Those who know me know that I absolutely love college football. I love the pageantry, the tradition and, of course, the tailgating. My most magical season reached its annual conclusion last week with Alabama’s rolling 42-14 victory over Notre Dame in the BCS National Championship game.
Growing-up in Georgia, few things topped an afternoon “between the hedges” watching the mighty Bulldogs take on their fellow SEC opponents. For Southerners, college football is a religion. Saturdays in the South are full of all the pomp and circumstance of even the highest of church services. Sure, we’ll save our Sunday best for the next morning, but all of our best worship will be spent Saturday.
Alex Gallimore |
A few years ago I left my home in Georgia and moved to North Carolina where football is, shall we say, different. I quickly learned as a graduate student at Wake Forest that college football in this part of the country is a very watered down version of the liturgical rituals of my youth. Still, I embraced my new home and became a supporter of the Demon Deacons. Yes, Wake Forest football fans do exist and while our numbers may be few, we possess a passion that defies explanation.
I must confess that I am a college football elitist. I love the historic rivalries and regional conferences and believe that it is good for the game when the teams with the richest traditions do well. As a result, I tend to resist the cartoonish uniforms worn by teams like Oregon as well as the conference realignment that has taken place in recent years. This season, West Virginia — of all schools — competed in the Big 12 and until recently, Boise State was slated to move into the Big East. Nebraska now plays in the Big Ten, Texas A&M in the SEC, and soon Pittsburg and Syracuse will join the ACC as will Notre Dame in every sport except football.
One Saturday this fall while watching a few games with a good friend, we discussed the recent realignment and the possibility of additional changes. We felt all the movements had become a bit ridiculous and that the dust seemed to be settling to give way to a newer, much more stable system. The next day, Maryland, a founding member of the ACC, announced its decision to join Rutgers in moving to the Big Ten only to be replaced by Louisville in the ACC. Needless to say, the dust continued to swirl.
This conversation reminded me of a panel discussion I attended about a year ago at a gathering for moderate Baptists. While speaking of reaching emerging generations and communicating to a rapidly changing culture, one of the speakers suggested that we’ll have a better idea on how to reach people once the dust has settled over this historic epistemic shift. The bottom line was that churches and leaders should just hold on, ride it out and re-evaluate once the stability of life returns.
College football is a simple example of the fact that stability and continuity are no longer cornerstones of our American cultural identity. Our churches are located in a world of endless transition, constantly rewriting once universal meta-narratives in favor of more local, post-modern, individualistic stories. It once made sense to do things a particular way — say, playing a team in the same geographical location due to the limitations of travel or the importance of maintaining local fan bases. Today, however, with availability of air buses, the rising number of non-residential students and the ability to watch any team play live from any TV anywhere in the world, historic affiliations and practices are growing less and less important.
If this is happening in college football, something with widespread following across America, what is it doing to our churches? I fear most faith communities have missed how great an impact current cultural change is having on congregational life in a world where people access information and interact differently than they did just 10 years ago.
It is past time we begin asking how we might communicate the same historic experience in new ways. How can we change, adapt, realign in order to provide the same message? What new partnerships can be developed? What can we do today that may have seemed absurd yesterday? How might we tweak our traditions in order revive them to emerging generations?
Our culture is realigning itself, and new priorities are uprooting longstanding traditions. It is time we embrace new ways of church life in order to provide the same distinctly Christian and Baptist experiences of old.
Nobody likes tradition as much and I do, and change is always strange at first. But just think — one day Alabama might just join the NFL.
Alex Gallimore (alexcgallimore@gmail.com) is pastor of Hester Baptist Church in Oxford, N.C.