This is the weekend of the Sweet Corn Festival here in Lodi. A lot has changed in the twenty years we've lived down the street from the festival grounds.
Some hasn't - it's never been Ohio sweet corn they eat at this festival; it seems to come from Florida or California or some such place. Go figure. But I digress.
The field where the festival is held is large enough to hold two baseball fields or one elementary-school sized football field. Twenty-one years ago, when we first moved into Lodi, the field was about 1/3 carnival rides, about 1/3 wide-open field, and the rest a mix of commercial concessions and community spaces. Besides the sweet corn booth (run by the Chamber of Commerce), the Fire Department always had a chicken BBQ, the Boy Scouts ran a dunk tank, the Band Boosters had pop and hot dogs, the Rotary and the Ruritans had some little carnival games for the kids. There was a large tent where several local merchants could set up spaces for handing out fliers and goodies. Sometimes a church would have a space, as would the local hospital and one of the realtors. There was a sizeable stage for contests of corn-shucking and corn-eating and so forth, but the highlight for years was the Tug-of-War Tournament, which eventually gave way for several years to the Modified Garden-Tractor Pull Tournament. When we first moved in, it was all pretty cool.
Over the years it's gradually become pretty chintzy. This year we went over there last evening only for some ice cream and to watch the fireworks. This year the field is about half carnival rides and midway. The concessions are all operated by professionals with glitzy wagons who travel from fair to festival all summer. The local merchants who wanted to hand out goodies set up their own pop-up awnings. The stage was half the size it used to be. The wide-open field was clogged with people selling all kinds of cheap stuff. We had to look hard for the corn, but we finally found it. We had to look harder for the Tug-of-War, the Garden Tractor Pull, the Boy Scouts, the Rotary, the Ruritans, the Band Boosters - we didn't see any of them, because none of them were there.
We do know that it's become increasingly difficult to get volunteers to staff a booth at an event like this. Even folks who'll do a lot for the church (as long as it's at the church) aren't real quick to volunteer for blocks of time at a three-day event. So they tend to back off and eventually give up all together. This leaves the organizers (whoever they are) with asking "what do we need to do to keep this thing going?" and deciding that they need to bring in professionals and expand the money-making areas. Pretty soon the Chamber of Commerce is bringing in more money for the Village (I guess), but it just doesn't seem like it's that much fun any more.
All this is leading up to this about the church (local congregation, or in a more global sense): it may not be glamorous or glitzy, but it can be fun. It may hurt sometimes, but we can be forgiving. When we work together as if we love one another, as if we're family, we can overlook some things and let others slide.
And yes, sometimes in the church we get tired of doing the same things over and over again. And sometimes we think that we'd like to see if someone else would want to take over this or that job. And sometimes we look at some other church or program and see its flashy lights and get all dreamy-eyed and wonder "what if we had that."
And I wonder if in embracing these things in the church we run the same risk we seem to have succumbed to in the Lodi Sweet Corn Festival. In embracing the expansion and the glitz and the bright lights we've managed to push out the community. It always used to seem like Lodi's Sweet Corn Festival; this year it seems more like The Sweet Corn Festival That Happens to be in Lodi.
If we embrace all the success / program / growth paradigms for our churches, do we run the risk of pushing out the community that may still be there? And if so, where does that leave our congregations?
Where does that leave our District? Or our church body? Or the church at large?
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