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Rural churches in a changing world
Sunday, September 24, 2006
CARLISLE — — When the congregation of Tapscott Primitive Baptist Church sang its final hymn in 2003, the voices of four members remained.
The closing of Tapscott, which organized in 1814, "was one of the saddest things ever," said Nancy Baker, whose husband, James, served as lay pastor for the Warren County congregation. "That was our life."
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The West Alexandria couple — he's 85, she's 82 — joined the church in the early 1950s, when roughly 25 people attended monthly worship services. They raised two children there.
In winter, they and other members arrived early to stoke the wood-burning stoves. The simple brick church, built in about 1850 on a long, unpaved lane off what's now Ohio 123, still had outhouses then — one for men, one for women. Updated through the years with central heat, air conditioning and restrooms, the church has been turned over to Carlisle, which plans to use it as a community center.
"The world has changed," said lay pastor Baker, who is a retired organic chemist.
Many rural and small-town churches who haven't yet met Tapscott's fate have been unsure of how to change with it — or if they should embrace change at all. Some see a tension inherent in trying to keep church relevant to younger generations, yet reverent to God.
"You get a quality of irreverence" with the casual dress of pastors, "rock-and-roll" music and high-tech equipment that's transforming the way many growing churches across the Miami Valley worship, said Elder Eddie Garrett, 73, who heads a membership of about 15 at the Thompson Memorial Primitive Baptist Church in Franklin. "It takes away from the spirituality of the service."
But Mike Slaughter, 55, senior pastor at Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church near Tipp City, one of the region's largest churches, offered a different view.
"Jesus was considered irreverent," he said. "... Whatever the traditions of the religious people were, he violated those traditions. What he showed was true faith is how you treated people, how you made God make sense to people."
