going to close their doors for good.
I really enjoy watching Marion basketball on the YouTube network. However, some of the ads are pretty old a recent donation from 2018 is not a recent donation. We need some new commercials. [Editor’s Note: It’s not often that you hear someone asking for new commercials, but I guess seven years is a long time to be considered “new” these days. But if any of you business owners out there want to do some advertising, apparently you can get in on the action on the Marion Patriot Activities Network] —–— I don’t know who else in this area is paying attention to it, but I’ve been seeing it for several years now, and the truth is, church is pretty much played out. People aren’t necessarily interested in sitting through a two or three hour service anymore, enduring a lengthy sermon that only criticizes and condemns people week after week. As a member of Generation X (born in 1979), I was raised in church, and for many years I found it to be a good way to start the week, but now things are much different, and so much has changed. Church is one of those things that has denitely changed, and not necessarily for the better. In fact, compared to years and decades past, much of what dened Christianity is no longer appealing. The music is different. The preaching is different. Even the way we fellowship is different. And I commend the young people who are coming along now for their bravery and strength. Unlike those of us who grew up in the 1990s back, the kids of the 21st century aren’t falling for the okee-doke. I’m very proud of them. We love and respect our elders, but I’m afraid that we were in a sense misguided by many of them. They have driven a lot of people away from the church with their negative opinions, dirty deeds, and hypocrisy. And get this. They’re not walking away from righteousness, but rather, they’re walking away from religion. The bottom line is, once all the baby boomers are gone, there are a number of churches around here that are
[Editor’s Note: Well, I can tell you it’s not just “in this area” that church attendance is declining – and it has been for the past 30 to 50 years, minus a bump that occurred post-9/11. In the 1960s, church attendance (measured as once a week on average) was about 65 percent. Today, it’s about 30 percent and dropping. A lot of the latest big drop-off was the COVID-19 pandemic. Churches shut down and a lot of people simply never went back. There is a lot of disenchantment with church right now. Some of it has to do with the Catholic church’s priest sex abuse scandal. Some of it has to do with the Christian church’s strong ties to MAGA and hard rightwing stances on a number of issues. And weirdly, some of it also has to do with the exact opposite – churches becoming “too woke” for some believers. Overall, though, I think it mostly has to do with us simply becoming too busy with other obligations and too distracted by all of the other things that draw our attention. I don’t know if I’d go so far as saying that church is “played out” – in fact, many churches are thriving. If you haven’t gone in a while, I would strongly recommend giving it another try. In addition to the worship aspect of church, there’s also a lot of opportunity to plug into a number of small groups that can really be a positive thing in your life] —–— Thanks, Ralph! I’ll have that song stuck in my head for the next 3 days! But … it was some mighty tasty cereal. [Editor’s Note: If this seems out of the blue, it’s in regard to my Viewpoint last week about the cereal aisle – speci_cally in regard to the ‘Super Sugar Crisp” theme song. Now, for me, the song that got stuck in my head from that was the Honeycomb jingle … “Honeycomb big? Yeah, yeah, yeah! It’s not small? No, no, no!” So, good luck getting that out of your head if you were subjected to that back in the day. I can still picture Andre the Giant interacting with the kids in their treehouse in the commercial. Good times …]
