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RENDEZVOUS

God's People Are Where You Find Them

by Jim Carlson, Executive Director

I’ll bet every American adult has wondered why anyone would want to be a mortician (including, at times, even those in the funeral business...!). While the funeral directors I’ve known have all been sensitive, polished, professional businessmen, there’s that "other side" to their work that makes most folks a bit uneasy. We’re glad somebody’s doing the job, though.

I recently had the pleasure of spending the better part of a day traveling with our local funeral director, as we performed services quite a distance from our town. I learned a great deal in our conversation, and we discussed the question of "who gets into this funeral business, anyway?" My friend’s observation was that a great many funeral homes are family businesses, carried on generation after generation. (His grandfather had started our local mortuary.) That makes sense: if a person has grown up in a certain environment, regardless of how mundane or unique, he or she will be familiar with those surroundings and so more inclined toward them as an adult.

When I first moved to central Montana from northern Idaho in 1978, I remember being struck by the open spaces, the farm/ranch culture and tremendous distances of my new setting. I wondered how people could adjust to life there (I then grew to love it!).

But if you really want to see "stark" and experience "distance," head further east, on out to the Dakotas. There, the dryland farms and immense ranches are home to many hearty and wonderful folks, but these are not the envy of most of the rest of our society. There’s something about this kind of isolation that creates in folks a sense of loneliness, of being left out of the mainstream of the civilized world. While the farms and ranches (like funeral homes) tend to stay in the family for generations, it’s very hard for a person from the outside to adapt to such a rural life.

Ever wonder how people ever get started living in isolated places, outside the population centers, and stay long enough to build a place and turn it over to the next generation? In the case of the Dakotas, that open territory was peopled largely by Russian German immigrants between 1870 and 1917. However, their experience living in this type of area began much earlier. Dr. Milton Reimer, in his treatment of "A History of the Great Plains Congregational Fellowship," relates that "the social and religious mindset of the Russian Germans had been shaped by a century and a half of living on the Russian steppes. Beginning in 1763, in response to a generous colonization offer made by Catherine the Great, thousands of families left their German homelands and migrated to the newly opened grasslands along the Volga River." The life they had known for generations in the "old country" was continued in the new.

Regardless of how they got there, people make their homes where they’re comfortable living and capable of working, especially in isolated areas. For the most part, they’re where they are by choice, and aren’t interested in living in the "mainstream" of society. Those who wish to move to a populated area are free to do so.

A few summers ago a group from a large, city church graciously visited one of our Mission churches to help with a children’s ministry. During an orientation briefing prior to their week of work, the helpers were told something of what to expect during their time in the "back country," where most of them had no experience. They were to expect folks to live differently, frugally and with few of the distractions our guests took for granted (little things like, say, plumbing...). The point was emphasized that these people were not to be pitied or looked down on for their choice of surroundings. They could leave if they wanted to leave, but were content with things as they had them.

Happily, the gospel works the same, no matter the location. The apostles of Jesus learned that the Word of God does its work among people whether they are eloquent and cultured Alexandrians (Acts 18.24-28), cosmopolitan Corinthians (Acts 18.8-11), educated Athenians (Acts 17.34), meat-and-potatoes Thessalonians (Acts 17.3-4), or even lowly Cretans (Titus 1.5). We rest in the faithfulness of God where He has put us to serve: the "little places" of the Rocky Mountain West.