In the Last Twenty-Five Years

I'm sitting here in my study, and I've been looking at an "old" picture. I say "old" because the year this shot was taken was in 1985. That was the year I completed my Master's Degree in Counselor Education/Student Personnel at Emporia State, so I doesn't seem so long ago to me. Then again, twenty-five years is over one-half of my lifetime ago, so maybe it is old for a picture.

It's a picture of the Deacons of First Presbyterian in Marshall. They're standing tall at the front of the sanctuary, all seventeen of them. I look at them and I wonder, would they recognize their church today? I gotta say no, there are a lot of things they would see that they wouldn't recognize at all.

We can begin with the people who make up the church board, what Presbyterians call the Session. The first thing they would see is women! Half of our Session is women as required in Presbyterian polity. How would seventeen men, most of them balding and gray, feel about working under a session that was half women? Granted, the pic is from '85 and not '55, but I think it would have made for some uncomfortable silence before the chatting began.

These men are all in suits, not a blazer or a sport coat among the bunch, but suits. How would they feel about the more casual atmosphere they would find today? I see some of these men's wives in church every Sunday, and they don't seem too upset about it, but if they were dropped into worship by some sort of time travelling parachute, they would be in shock.

They would also probably be uncomfortable that almost nobody smokes anymore, except for the young men and women who were in the church pre-school in 1985. That would be a conversation.

Don't get me started on the two hymnals that had been published since 1985, with a third in the pipeline.

What they would still find is Christ. Christ living, crucified, and raised is preached every Sunday.

These men and I may not share much. The youngest appears to be twenty years younger than me. We probably think differently about a whole lot of issues, but I pray that we would all find that we take the same living water from the taproot of the tree of faith. We are all, then and now, saved by grace through faith. For this, thanks be to Christ.

Oh, one more thing, what would they say about me blogging this about them. Computers? Blogs? The Interwebs? It is a whole new world, saved by the same ol' God. Hallelujah!