The Train is Gone

As I write, I am sitting on a train bound for Seattle. I haven’t really ever been on a train before.

As a kid, I watched a lot of movies with trains in them. Most of them were westerns and someone always robbed the train. That was usually the only reason ever to have a train in a western. It must have been a really terrifying experience to ride a train in the west in the eighteen hundreds. The chance of someone robbing you at gunpoint was quite high – at least in the movies.

Its funny but this ride is everything I would have expected it to be so far. There is a gentle rolling side to side accented with bumping, thumbing and screeching. But the coolest part is the whistle. There it goes right now. That whistle brings back so many memories of my childhood.

Growing up, I spent most of my weekends in the small town of Manhattan Montana. In the 19^th and early 20^th century, there was a train station in Manhattan. Every day trains would carry passengers, cattle, and produce to and from far off places. In the 60’s and 70’s when I was there, the train station had been boarded up for years and the trains barreled through town as if Manhattan didn’t even exist. The engineer boldly used the train's whistle as a warning to all. Its as if it is making a proclamation.

First from the distance you hear, “The Train is coming!”

Then seconds later the volume increases as the whistle announces, “The Train is here!”

In an instant the tone of the sound changes as it begins to move away, “The train is leaving!”

Finally still, only moments later, in the distance as it moves way the whistle yells back, "The Train is Gone!”
At night I would here the train race through town and dream about the places it was going. In the day I would count the cars. Many trains had 100 cars or more. The signals in town were inadequate – often just a stop sign. I remember many people died because of the trains. I learned a healthy respect for trains.

When I think back on it now, I realize that the train was a symbol of progress. Many of the old folks in town remembered when the train stopped at the station. My grandpa remembers when they had to load up with wood and water for the old steam engines. All the trains that I had seen were huge diesels. Sometime 4 or 5 engines pulled the train and it raced through town. The old people remembered that Manhattan had been an important stop. But by the time I had arrive it was just one of many small towns located on the train line that served no purpose whatsoever to the train. The train that built the town now snubbed it.

The same was true of the highways. The old highway (or old road as we called it) ran through the center of town. There were gas stations, restaurants, a hotel and several bars along the main street that was also the highway. Everything a person needed for their road trip could be found on Main Street. Manhattan in the 50’s and early 60’s looked a lot like Mayberry. My grandpa owned a Gas station that eventually my Uncle Fred owned.

But then I90, the new freeway, came in and it bypassed Manhattan. There was an off ramp into town but cars now could speed right past Manhattan and hardly know it was there. By the late 70s some one built the Travel Shop on the outskirts of town right next to the Freeway and practically on the off ramp into town. It was a new gas station, convenient store, and souvenir shop all rolled into one. So if anyone needed gas or something to eat or even a trinket to bring home to their kids, all they had to do was stop at the travel shop. No one had to come into town anymore. My Uncle Fred turned the gas station into an auto repair shop but eventually even that went out of business. The only business that seemed to grow was the Travel Shop.

Manhattan exists today as a quiet town. There isn’t a whole lot of business. There aren’t a whole lot of people and the residents like it that way. The town was built for the train. The train left and so it adapted itself to the automobile and almost made it. The cars left and everything that Manhattan had to offer was offered at the Travel shop. Now the town exists for itself. “Let the visitors stay to the outskirts. Our bars and our…other bars are for us and we like it that way.”

In some ways the modern church is like Manhattan. The modern church was made to cater to the modern era. During the renaissance they broke away from the medieval church and staked a claim out on the modern frontier. They staked their future on modernity. And they were successful. The church grew more in the modern era than it did in the medieval era. Then in the 19^th century, modernity turned its back on the church. It used all its strengths or reason and logic and said the church is no longer a stop on our train line. Modernity challenged the church. Evolution said, “See there really is no God. Logically we are all monkeys.” Other attacks came and secular society moved at its own pace and left the Church behind.

So the church adjusted. It developed new apologetics; apologetics that appealed to the logic of those who attacked the church. They changed their methods and found new ways to present the gospel. They offered hope and celebration to a modern world that had become hopeless and sterile. And it worked. People came to the church. It was the Mayberry years.

But then the highway moved. Suddenly, TV, movies and eventually the internet came in and redefined how people learn. Logic was good but overrated. Beauty was missing and stopping in Mayberry with its nice sterile logical church didn’t appeal anymore. Spirituality needed to more experiential and passionate. Experience became the rage, truth became relative and the churches logical apologetic began to sound more and more like a clanging bell. The culture was shifting away from the church and the church responded with an attitude of preservation. They wanted to cling to Mayberry. Mayberry was a great place after all.

Someone got wise, went to the outskirts of town, and brought with them all the essentials that the church had to offer. They made it easy for culture to get off the freeway and take a break and see what the church was about. And it worked. But the church hated it. They were jealous because they took all the business away from them. So they accused them of watering down the message. Taking away the blessed modernistic apologetic and fundamentals and encapsulating them in to trite messages of peace with God.

So now what.

If Manhattan had wanted to grow and offer a future to its children it would have moved ¼ of a mile to the east and built attractions and amenities for travelers. They would have gone to the people; found ways to get them to slow down and spend some time in Manhattan. It would have become known as a place for others to come. But even then would it have survived. The church is no longer a train stop and it is no longer Mayberry. Churches that are growing are on the outskirts of town and often ridiculed by the church in town. But everyday hundreds thousands of people pass the church by as they speed along the cultural highway.

I wonder what it would be like to build a church that moved at the speed of the culture. I picture god’s people hitch hiking along the freeway or car pooling with lost people. But although this is a great picture of individual outreach it is not a good picture of what the church is supposed to be. Regardless of what postmodern critics might say there are foundations and principals and even fundamentals that define the Church and community is a big part it. Community is important because it is in community that culture is defined. The freeway culture is moving toward death and the Church’s culture will always be different from the world’s culture.

So if we somehow find a way to travel along and connect with the freeway travelers, we will still need to find ways to connect them to community. So a town is still a good picture but the purpose of the town may be totally different. Rather than Mayberry that existed to preserve our way of life, this new town would have to be a bold community that has a bold mission focused on rescuing people from the freeway culture. It will look more like Star Trek the Next Generation. After all the Enterprise was a traveling city that boldly went where no man had gone before. The Enterprise brought the message of hope and freedom to a much darker galaxy. (I admit this is a really geeky stretch of the analogy.)

What ever we do we need to do it with the heart of God in mind. Close to God’s heart is reaching and rescuing lost people. The same lost people who are speeding down the freeway. I think he would be in favor of anything that pulls them out of a culture that leads to death. That may mean that we have to find new ways to reach the freeway culture. But we must find ways to go beyond Mayberry or the Travel Shop. Mayberry was a beautiful place and the Travel Shop is a great and needed solution for culture today but there are still so many people to reach.

The last time I was in Manhattan, there were tons of cars whisking past the little town. The boarded-up train station is gone. They tore it down a few years back. It was like they wanted to forget the train had ever stopped there. Yet every night at about 10:00, the train screams through town with its whistle boldly proclaiming, “The Train is Gone!”