By Harry Bronkar, columnist
By now we are all aware that covid has pretty well messed up just about everything in our lives: shopping, eating out, travel, schools, work places, family holiday gatherings, even going to church.
Before the pandemic I had gone to church nearly every Sunday for 75 years. As a child I went to Sunday School every week, and in just a few years I was familiar with most of the stories and characters in the Bible.
When I went to my grandmother’s house down the street, we would sit in her porch swing, and to its back-and-forth rhythm we would recite the books of the Bible.
In the church service, when the pastor announced that the scripture lesson was Lamentations 3:22-27, I could instantly turn to it without consulting the list of books in the front. From about age eight, I attended worship services each week, and heard the pastor’s sermons and quickly became familiar with the basic Fundamentalist theology on which we were told the entire Christian faith was founded.
After high school I enrolled in Wheaton College, a noted evangelical school in Illinois. They required that every student take four hours of Bible courses, but if incoming freshmen could pass a basic Bible exam, two hours were exempt. I aced it easily. During my four years at Wheaton, I was taught that evangelical theology was really the only way to understand the Christian faith.
During my years at Wheaton, I felt the call to the ministry, and consulted with the school chaplain regarding which seminary I should attend. My pastor at home had recommended the Southern Baptist Seminary in Kentucky. The chaplain allowed that this was a good school, but cautioned me to watch out for dangerous teachings of a-millennialism, an interpretation of what might happen during the last days during the return of Jesus. I went to Southern, but never once did I even hear of a-millennialism.
What I am trying to say is that thoughtful theological education became broader than simply the one restrictive evangelical belief I had been brought up on. I went on to serve churches in New England, where I met Catholics and Jews and Universalists, and found that they were also dedicated and thoughtful Christians. My own faith grew, and my life and ministry was enriched as I opened myself to a more creative thinking about faith.
For the last two years, I have not attended church, and I confess that I haven’t really missed it. During this time I have read through the Bible twice, trying to think through the minds of those persons in the polls who claim that they are not church-goers, or “nones,” no religion at all.
As churches try to re-charge following the pandemic, I hope they don’t just revert to the old ways of “doing church.” It will probably be fatal if they attempt to convince the “nones” to join a church organization and give money to its programs. They will likely not be interested in attending a Bible study where they are told what the orthodox Christian beliefs are, or urged to convert.
If the millennials and generation Xers are, as they claim, seekers, then the post-pandemic church will want to get to know them where they are, and join them on an honest quest, where the paths to meaning are not necessarily the same for everyone.
I am a 20th century person, and I celebrate my 85th birthday this year and don’t expect that I will be involved in this church that COVID leaves behind. But I do think that some of these insights I have shared here will prove useful to future leaders of the 21st century seekers.
Harry Bronkar is a retired Baptist minister living in Seven Lakes. Contact him at hbronkar@gmail.com.
