REPLACING THE 1950S CHURCH [Sa, 10-22-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man— REPLACING THE 1950S CHURCH [Sa, 10-22-24]

 

When I was in seminary, our homiletics professor, Merrill Abbey, had us listen to a sermon by J. Wallace Hamilton, the preacher at Pasadena Community Methodist Church [PCMC] in St. Petersburg, FL. The sermon was on a long-play vinyl record, the best available technology at that time. I was so impressed with Hamilton’s sermon that I bought a copy of that record for myself. I wanted to be a good preacher, and I wondered, “How did he get to be so good at this?”

Well, his was the quintessential story of the 1950s church, the church of suburban growth and denominational loyalty and pulpit centrality.

Hamilton’s church was a new, struggling start in 1929, and only four years old when Hamilton was appointed there. He had just been ordained as a probationer. He wasn’t fully ordained until two years later.

Some of the lay people recognized that he had a special gift for preaching. “We’re small now, but we have a chance to grow here,” they told him. “You concentrate on preaching. We’ll do the rest of the work the preacher usually does so that you’ll have time for it. You preach, and we’ll bring the people in to hear you. And we’ll grow.”

By the time I was in seminary in the 1960s, PCMC had become one of the first megachurches, over seven thousand people on some Sundays, even though the sanctuary, built during Hamilton’s tenure, seated “only” two thousand. Others listened to speakers in their cars in the parking lot, drive-in movie style.

In its first four years, before Hamilton, PCMC had three preachers. That was fairly standard for Methodist churches in those days. Many appointments were for only one year, especially for a small church like PCMC. Preachers were eager to “move up the ladder” to bigger churches with bigger salaries. What was definitely not standard was for a Methodist preacher to stay in his first appointment for his entire lifetime, for 39 years, from the time when he wasn’t even fully ordained yet, until his death. J. Wallace Hamilton did that.

He could do that because he was a preacher in the 1950s church.

That’s what sociologists call it, The 1950s Church, because it hit its zenith in that decade. It spanned most of the 20^th century. It was pulpit centered and denominationally identified and growth oriented. It was perfect for J. Wallace Hamilton.

It was perfect for me, too, since I thought the main job of a minister was preaching. Nobody knew it then, but the 1950s church was already starting its decline in the decade for which it is now named. [That’s how we name things, according to my sociology professor friend, the great Paul J. Baker. “If you cut down all the shady oaks in building a sub-division, you name it Shady Oaks. Places and eras get named for what was destroyed in creating them.”]

The times, they were a changin’, even before Boy Dylan began to sing about it. The 1950s values of personal relationships, community, extended family, print communication, denominational identity, women in the home, respect for the Abe Lincoln sort of honesty… all those were being replaced by television, electronics, celebrity worship, social movement from rural to urban, adulation of the wealthy, entrepreneurial preachers, women in the work place… Each change helped make the others possible.

I’m glad I’m not a preacher now. In fact, every person in the whole country is glad not to be a preacher now. Most denominations retire eight to ten preachers each year for every one who is ordained. The 1950s church can’t survive that way. Well, it’s already dead, anyway.

That’s okay. The purpose of the 1950s church was growth. The flourishing post-war culture that made the 1950s church possible is also dead. A new church is borning, but we don’t yet know what it will look like, but we know it’s purpose. As the late, inciteful Kris Kristofferson sang, “Yesterday is dead and gone, and tomorrow’s out of sight…” The purpose of the church now is just to help the world “…make it through the night.” All the world is asking is our time.

John Robert McFarland

The song is Kristofferson’s, but the idea that the world is singing it to the church comes from sociological theologian Tex Sample.