch went back into the vest pocket as they stopped looking down and started looking up and participating in the worship experience. Long after her husband had died, and the children had married and moved away, she still carried that dented pocket watch in her purse; a sacred relic which brought to remembrance being in church worshiping God with her family around her.
One day I will be back in that church here in Sacramento, and I will find that grandfather and thank him for what he said that day and for what he and his wife had done so many years before.
This memory came to me one day when I was worshipping at a church here in Sacramento – sitting in a pew, not standing in a pulpit. At a time of introducing visitors, an older couple in the back of the church introduced their six year old grandson. As they wrapped up their brief introduction, the lad’s grandfather said with a note of pride in his voice, “Yep, sitting right where his father sat when he was this age.”
When our children came along, I was already out of the pew and into the pulpit; When Pam and I married, there was already the separation between pew and pulpit; neither my wife nor my kids nor myself have ever really had the experience of sitting in church together. On the rare occasion that it does happen, it really feels right and purpose–filled. As a preacher, I had the opportunity to observe those families who sat together, and prayed, and sang, and listened together. For a time, my wife gave up her spot in the choir, in order to keep a tight tether on our four in their younger years. Now, in my role as a non-parish pastor, I sit in pews and wonder why we have we lost the kids sitting with their parents. Have we become so acquiescent to children’s demands that we shrug our shoulders and say “whatever …!”
There was a woman in my first church in Arkansas who showed me a gold pocket watch which had belonged to her late husband. She showed me the tiny dents in the case, and then told me that those were teeth marks from her children. From the time they were small, she and her husband had them in church, and when they got fussy, she gave them the pocket watch to occupy their attention, to bite on, to look at their reflection on the bright metal, etc; later they were allowed to open the case and move the hands as they practiced their math, all the while seated in church with mom and dad. Later, the watch went back into the vest pocket as they stopped looking down and started looking up and participating in the worship experience. Long after her husband had died, and the children had married and moved away, she still carried that dented pocket watch in her purse; a sacred relic which brought to remembrance being in church worshiping God with her family around her.
One day I will be back in that church here in Sacramento, and I will find that grandfather and thank him for what he said that day and for what he and his wife had done so many years before.
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