Words from WW Blog

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WORDS FROM W.W.                                          April 27, 2020

Driving by the empty movie theater parking lot is strange. It brings me back to the days of boarded-up Blockbusters. Who would have thought that would happen? And now who knows when theaters will have vehicles parked in them for the evening showings?

Maybe it’s time to bring back the drive-in theaters!

When I was growing up in Winchester, Kentucky, my parents would load my brother, sister, and me into the car and head out to Sky Vue Drive-In Theater on Lexington Road, just a few miles out of town.

We’d already have our pajamas on, complete with fitted feet. (To this day I can’t wear socks on my feet at night. Maybe it goes back to the memories of their incarcerations in those smothering pajama feet!) Because we were PJ’ed we were never allowed to play on the swing set and slide down front by the giant screen. Mom and Dad were wise people. I’m sure they thought about three sweaty kids smelling up the Ford and making the family outing seem like we were in a middle school boy’s lockerroom.

It seems that I, being the youngest, always sat in the front seat between Mom and Dad. I was the insurance that they wouldn’t start smooching and causing my brother and sister, sitting behind them, to start gagging.

Mom would have popped popcorn and Dad had gathered a few bottles of RC Cola for the trip. The images of a dancing soft drink and bucket of popcorn trying to lure people to the little white stone building that served as the concession stand didn’t work on us. Mom made good popcorn anyway. We always ate it on Sunday nights as we watched The Ed Sullivan Show. Sky Vue outings were the only other time Mom would make it.

I remember watching The Bridge Over The River Kwai at the Sky Vue. I think we may have seen an Elvis Presley movie there once or twice, as well. Presley didn’t impress me as much as the army movies. Being four years old, gyrating hips weren’t understood yet. As Elvis swayed, I never thought about what my mom was thinking about. Still don’t!

Dad would hang the speaker on the driver’s side window and, if the mosquitoes weren’t too bad, keep the windows down most of the way to allow the pleasant Bluegrass breeze to float through.

Sky Vue always had a double-feature, but I never kept my eyes open for more than the first five minutes of the second movie. I’d lean against one of my parents and drift off into a distant Dreamland, where PayDay’s and Pepsi’s were the main menu items.

And then I’d wake up the next morning in my bed, magically transported there sometime during my slumber.

Those were good days. The Sky Vue opened in 1948 and finally closed in 2014. Judging from the last Yelp reviews, its closure was probably about twenty years past when it should have. But, maybe, just maybe, it’s time for drive-ins to make a comeback. Maybe it’s time for new families to be able to Bluetooth in the sound of the main feature on the screen, and girlfriends snuggle up to their latest squeeze, who is having a hard time staying focused on the film.

I’d go. Maybe even position the grandkids in the backseat! The only problem now would be that I’d be asleep five minutes into the second feature and they’d still be wide awake.

I notice it at the four-way stops around our neighborhood. Perhaps it’s because the pandemic has lessened the amount of traffic, but my three-times-a-day walks have me seeing numerous kinda’ stops. That is, people slow down a little bit as if the stop sign is a suggestion.

That’s an indication, in my opinion, that the lessening of restrictions about to happen is also a bad sign. Our governor has emphasized that people should exercise self-control and continue to observe safe social distancing, as well as “staying safer at home.”

In our culture of entitlement, however, there will be numerous folk who will use this easing of the mandates to do what they very well please. Others be damned is the battle cry for many.

Call this optimist a skeptic, but I see it in the supermarket. A little step of courtesy and community concern like wearing a mask is ignored by so many. Here are the store employees all wearing protection gear (masks and gloves) and unmasked Johnny Cool comes waltzing in as if the world revolves around him.

That’s why I’m uneasy about reopening. Many businesses have thought through it and are ready with new procedures and safeguards. I applaud that. One restaurant owner said his establishment would go to a “no cash” system where the customer could pay, using an app. He also said the menu would be available on cell phones, instead of using paper menus. That’s thinking ahead of the best ways to run a business and keep people safe.

The problems are the Johnny Cool’s and Betty Not-So-Bright’s who feel enlightened to exercise their free will at the expense of others.

Self-control is an antiquated term and characteristic of our culture. In Scripture, it’s almost always written about as being an indicator of maturity, wisdom, and a part of someone who has a consistent spiritual journey. Conversely, the lack of self-control is a sign of depravity and stupidity.

There have been encouraging signs of how people have stepped up to help one another, contributing food, money, and creativity. It’s just all of those self-absorbed, it’s-all-about-me folk that turn his grey hair greyer.

And, let me tell ya’, I’m very careful crossing streets!

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I stood in front of a class of eighth-graders this past September 11th. The topic that day was what had happened on that day in 2001. I talked to them about how 9/11 changed things, airport security in particular. Some of them took on surprising facial expressions when I told them that people used to be able to meet their arriving family members at the gate, as well as escort them all the way to the gate for their departures.

“9/11 changed things.”

The coronavirus

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, likewise, is changing things and will change things. Despite our incredible reluctance to admit it, things will not return to what and how they were.

Hopefully, faith communities will grasp that. Churches sometimes have a difficult time accepting that things change. Even as the elephant has thrashed around in the sanctuary, some communities of faith will insist that we need to keep things as they are.

Well, like the Titanic, that vessel is no more!

Streaming worship services are here and they are not going away. When most churches are able to gather in physical worship centers again, streaming the worship service will be an additional way of being connected to the body of believers. It is not just a temporary solution. In fact, many churches will increase their audience because it is not restricted to a geographical area. Today I listened to my friend in ministry, Chuck Moore, speak to his virtual congregation of First Baptist Church of Savoy/Champaign, Illinois. I’m a healthy 16-hour drive away, but I was in the same room with him.

Most of us long for the intimate surroundings of a sanctuary, but we’ve learned, in this time of change, that we can worship online with our faith community and it’s okay. There will be those, like during the worship war battles over hymns and praise music in the 1980s, who will scoff at the new ways, and probably send nasty letters (ironically, the email type) to their pastors about how disgusted they are with all these newfangled ideas. They may even leave the church to find another that is anchored to the past.

So be it! Let them climb into another sinking boat and pretend that it’s a Viking River Cruise.

Things change, and some faith communities are feeling the chains be broken loose during this time as they have to be innovative and creative. The choir has left the building, not virtual choirs are appearing. Last Sunday I listened to a virtual choir from Nashville sing an amazing version of It Is Well With My Soul as a part of the Mason, Michigan Community Church Easter worship. Then I found the video on YouTube and played it another five times. Just think, I’m in Colorado Springs watching the service of a church in Michigan as they air a Tennessee choir connected by about 35 iPhones singing a song.

I remember when my grandparents, farmers in Eastern Kentucky, got indoor plumbing. Before that my grandmother had used a handpump and we’d go to a well in the frontyard and lower a bucket to get a nice cool drink of water. When the indoor plumbing went in my grandfather never went back to the outhouse behind the garden. Indoor plumbing was the new norm for him, and my grandmother didn’t quite know what to do with herself when she just had to turn a faucet on.

Things change, and the churches that don’t recognize that this pandemic has changed from now on how we do ministry will be left holding the bucket.

I can’t help myself and I’m getting a crick in my neck because of it!

Yesterday, ESPN’s Adam Shefter was talking about NFL draft possibilities…who could be picked early and who could be picked late…and all I could focus on was the books on the shelves behind him. There was Louie Zamperini’s story, Unbroken, that I’ve seen in the theatre and read the book. Other titles seemed harder to make out so I moved closer to the TV and leaned my head to the right, trying to read titles.

It’s my ADD indicator. Put books on shelves behind the NBC News Correspondent and I don’t even hear him saying that the sky is falling. There’s David McCullough’s 1776! And what was that? Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals! Classic!

I have yet to locate a James Patterson novel showing on one of those shelves. Probably located lower so the camera doesn’t pick it up. I did see a Daniel Silva on one shelf, trying to be hidden by the cookbooks on either side.

Thankfully the remote shoots don’t last too long. Otherwise, I’d be walking around with a warped view of my surroundings.

Some shelves have more literary works than others. Some are more opinions lengthened to 300 pages of print. Shefter had some classic-looking book covers whose contents I couldn’t make out. Perhaps they were classics like The Tale of Two Cities and The Last of the Mohicans. More likely, they were George Plimpton’s Paper Lion and Out of My League.

Fox News shelves tilted to the right and CNN readjusted my neck posture to the left. Al Roker had shelves of LPs.

Meanwhile, the news and commentaries resonated at background noise as I concentrated on what was in the background. I wonder…I just wonder…if I sent a copy of my book, Red Hot: New Life in Fleming, to Adam Shefter would he put it on the second shelf from the top, right between Michael Lewis’s Moneyball and Grisham’s Calico Joe? I’d even autograph it for him!

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WORDS FROM W.W.                                                  April 12, 2020

                          The Disciples socially distanced themselves on that Resurrection Sunday, but Jesus came to them and said: “Peace be with you!”

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(more…)

Let’s be honest! We don’t want it to seem like we’re lacking faith, and yet we’re disturbed by those who seem dead set on gathering in mass in church buildings for a Sunday morning worship service!

We believe in the Jesus who is always with us, and we are anchored to the Jesus who rose from the dead. Part of that faith journey is believing that we can worship together, despite practicing social distance.

Should we begrudge those who seem committed to massing together in a sanctuary, as if they are the Hebrew people of Moses’s day, putting the blood of a lamb on their doorframes and having COVID-19 blow past them as it hunts for its next place to land? Is it unspiritual of us to believe they have taken that step of faith off a cliff?

There are enough issues for people of faith to disagree about, and here’s one more point of contention to add to the heap.

So what are the confusing elements that are the bones of contention?

First of all, there’s the proclamation of some that they are being a witness to their communities and cities by continuing to come together and worship in the freedom of Christ, not being prisoners of their homes. The reality, however, is that the only people impressed by their witness are those who are gathered in their sanctuaries. The opinion of others ranges from “those crazy religious fanatics” to “It figures they would do something as dumb as that!”

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Having a witness includes the elements of integrity and humility.  That leads into the second bone of contention: the attitude of many of those who are gathering together. When I say “gather together’, I’m not referring to those who have decided to do drive-in church services this Sunday. I applaud their creativity, their seeking that middle ground of gathering together, but wanting to be safe and be seen as being safe.

Unfortunately, those who are gathering in mass in church buildings are coming off as either spiritually arrogant or deliberately thumbing their noses toward the governing bodies (local, state, and national). They are taking church and state separation to the extreme. The opinion about the multitudes watching them from a distance is that they couldn’t care less about the communities they live in; that they are more enamored by how many people are still flocking to their buildings on Sunday mornings, than with the risen Christ who can speak to people in the quiet of the living room.

Those of us who are worshiping by watching a worship service being streamed onto our laptops are wondering if we’re simply spiritual vagrants or have we found a good balance between faith and that other thing God gave us…common sense?