“The sun come up…
the sun goes down…
the hands on the clock just keep going around.
I just get up…
and it’s time to lay down…
life gets tedious, don’t it.”
It is just a bit of doggerel from a 1930s tune. Job expressed it, “Life is faster than a weaver’s shuttle (Job 7:6).” The truth is, the only place we are born equal is in the amount of time each day.
Our little cowboy above represents a dying breed. Seventy-five years ago the vast majority of farms and ranches in America were single family-owned and it took the whole family from the smallest child to mama and daddy working 18 hours a day to make it work. Kids were valuable as farm laborers, worth their weight in gold. The family farm or ranch was the heart of the county.
Today, there are large corporations owning the vast majority of the crop and animal-producing farms, and families have moved to town and children are a $68,000.00 a year liability. No wonder families are getting smaller and smaller.
At the same time, seventy-five years ago, the vast majority of churches were neighborhood churches, and a church of 400 was huge. In that church everyone had a job to make it work. There was a hired minister, or a teaching pastor that directed, preached, married, counseled, did the calling an burying. The youth ministry, Bible school teaching, janitorial, choir, piano/organ player, lawn mower was everyone in the church’s job. They worked all week long. The church was the heart of the neighborhood.
Today across America, we see the rise of mega churches with 15,000 to 35,000 people in worship on a weekend. The church has a hired staff anywhere from 20 to 80 professionals to do the work and 99% of the attenders only come to weekend services and go home driving by dozens of small, plateauing, dying churches that are shabby and lacking enough workers to keep them up. I will let God judge the correctness and efficiency of that; I just know that Agape is a throw-back to the age of seventy-five years ago.
We have Bible School and evening services, we go calling in the homes, hospital and we are evangelistic. The one thing we need is for everyone to feel the responsibility of volunteering and sharing the work. You need a job! Which one do you want?
//HDP