reflections on a Christian life

Anticipation of December typically brings memories of the crescendo of events beginning with early celebration of family birthdays (my Grandma’s, my mom’s and my own) and climaxing with Christmas Day.  Lately it is more of a rush of closing out yearend business meetings, eating too much and long checkout lines.  But back in the early 60s life was much simpler.  We didn’t have video games and iPhones.  For recreation, we would play stickball in the street with the sawed off end of a broom.  The 2^nd and third steps of the cement staircase leading up to the Serratelli’s house were the strike zone and if you hit it across the street to our house it was a home run.   Or we would have touch football games with the field consisting of three poured sections of concrete in the street.  You got a new set of downs if you got to the crack at the start of the last 3^rd of the field.  When it came to Sunday School visual aids, the flannel graph was the primary tool.  Paper cutouts of the Patriarchs or Jesus with felt backing were pressed up on a cloth board and manipulated as the teacher told the story.  The “Davey and Goliath” show was the height of high tech communication.  It is conjured up every time I hear the tune of “A Might Fortress is our God”.

Shortly before Thanksgiving, the plan for the Sunday School Christmas program would be rolled out.  There would be several Saturday mornings of rehearsals prior the main event.  The individual chosen to recite the “welcome” was sure to be either the girl with the softest voice, or the boy with the loudest.  Juvenile speculation would surround the designated actors for Mary and Joseph and the rest of us, as shepherds, wisemen or the heavenly host would have a few lines to be delivered on cue.  The costumes stored in a hallway behind the sanctuary were passed out for the assigned roles, and our moms would either alter or pin them up so we were ready for our dress rehearsal on the final Saturday.

That Sunday night we wouldn’t have to stay dressed up since we had our costumes, and we knew the pastor would not give a sermon, only say a welcome and a prayer over the offering, so we were pretty wired.  Plus we would be getting gifts from our teachers and a full box of chocolate, all our own, from the Sunday School.  (Growing up with 3 siblings there were three times a year that you got candy you could horde as your own: Halloween, Easter and the Christmas program night).  The program itself would have its share of tripped entrances, flubbed lines and every couple of years, a candle would be too close and some girl’s hair would get singed.

This annual event has been repeated in churches around the country not because of the skill of the actors or our taste in family entertainment- it has been repeated because we are celebrating a historical event and engaging in worship.  We are putting on a celebration for God and inviting the audience to celebrate with us.  We are remembering the events of Christ’s birth by reenacting before God, his own miracle.  We are singing to him and for him.

Gradually, during the 80s and 90s, the family video camera intruded on the spectacle to turn the event into a performance on the shelf in the family room.  As we became more discriminating in our tastes we shortened or eliminated the Christmas pageant and were more selective in our musical and theatrical talent, preferring to increase our quality and “relevance”.  Now we can deliver mood, magic and inspiring drama or readings without enlisting the minions of amateurs and wasting shopping days in rehearsals.

I don’t think my church has had a Sunday School Christmas program in at least ten years- and maybe it is silly to think we should go back to that.  But I do want to be able to come together, children, teens, adults, grandparents and celebrate before God for his pleasure.

“These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.  Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.  Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”

From this snippet of scripture flows a host of divergent dogma on how to accomplish the task of what used to be called Christian Education but now seems to be going through either an identity crisis or a marketing makeover.

I’ve already frustrated some of you by not quoting the reference.  As I was trained as a kid, you say the reference before and after the verse if you want to get full credit in earning points toward your camp scholarship or the star for verse memorization (the hat trick was verse memorized, Bible in hand and lesson done).

I was pretty good at the scripture memory thing.  I also had the books of the Bible down, which came in handy during “Sword Drills”.  I don’t think my kids ever participated in one of those, but they were a staple component of the Sunday school at my church.  In the sword drill, a scripture reference was called out and who ever could find it and stand to read it first got a point for their team.  Honing your ability to quickly draw and deploy your “sword”- as Ephesians 6 calls the Word of God”, was essential to upcoming battles with the world or the Devil or just a pastor who couldn’t develop a thirty minute sermon without hopping all over the Bible.

My formal education consisted of regular Sunday school, Sunday morning sermons, often Sunday evening sermons, and an occasional prayer meeting.  One Good Friday, my brother and I accompanied my Dad to a service in downtown Newark to listen to seven sermons on the seven last words of Christ.  I remember that the church was dark, it was a beautiful sunny day outside, and the stairwell in the parking garage below Branch Brook Park smelled like urine.  We also got compliments on our matching red blazers from some of the ladies who attended.

Occasionally, my folks would get on a kick of having family devotions during dinner.  If it was before the meal, we kids were pretty anxious to get to the eating.  When my mom would spring a hymn on us that added another 5 minutes to the wait.  During one season, mom included readings from an etiquette book.  I learned that I should spoon my soup away from me and that there is something called a finger bowl.

One of the biggest reinforcements of spiritual growth was my experience at summer camp.  We would go for a week a year, to a Christian Service Brigade camp in upstate New York where you would have your own devotions, and group Bible study each day.  I’d usually return home inspired to have my own devotions and be kinder to my younger brother for at least a week or two.  There is more to say about that in the future.

Anyway, when we got involved in church as a couple, my wife and I were full of ideas and expectations about how children grew in Christ and fit into the life of the church.  We also heard a lot of ideas from others.  One pastor pleaded that he could not communicate to both a junior high mind and an adult in the same message (guess he wasn’t aware of the findings on the adult male attention span); one couple filled us in that we would discover we would not want our children fidgeting beside us during the service and would be glad for the provision of children’s church to whisk our kids away during the worship hour; those who were more achievement oriented wanted to see results, such as verses memorized and historical timelines recounted.

We wanted our kids to know God and to see that their own parents saw their relationship with God as central to their life.  Although Janet was able to more naturally weave faith into conversations with the kids about decisions and life’s events, we were together in our commitment.  Evening family devotions were not going to work for us.  Everyone had a different schedule and palate so we sat around the table only a few times a week and the prayer was more of a starting gun than a pause before food and conversation.  For a while, we had a small group in which we got together as with kids included in every other session.  We did skits, family verses, and praise songs together.  Sometimes our kids sat with us in the worship service, sometimes they went to children’s church, sometimes we just had to bail and head outside. Our family went to a Walk Through the Bible seminar once.  That was a bust- for the older two it was probably the equivalent of my Good Friday service experience.  The highlight for them was lunch at the local KFC.  Our youngest picked up the most.  She was in the session for the 4-5 year olds and had a great learning time.  During their high school years I would go to the bagel shop one day a week with each of my kids.  My son would allow me three questions before my quota was up and we would eat in silence- so if I wasted one asking about whether he was ready for his tests, I only had two left.  My daughters were more conversational, but they didn’t put up with any monologue exhortations either.  Janet had better luck during her after school or lunchtime debriefs.

Well, our youngest is twenty so we’re through the childhood stage- it’s gratifying when you daughter calls up and asks for you to pick out a devotional for her, since you’ve supplied them faithfully over the years.  Sorry we can’t present a winning formula- one thing we’re convinced of is that there are already enough people promoting their formula.  We only know that we need to be in Christ and point our family to him as well.

They say that God has no grand children- because each one of us must come to Christ on our own.  If that is true, why do they also throw out the statistic that most Christians came to Christ during their childhood years with the additional suggestion that one of the best ways to grow the church is for Christian couples to have babies?

Well- I guess I’m one of those 2^nd generation Christians.  I’m told that my dad became a Christian down in Texas while stationed at Fort Bliss, El Paso.  Since they were there about 2 years, during which time, I was born, I don’t know if he came to Christ before or after my butt breach entry into this world.

Church was what we did- and we were not just Christians- we were Baptists- a heritage which I was informed was most like the early church which began just after the resurrection (or was it with John the Baptist?- I can’t remember- except when I got to college I learned about Zwingli and the Anabaptists and figure that the roots more likely rose out of the stew of the Reformation).  I should add, we were Conservative Baptists…There were apparently people called American Baptists who were too liberal and Southern Baptists who were akin to used car salesmen and the Regular Baptists who all had crew cuts and burned books and Beatles records.  From what I knew, the Conservative Baptists had it dialed in just right.

We went to the First Baptist Church (don’t think there was a second Baptist church in our town).  Dad was a deacon and the Sunday School Superintendent and my mom was a 2 and 3 year old teacher and did most of the solos during special music.  We sat about 2 rows back from the front every Sunday on the right side.  I could tell you just about every detail about that sanctuary.  I knew where all the water spots were on the ceiling tiles, how many rows of pews there were, and which pieces of stained glass were cracked.  On the side wall was a Mercator map of the world with little lights where each of our missionaries was located as well as one for our church.  I could name every one of those missionaries as well as their kids since their pictures were all thumbtacked on the corkboard in our kitchen.  When some guy from our church left for the mission field, he repainted and updated the board, adding a light for his destination city.

In between drawing on offering envelopes, adding up the digits of the hymn numbers posted on each side of the platform, and trying to guess which families were sitting behind us by peering under the pew and looking at all the legs and shoes hanging down, I picked up a jumbled theology of legalism and grace.  One pastor often challenging us to consider what our answer would be if the communists burst into to our church, lined us up outside and demanded that we renounce Christ or be shot.  I guess people got tired of that talk because attendance kept dropping and he eventually left.  Our next pastor was a reformed alcoholic and avid fisherman.  He had hit bottom at the rescue mission in downtown Newark, went to Bible College and was now in our pulpit, with his wife at the organ and his kids in the front row.  “Rescue missions” really are about just that.

We kids in the church would sometimes go down to the mission play our instruments and sing while the pastor did the sermon.  Hard to believe that in that sea of sorry looking humanity that wandered off the street knowing that if they just sat through the service, they would be rewarded with a warm meal, there could be a future pastor.

Anyway, pastor Al was about grace, his most memorable illustration being about a little boy making a boat only to have it lost down a storm drain.  Later he finds it in a second hand store and purchases it, saying “little boat, you are mine twice- once because I made you and twice because I bought you.”  Must be a good illustration because I still remember it- and it is a heck of a lot better tale than what happened to the kid and his boat in the opening chapter of Stephen King’s “It”.

As to how I came to faith- I don’t know if it was the Holy Spirit, peer pressure or being spooked about hell, but I don’t think that matters any more.  I know I had a conversation in the back yard with my brother and prayed some time around the age of 5 or 6.  Later when I was nearing my 8^th birthday, we had some evangelist doing a series of weekend meetings- “Dynamite Robbie Robertson” wow- I am not making this up!!  The first night he has some sort of call to conviction which my older brother raised his hand for.  That got kudos for him when Robbie congratulated my parents on Bill’s response.  I also knew that in order to get to take communion, I needed to get into that baptism pool which was under the floorboards where the Pulpit stood.  The next night I figured was my turn so I made my move.  I guess he was looking for something bigger because I next found myself after the service sitting with two men who came forward along with Robbie himself and we were reading John 3:16 together and praying the sinner’s prayer (what is it Billy Graham used to say?  “You may have come here on a bus- don’t worry, it will wait for you”).  I figured, no harm in doing a second round because I sure didn’t want the alternative- I observed later that people were constantly invited to rededicate their life to Christ- what that means about the first time or the last rededication, I don’t know- maybe we should just do confession like the Catholics.

Anyway, shortly after that, I got baptized and became a member of the church- which meant, I got take communion and actually vote during church business meetings.  Plus I got put on the tract committee that had a budget somewhere near $50/year.  “Chick” tracts were just making their appearance- best described as graphical horror novels for Christians.  If they didn’t scare you into becoming a Christian, they would scare you away from Christians.