Familiar Things

A couple Sundays ago, for the first time in a long time, I sat in a church pew. I held a hymnal in my hands because there was no projection. When I placed the hymnal back in the rack on the back of the pew, I felt a twinge somewhere deep inside.

It was the twinge of something deeply familiar and the twinge of something forgotten.

For the first twenty years of my life, all but a handful of worship services involved pews and hymnals. My hands knew to hold a hymnal long before my eyes and mind could make sense of the words and notes. I sang anyway; after all, I was part of the congregation. I wiggled on pews as a child and later held children struggling with their own pew-inspired wiggles.

I never expected something as simple as placing a hymnal back in its rack would evoke such strong memories. Then again, I realize part of the reason that simple action resonated so deeply was that I had done it so often, so regularly, so unconsciously from toddlerhood to adulthood.

I'm not filled with nostalgia for churches filled with pews and hymnals. They are part of my formation, not the formation offered by the congregation I serve now or the ones I have served in recent years for that matter. As we work to make disciples of generations accustomed to lots of media and comfy chairs, I have no problem worshipping with neither pews nor hymnals.

But I wonder about those familiar things. I wonder about what familiar things the children in my congregation are being offered.

I wonder what they encounter in churches that engages their bodies and their minds.

I wonder what thing they encounter in worship that they're not yet able to understand, but one day becomes sweetly familiar.

I wonder what will become something they do as second nature.

I wonder what they will have, what thing they will do later on in their life, maybe even something they had forgotten, that will make them say in some holy place, "I belong here," even if it's for just fleeting a moment.

I wonder because I know, somehow, the beautifully familiar feeling of a hymnal being placed in the rack on the pew is why I now lead a congregation.

I pray that these new generations of believers will still find holy familiar things.