by Steve Nofel
I ranted, but my corgi-lab mix friend, Lexi, didn’t seem to care one way or another.
It began early in the week while I was watching the Chicago Cubs and Milwaukee Brewers. There was a play at the plate. The throw from the Cubs fielder was pretty good, the catcher was out in front of the plate as dictated by the new “no collisions allowed” rule, and a handsome muscular runner looked like a model ball player as he was racing home from third. The throw. The slide. The sweep tag. The ump pumped his right arm up and down and shouted “Out!” It was a good call.
I ranted at Lexi, “Did you see that slide?” Rather than slide toward the stands and touch home with a back foot or extended arm on the farthest edge of the plate to give the catcher the smallest target for a tag possible, the runner did everything wrong. Quite dramatically, he went flying in with a leaping feet first dive at the plate with his arm extended like a diver at the top of the arc of a swan dive. He actually slid inside the baseline. Though his helmet came flying off and his hair swept behind him (and he looked great in replays), the runner gave the catcher a target for the tag he just couldn’t miss. “Modern ballplayers.” I muttered to Lexi. She yawned.
Then a couple of days later, the Cubs were playing against the St. Louis Cardinals. It was the second inning and the Cards had runners on first and second with no one out. The batter hit a ground ball the shortstop just missed, and the ball slowly rolled into left field. What should have happened was obvious. The left fielder should have thrown the ball back to the infielder stationed between third and pitcher’s mound. Since it was so early in the game, conceding the run would keep the runners advancing from first and second to second and third, hopefully, avoiding a big scoring inning. What the left fielder did was throw home. The ball flew over the catcher’s head. He missed his target by 20 feet from only 100 feet away! But, the runners didn’t advance! They were statues, standing there watching it all unfold.
“Lexi, old girl,” I said with some force, “The American pastime just ain’t what it used to be.” I went on to tell her about the love of homeruns that has ruined batting, the lack of fundamental fielding and ballplayers more worried about SportsCenter highlights than good base running and squeezing out another run or two. And you know, I am not the only one who feels this way!
Things just ain’t what they used to be.
One retired major leaguer wrote, “Baseball today is not what it should be. The players today do not try to learn all the fine points of the game, as in the days of old, but simply try to get by.
“The boys go out to the plate, take a slam at the ball, pray that they will get a hit and let it go at that.
“It makes me weep to think of the men of the old days who played the game and boys of today. It’s positively a shame, and they are getting big money for it too.”
This was written by Bill Joyce who was a third baseman and manager in the ‘90s … make that the 1890s. Joyce wrote that in 1916 for the “Spalding Base Ball Guide.”
You know, sometimes it seems that nothing is ever the way it used to be.
I just celebrated the 23rd anniversary of my ordination. Sometimes I do lament that in 1991 no one anticipated the kind of church I would be serving in 2014.
It is all changed so much. There are new and funky translations of the Bible. Where once we thought new hymnals were a bane, now there are a dozen different styles of sacred music! We no longer simply listen to sermons because now they are often “multimedia events.” People talk back to me during the multimedia sermon. Imagine interrupting “the reverend” of your youth. Everybody (even the children) calls me “Steve” and not “Reverend.” Would we have dared call the minister of our youth by HIS first name? Did he even have a first name?
The office of pastor used to mean moderator, administrator, visitor, preacher and teacher. Following the lead of Eugene Peterson, I have begun defining myself as a pastor who listens, studies and prays.
No one dresses up for church anymore. Passing the peace and visiting during worship takes longer than the offertory, prelude and postlude combined … if we have an offertory, prelude or postlude at all.
Kids are allowed to make noise. They bring electronic devices to church to keep occupied rather than a baggie of Cheerios and a picture book.
When I was going to seminary and first ordained, the hot thing was “small group ministry.” Now they talk about “one-on-one” ministry. Once cutting edge ideas such as “being missional” are become clichés and passé.
When I look out from the balcony of the manse over at the church and realize I am one of the last pastors I know who is actually living in a manse, and 9 out of 10 people outside a Presbyterian congregation don’t even know what a manse is.
By now, I hope you see where I am going.
Things just are not what they used to be. And you know what? They never have been.
I am sure our parents lamented over what happened to church since their childhood. Our grandparents did the same, and so on and so on and so on, all the way back to the first century A.D. when the church leaders met in Jerusalem over concern about the new direction the church was going. See Acts 15.
Things are different. The world is different. 2014 is not 1991 or 1961. The style of society is always changing. People are people, that is true, but how we live out our lives certainly changes. Just think about it. For those of us who are a little older, our parents were worried that we would grow our hair out shaggy like the early Beatles. Now, parents think that the Beatles’ cuts are conservative. Parents worry about tats, piercings and other diverse “looks.” Heck parents and grandparents have tats, piercings and other diverse “looks.”
The church has changed. For better or worse, things just aren’t the way they used to be. At the same time, as long as we continue to stick to the basics of our faith, we are OK. In fact, we are more than OK, we are fulfilling our call.
Back in 1990-1991, I based the thesis of my master’s degree project on Acts 2:42, “They (the earliest church, infant church) devoted themselves to the apostles’ teachings and fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers.” My point was that we needed to return to that way of being church. I recently found that 50-some-page work when I was going through files. I can say unabashedly it was good work. I can also say that my Scripture exegesis was solid, as were my theological research and arguments.
The fundamentals of our faith are always the same: Jesus Christ is Lord. We are called upon to serve him by serving the people of God. We do so best in imitation of the infant church through devoting ourselves to the apostles’ teachings (Bible study), fellowship, breaking of the bread (the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper) and prayer. I could almost present it today, except, how I suggested going about doing in 1991 is out of date, out of sync with today’s world, and just not going to work in 2014.
Absolutely, I was right about who we are as Christ followers. That never, ever changes. The fundamentals of faith are timeless. But, our way of living out the faith, our style of church and ministry is changing and ever evolving.
As long as we unabashedly focus on the timeless truths, keep Jesus Christ at the center, devote ourselves to fulfilling his call in our lives to “Go out to all the world and be my witnesses,” to prayer, sacrament, fellowship and Bible study, then we are OK. We are more than OK. We thrive, even if how we thrive is so different than just a few years ago.
Things just aren’t the way they used to be. Honestly, they never have been.
However, Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8).
Just keep that in mind and live that out in our ever evolving world, church and lives.
STEVE NOFEL is co-pastor at the Montezuma Valley Presbyterian Church in Cortez, Colorado.
