Lead me in the right path, O LORD, or my enemies will conquer me. Make your way plain for me to follow. (Psalm 5:8)We just got back from Longton, Kansas. We were looking at the work there. And we saw it.
Longton is a small town of 350 people with an abbreviated downtown like so many small towns have. There are some businesses, chief among them, a small grocery store, a café and a bar that the church says serves a great steak. There is a post office and a pizza place, along with a couple of other things that may or not be open. It was hard to tell on a Saturday evening and Sunday morning.
The church had about 40 in attendance but has had a lot of problems in the past couple of years. Their pastor left after some unpleasantness kind of took his heart away. He had also gotten married and had a couple of children so he needed more money than they were able to pay him. They had two or three men that they considered seriously that came for three or four Sundays each but turned out not to be what they claimed to be.
So they are afraid.
They responded overwhelmingly positively to us. In fact, they loved us. it was almost unanimous among those I talked to that we come back.
The only problem is do we want to? It is a town of 350 that is dead as a hammer. It does have a small school that is a united school district of several small towns in the county. It also has a couple of businesses that seem to be doing alright. It has no industries, but does have a gas station (although 20 cents higher than thirty miles away) and a drive in. It has three churches but from what I hear, two of them are dead.
Is it a work that I truly want. On the one hand, I want to go somewhere to be their pastor. On the other, they are in a dead little town.
On the practical side, they have a parsonage that is provided, but it is an older house. But it and the church are paid for. They have some money in the bank and are not hurting at all. And they appear to want this so much.
They have begun to reach out to technology a bit in that they bought a projector and lap top computer and project songs on the wall. They used YouTube videos of praise songs complete with winging and music. That means they are open to new stuff. It would not be hard to begin a praise band using kids from the town. I would bet money that guitar players and drummers and such would come out of the woodwork when they found out there was a place to play. It has happened before.
But the town is dead and 30 miles from the nearest town of any kind of life (and WalMart). It is 30 and 100 miles from the nearest hospitals of any kind. But as I pointed out to Ella, do I really want to spend my life trying to close to a hospital or grocery store. There in Longton, I would have trouble getting cheap food. I would have to go to Independence thirty miles away. The nearest city of any real size is Topeka, 100 miles away, or Tulsa, about the same.
I have got to decide what I want to do. They will probably ask me to come back next week. If we go back, we will spend Thursday through Monday there.
I have got to decide how badly I want my own church. Do I want it enough to go to Longton, a town that is dead.
Ella is not excited about it but will go wherever I drag her since she is trapped in my world.
On the other hand., I loved them. On the other other hand, I am a church fool and love the church anyway.
I have to decide.
Lord, give me strength and power to decide what your will is. Make your will plain so that I do not have to worry. Hear me, O Lord. Amen.
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