It ain't my daddy's church.
My dad grew up on a farm, just outside Lathrap, Kan., (pop. 150) There were three churches in town, the Baptist, Methodist & Disciples of Christ. Each had a membership of approximately 50 people so essentially the whole town was represented in the little congregations.
(There were two beer joints in town.)
I would say Dad's definite notions of what church ought to be were formed a long time ago, well before I was ever thought of, when he was of such tender years.
"They put a coffee machine in the front foyer," he said, adding derisively, "They take their coffee into the sanctuary."
For Dad, carrying coffee into church is nothing short of heresy.
"When I was a kid, Dad and Mother wouldn't even let us chew gum in church," he said.
It was a couple of days after Christmas and we sat in the den by the Christmas tree where my kids had just opened their presents. The light was drawing dim outside the window, the clean, sweet view of Country Club Lane descending for the evening.
Dad and my step-mom, Marcie, always in the loop, filled us in on all the intrigue, the backroom machinations that accompany church politics, how a faction who thought they owned the place wanted the preacher gone and got what they wanted. He resigned. It's not as if he slept with a woman who isn't his wife or something. Just a nice group of people showing the fruits of their spirits.
"When I was a kid, it was an honor to have the preacher over for dinner," Dad said, adding that people just don't do that anymore.
anymore
Not that the preacher has escaped Dad's critiques. Why did he have to put that center row of chairs in the sanctuary? Why even have chairs at all.
"It was a lot more comfortable with pews," Dad said.
"Especially if they're pure wood and no cushions, huh Dad?" I asked.
Then there's that modern church music. A worship and praise leader wearing flannel and skinny jeans, tattoos, thin-cut beard, looking like a mix of Rob Bell and early Elvis Costello as he strums his acoustic guitar. The rock band kicks in from behind as he sings, "And heaven meets earth when an unforeseen kiss..."Not Dad's thing.
Dad spent his high school years with rockabilly. Elvis Presley and the Blue Moon Boys. Carl Perkins. Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two. That hillbilly blues music that sprang in large part from gospel. But you didn't find songs about a whole lotta shakin' going on in church. For Dad and my grandparents, now departed, it was "Abide With Me," "It is Well With My Soul," "The Uncloudy Day." Stuff like that.
"Oh G.G., what do you care?" Marcie said. "You don't even sing."
"That doesn't matter," he said. And at that moment, I found some commonality with the old man. It was a matter of principle for him. It's like I'm always telling my wife, Maria. Something may not affect me personally, but I weigh in because it's the "principle of the thing."
"Can you tell he doesn't like change?" Marcie asked us, then addressed Dad again. "G.G., you're showing your age."
I was sprawled over the beige carpet with my daughter Gabby as she perused Pinterest on her Android tablet, my son, Max, on the couch beside Maria playing his DS.
"Kids, Grandpa is describing the 1940's," I told Max and Gabby. "Kind of like how Dad goes on about the '70s. We had vinyl records and eight-tracks, watched 'Underdog' and 'The Grape Ape' on Saturday mornings, danced disco in PE class, drank Tang like the astronauts."
My hometown had 4,000 people and I could ride my bike all over town. Ten-thousand people now, traffic lights, the ever present possibility of child abductors.
I don't know what to think. Maybe Dad was right. Perhaps those cup holders where we stick our lattes at church are an abomination. But I'll be damned if they don't help somebody get saved.
