My Music Journal 2025 - January 5, 2025

 

Sunday, January 5, 2025

Time: 7:45 AM
Song: Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked 
Artist: Cage the Elephant
Mode of Consumption: Radio – Planet 93.9 FM on the way to church.

Song link: https://open.spotify.com/track/3Pzh926pXggbMe2ZpXyMV7?si=fbd2fbf10b624413

I’m riding passenger in our dark blue Ford F150 on a gray morning. I punch the button the dash that identifies songs being played on the radio.

“It’s Cage the Elephant,” Jodi said.

I’m not sure I even cared, I just like pushing the button and seeing the answer. It passes the time during our 10-minute trip to church.

My father-in-law once talked about having to learn that the church was also a business. He was on the church council for most of the last three decades of his life, holding the title of council president for many of those years in both official and unofficial capacities. The life of the congregation may be dependent upon the holy spirit, but it’s also reliant upon those willing to keep the books, to arrange contractors for maintenance of the building, mow the grass, print the bulletins, hire pastors, perform public relations, and so on and so forth.

I’m in my second year as treasurer for the church, a position I am not particularly interested in nor suited for, but which was bequeathed to me as there really isn’t anyone else left to do it. It really blows my mind when I think about how much I used to goof off in church during my youth, and now I balance the checkbook for the place. Lord, help us.

We go to a country church that once had weekly attendance over a hundred people in the seventies and eighties, but has been in steady decline since the 90s. We could write a novel on the reasons – Socio-economnic, political, religious shifts, and likely a few contentious decisions made by various folks that were put in charge of the “business” side of the church at various times.

We’re left with an average attendance in the teens with average age of congregates in the 70s. Jodi and I are the youngest of the regular attendees, and unless something changes, we’ll oversee the last days of this 150-year-old congregation.

That will be sad business. Sometimes it’s easier to just punch the button on the dash and see what song the radio station is playing than think about it.