Blog Changes--Culture Shock

Third Friday of Easter

As you can probably tell, I have not mapped out this blog far in advance. My faith journey narrative, which I thought might take four of five blogs, has ended up being far longer--and I'm not even half-way through my life. I'm also starting to feel a little self-indulgent, talking about nothing but myself in just about every blog. 

Next week I'll start a different schedule: 

Mondays will be the Faith Journey Narrative,  

Tuesdays will be book reviews, movie reviews, and/or music reviews, maybe even a sermon review. 

Wednesdays will be on Church life--the United Methodist Church, University United Methodist                  Church, other denominations, worship and liturgy. 

Thursdays will be on prayer and spirituality

Fridays will be on answering questions or addressing comments that have come up during the week

Saturdays could be on anything, including comments and questions I didn't get to on Friday.

Sunday is a day of rest.

Culture Shock

In December of 1974 I was still a long, long way from finishing my dissertation. Scholarship and Fellowship money had run out. I had been married to Marti for six years. Our daughter, April, had been born in August. Marti got a job In the United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry in Nashville, Tennessee. Part of the deal of her taking the job was that I would get a pastoral appointment in the Tennessee Conference. 

My appointment was in a small church in a very small community, Triune United Methodist Church in Triune, Tennessee, 30 miles southeast of Nashville just off I-Nowhere. It was a very rural community. I was a city boy. I was an academic. Most of them had not been to college. My hair was shoulder length. Their men had crew cuts. I'm remember when I walked into the sanctuary for my first Sunday morning service. I looked out at what appeared  to be a visible sign of disappointment of the faces of the congregation members. 

I had made the bulletins early in the week. The first hymn was "A Mighty Fortress." Most of them did not seem to know it. They sang with a sound I was not used to. They sang through the noses. It was country music twang. I knew very little about country music (but a lot about Bach). It came time for the Responsive Reading (as it was called in '64 Methodist Hymnal). We stood. I read my part. Only a very few responded with theirs. This was something unfamiliar to most of them. In addition to the Methodist Hymnal the pews also had a Church of God Hymnal. It was much the preferred hymnal. 

The Offertory Anthem was sung lustily and twangingly from that hymnal by the choir.

I was invited the next Saturday night to the monthly "Sangin'" at one of the members homes. About 30 people of all ages came. Miss Ruby played the piano. The Church of God hymnals had been brought to the house. We sang for over three hours. Of the huge number of songs we sang I had only heard one of them before--and that was Amazing Grace--and they added a whole chorus to it, which I also did not know.  

We socialized a bit afterward. Miss Ruby, who was well advanced in years, told me she was originally from Dayton, Tennessee and that she had gone everyday with her parents to the Scopes Trial, when she was a girl. I was impressed. Then she asked me a question in a rather adversarial tone, "Do you believe in race mixing?" My answer was more evasive than courageous. 

More culture shock will come tomorrow.

Faithfully,

Christian