I dropped in on a country church in south central Nebraska two years ago now, a lively bunch of Mennonites who'd come to the region 150 years ago, fresh out of Russia--German-speaking pacifist believers, men and women who lived hard lives out of sod houses and kept rigorous by hard work and prayer. Lovely people really.
The building was a brick fortress, as well-kept as the cemetery next door. Many country churches in the upper Midwest today are handful gatherings of old folks singing along with an silver-haired organist doing her best on something by Fanny Crosby.
Those Nebraska Mennonites were anything but: lots of families, lots of kids; lots of old people too, but a lot of life. It seemed to me that people actually loved each other. May not have always liked the guy in the next pew, but were committed deeply to each other.
No one spoke to me at that church. I got the complimentary handshake, but no one asked me my name or where I was from.
I was given the complimentary handshake at Baldwin CRC too, but once again little else. I may have been the only stranger in their midst Sunday morning. All tolled, not that many congregants were thronging.
I'm not one of those who think a church should be graded solely on the basis of its friendliness. I don't doubt that a half-century ago, when those two old pastors I respected sat on these same pews, no one would have asked me my name either.
But that no one even tried to talk to the old bald guy in the red shirt does create a perception that's hard to fend off--to wit, that the people lack the vital human trait of curiosity. The Mennonites didn't speak to me because they were speaking to each other; the place was alive, even though they seemed to miss altogether the stranger within their gates. But the church at Baldwin, significantly smaller, just didn't seem as vital.
Country churches in the upper Midwest struggle. Once upon a time there were more families on the land surrounding Baldwin CRC, and each of those families had a dozen kids. Once upon a time, ethnicity bound life so tightly that some, I'm sure, thought wooden shoes a straight jacket. Once upon a time a vital, dynamic community of immigrant people surrounded that old country church, the community which birthed those two preachers I knew and respected.
But where there were once six or eight families, today there are only two--maybe only one. Old McDonald's kids gave up on farming generations ago. Ethnicity withered. A way of life once thought separate from the "Americans" all around has now largely been assimilated, and that's not all bad.
The church was half-full Sunday. Maybe members were off to their cabins, but I'm guessing it's always only half-full because it's difficult to sustain vitality when the community is wilting for reasons that have far more to do with demographics than theology or dedication.
There's a silver Psalter in the rack, but everything's on a screen. Two young women were the praise band. Half the songs were to me unfamiliar. One man, up front, raised his arms, in celebration that was far easier for him to feel than it was for me. The visiting preacher was good and strong, I thought. There just wasn't much vitality.
Maybe I should have stayed for coffee, for fellowship. I would have loved a tour of the neighborhood, loved to know where those two preachers grew up, know a bit more about farming amid all those woodlots.
I didn't race to the door. I wasn't first out into the parking lot. But didn't feel much desire to join those who stayed in the fellowship hall because up until that point I'd really not felt much fellowship at all.
This Sunday, maybe it would be different. I was nothing more than a drop-in.
Baldwin CRC sits in a low spot between slowly climbing hills on either side. You can see the old church in the middle of the building additions the people have made through the years, and I like that, a church that keeps a hold of its history.
I rode around for a while, thinking maybe there was a ghost or two lingering, a marker I might locate to note where Ted Wevers once combined corn.
Life is not over by a long shot at Baldwin CRC, and I don't mean all of this to be a dirge. Good, good people care and care deeply about Baldwin CRC. I saw some of them on Sunday, I'm sure.
But I'm guessing that, from down there below, it's an uphill struggle.
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