Under the Hood

I don't know anything about what makes a car run. . . now days. As time has gone by it has become more and more difficult to work on a car under a "shade tree" so to speak. Days were when you could find any man worth his salt working on his car in the back yard. With the advent of computers and diods and unibody construction under the hood became full of stuff that no one can work on without the help of an electronic gizmo that "reads" what is wrong.

As time has gone by life has become more complex as well. Without getting into the nuts and bolts of relationships, consider just the matter of the church. When I first began serving in a church there were some certainties associated with the church.

Among those certainties were: 1) "EVERYONE" went to church! 2) "Everyone" was part of a church and at least sent their children to Sunday School. 3) "Nobody" worked on Sunday unless they were in the helping field like hospital or police or firefighter. 4) When you moved into another community, you always joined or at least found another church to call your own. 5) Pastors were looked up to as being well educated and honorable people. 6) By in large there was among main stream denominational churchs, what was called the "right way" to do church.

Well as you can see there have been some changes in the last almost 35 years. Now we live in what is called a diversified society. Is it any wonder that church is rather diversified now as well. There really is NO "EVERYONE" in any context of the church. Probably wasn't back then either. As society has changed though we, the church, hasn't kept up with that change. Especially in the hinter lands we find life is really slow and change is too.

We, the church, need a PIT CREW to look under the hood and see what makes the church run or tick or function, whatever. We have created just such a crew fromt he leadership team of the Hamilton United Methodist Church. We will meet this coming Saturday morning at 9 a.m. at the SE corner of the 4 way stop light in downtown Hamilton. This gathering will be totally about prayer and dedication to looking deep under the hood of HUMC. Pray for us or at least with us.

later steve