First Church

The little white church had what my mother called “low back pews.” That meant that if you felt like leaning back during the sleepier portions of the service, you had better not. If you tried, the pew would catch you across the part of your back that wasn’t made for resting. The practical result was a worship posture that was forward and hopefully attentive.

I don’t remember ever sleeping through church back then. It was so fresh and new.

It was 1967. I was in the fifth grade and was enjoying my first “man teacher.” My folks had bought the first new house of their ten-year marriage. Dad put up a pool with an attached deck. My three-speed Schwinn Stingray with the slick back tire was the coolest. I was vaguely aware of a cousin and step-brother who were shipping out to Vietnam, but all in all life was good.

My first impression of the church was that it looked and smelled like the oldest building in town. A simple sanctuary sat on ground level above a full basement. Steep stairs led down to a pair of one-person-at-a-time restrooms, an open area partitioned into four classrooms for children, and a kitchen.

That church served as a spiritual anchor for the next four years. I don’t remember anything extraordinary happening. Just regular Sunday services and annual Vacation Bible Schools. My life beyond church was filled with summer little league and winter bowling. I ran away from some bullies and punched others in the nose. Unrequited romances over girls named Kim, Paulette, and Ellen swept me away. On fall weekends I took long bike hikes that would terrorize today’s mothers. I began to wonder what I would be when I grew up: a police officer, computer programmer, or baseball player. I watched Captain Kirk and Neil Armstrong on TV. Huntley and Brinkley reported the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. My summer visit with my aunt and uncle was put off by riots in Detroit.

Every Sunday we went to church where we heard the message that God loved us and that the Bible was a practical guide for life. Each week, Mr. Copp would descend to the basement and hand out candy to the children. We sang the same song before Communion every week – Lead Me to Calvary – and another to close the service – Bless Be the Tie That Binds. I would lean forward in the front pew while Pastor Gill announced the Good News and urged us to take it personally. Caught up in a radically changeable world, I heard that there was a reliable God whose eternal plan included me.

I was exhilarated and terrified. Exhilarated because it meant that by God faith, hope, and love would win out in the end. Terrified because I knew I faced a decision that would impact eternity. I had the opportunity to trust God enough to let him have his way with me. Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus.

Childhood faith decisions were an expected part of life in that church. Who is on the Lord’s side? Who will serve the King? That is a lot to expect of a 1960s middle-school kid. Life was filled with guns and war, and everyone got trampled on the floor. I wish we’d all been ready. There’s no time to change your mind. The Son has come and you’ve been left behind. Truth is, I resisted God’s gracious challenge until three years later when I was living in another state and going to another church. Yet, it was those years in that plain but faithful little church that laid the foundation for all the adult commitments that would come later.

Forty years have passed and many of those good people are enjoying their heavenly reward. The congregation outgrew its building and relocated. I haven’t been back there since -- except in my heart when I need a fresh experience of what Jesus means when he invites me to enter his Father’s kingdom as a little child.