The Place I Like Least

There are places that I love. My mom's kitchen, my back porch, my shop, sitting next to my wife, and the church sanctuary are easily in my top ten. Those places fill me with joy, peace, happiness and a sense of, well, being. Maybe a better word is abiding. Abiding comes out of Old English and means waiting, remaining, resting. When I am in those places and with those people, I am content to abide and simply be there. 

There are also places I don't like. I don't like banks. I don't like chicken coops. I despise with all my being serpentariums - snake houses. I don't much care for oncology units; multiply that times 10 to the 23rd for children's hospitals. Dentist's chairs? No thanks. Oddly enough I don't mind funeral homes or emergency rooms: I have enough pastoral experience that those don't instill the same level of personal dislike they used to. I dislike those for different reasons - they are places where the brokenness of God's creation is most evident, and it is my job to remind people in those places that there will be a time and place when that brokenness is itself broken. "There will be sorrow and sighing no more," Isaiah says. Or is that a Psalm? I can't remember right now. 

In my church (I use "my" loosely; it's not mine except by association), there are places I like - such as the sanctuary I mentioned before. I like my study - it's comfortable and my home-away-from-home. My dog often comes with me to work and sleeps on my couch (which, unlike the church, it is, truly, mine).  

The only place in the building that I dislike, oddly enough, is a hallway that runs near my office. It's not poorly lit or crooked, or in danger of the ceiling falling in, or the floor falling through if you step too hard. I dislike it because it is lined with photos, pictures of the kids' confirmation classes over the decades, going back to the earliest days of the congregation. 

My face is in five of those photos marking the confirmation classes I have taught. Those photos, especially, haunt me. They haunt me because, in those photos, I see mostly ghosts. 

In my church body, confirmation is the culmination of a period of Christian instruction in the teachings of the church. Similar to, but different from, the Roman Catholic sacrament of the same name, we say that in the rite, the Holy Spirit confirms (thus the name) the faith into which the child was baptized, usually as an infant. Some Lutheran churches say it's the child confirming that same faith, but I'm explaining it this way, to leave the work with God not the child. 

I have to do that, because as I look at those photos, especially from the last, oh, let's say 20 years, and my five classes in particular, I really, really struggle. There are no literal ghosts, of course, but it's as though they were photos of by-and-large ghosts. When I look at the faces and read the names, that's the only place I see them - in those framed prints. Those faces aren't in the pews. The names aren't connected to the congregation. The people aren't shut-in or home-bound where absence would be understood. They are just gone.  They all made a pledge that they would remain faithful to the church, even until death, but, sadly, for most of them, they have disappeared with "no forwarding address," to use the old US Postal Service phrase. It wasn't death - it was a choice. 

And that both frustrates me and it scares me. 

Now, I do understand that many go away to school, graduate, and get a job in some other city. My son is one of those. I'm talking about the ones, to twist the phrase, confirmed today - gone tomorrow. I confirmed them near the end of their 8th grade year, and within a year or two: poof. Where did they go? What of their parents? Where did they go? Those are the ones that frustrated me. What scares me is if I am the reason they leave. Did I do, or not do, something, was my preaching received as being unfaithful or incorrect? Did I bore them to tears so much that they would rather be at the ballpark than in the Lord's house? Did they break the promise willingly and knowingly, or was it never a sincere pledge? Was it even fair to ask a 12- or 13-year-old to make such a promise in the first place? 

I had to walk down that hall today - the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and I'm looking for short routes these days - and those feelings all bubbled up. It didn't help that I also found out that some families - perhaps even represented in one of those pictures - have been visiting other churches. That feels like a one-two punch in the gut. I wondered, again, what it was causing them to consider leaving. No one told me there was an issue, concern, or problem. Why are they church shopping? Answerless questions raise doubts, and the doubting mind, already on edge, is quick to fill in the blanks with options, some ridiculous, some possible. Did someone take "their" pew or parking spot? Silly. Was there a misunderstood phrase in a sermon? Possible. Did I say something to upset them? I don't know. We're the lights too bright or the heat too warm or the AC too cool? Mongo don't know. Did Satan finally convince them that another church, another pastor, another church body was better - or, worse, that they don't need the church and the Lord's gifts after all? 

Only one way to know, and that's to ask. It's a delicate conversation so I don't come across like a 14 year old boy asking his first ex-girlfriend, "But why don't you like me anymore?" Maybe I'll play Columbo: "Help me understand..." Possibly I'll get an honest answer, but more than likely they'll couch their answer, like the ex-girlfriend, nuancing it to assuage my feelings: "It's not you, it's us..." 

 

Tomorrow I'll go back to work, stand at the entrance to the hallway, and see the photos and think of the absent. I'll commend them to the Lord's care. Remember, I said that the confirmation rate was the Holy Spirit's confirming their faith? I pray that faith hasn't been dissolved, washed away by Satan and the world, but the Lord is holding them near to Himself - even if it is through another church.

Usually, though, I don't know. They generally don't come back to tell me.