CROSSROADS

Have you ever watched someone or something die a slow death?  It's painful watching a once vibrant, and quick, mind become dull and slow.  Especially before they recognize it themselves. The life in their eyes gradually dims, and you realize their fragility, humanity.  And your own.


Many have been, or are, first hand wittinesses to this in the mainline denominations that still remain the bulwark of Christianity here in America.


But times they are a changing.  There are Evangelicals on the Canterbury trail, those swimming the Tiber, those Emerging from something, those looking past Rome to Constantinople, those who gather in living rooms, and those content to sit in their favorite pew thinking things are just going through some cycle, and will be "all right". 


We traveled to another town three hours away for a football game two Friday's ago.  It was a quaint little southern town, that has remained about the same for the last 40 years. But one very obvious change stood out. The local Episcopal Church, a small yet attractive brick structure evoking thoughts of a solid, prosperous, and upstanding congregation, was closed.  The windows were broken, or boarded up, and the grass about a foot high, bushes unkempt. 


The building itself was dark, ominous looking in the middle of town.


Empty. God;'s house, His banquet table, was empty. There was no one there to serve food, to wash dishes, to care for His guests, His flock.  The Shepherd's were gone, and the flock had moved on, joined other flocks, or been devoured by wolves.


This is the future of Evangelical America, in probably less time than we realize.


I've seen other churches, in other towns, in a similar condition.  These are not churches in a dying part of town, it's just that their message was not relevant to the masses.


Which may be part of our problem, so long as numbers are important.  If we have a budget to meet, targets to hit, high attendance day figures to surpass, we will be preaching a gospel that tickles itching ears.


Not one that brings life, change, and revolution.


I know a church where the Pastor gets paid a buck a head for every person that shows up on Sunday. The ushers conduct a head count as they pass the plate, and the Pastor himself counts heads from the pulpit as the choir sings, in order to verify the body count.  I have this on very good authority.


So what happens when attendance begins to drop at a church like this? Panic, call in church growth gurus, call all of those less faithful members and urge them to come. 


What if we loved them, fed them, tenderly cared for them? For our brothers and sisters.

Tonight is Halloween, All Hallows Eve.

Which means that tomorrow is All Saints Day, a traditional feast of the church.

The ghostly origins of Halloween lay somewhere in the misty lands of Celts and Druids, the night when the spirit world spilled over into the physical world, and the new year began.  And this ancient practice was somehow carried over and blended into a creole celebration that has become our modern Halloween.

I've noticed that there is a definite reduction in Trick-or-Treaters in our neck of the woods.  Churches have more and more responded to this celebration by having parties and gatherings of their own for the purpose of promoting positive, wholesome fun, and so as to not participate in what it sees as a glorification of darkness.

Most of us today do not even realize that the day after is All Saints Day, celebrated in one form or another for nearly 1500 years by the Church.  We don't need a new celebration, let's crank up the feast we already have!

Tomorrow will be the day to remember all of the faithful who have gone before us, who have served the Kingdom well.  The many martyrs who have fertilized the vineyard of Christ with their own blood.

As a kid, I liked getting dressed up, and collecting all of the candy I could stand to eat.  I would eat Tootsie Rolls until my molars were so packed with chocolate goo that even paint stripper wouldn't have helped.

Now I've grown up, become more serious, and understand more of what all of that meant, what it was a vestige of.  And now if I wanted to go out and collect some candy, I wouldn't even need to dress up!

Come to think of it, I believe I have a chocolate bar sitting around here somewhere...

Spiritual warfare is real, we live in a world at war, and our enemies are not flesh and blood.  Sometimes we do not know what it is that we dabble in.

Be careful out there.