CHURCH SHORTAGE THREATENS AMERICAN CHRISTIANS!

Dear Smart Shoppers:

A few years back there was a subtle change in the tagline for infomercials. I think it may have been Ron Popeil’s last major contribution to the genre, although a quick check of Wiki Obits let me know he was still alive. (Wiki Obits is an online database service that permits understaffed journalism outlets to pretend they’ve maintained a research department in the event of a newsworthy death… Hacking that site could be fun.) In any case, the tag shift was transforming the old “Operators are standing by” to “If you get a busy signal, call back!” The value of this new polish on the art of the infomercial is the powerful tool of presumed scarcity. There’s never a busy signal in the land of infomercial operators; but implying that so many buyers are ahead of you in line that the call center could collapse radically increases the volume of calls. What marketers understand is the fleeting impact of their message. If you don’t call in the minute after the conclusion of the push, you’ll forget you ever wanted the inside-the-eggshell-egg-scrambler and buy the electronic cat litter scoop instead.

Perhaps the most popular example of the power of presumed scarcity was the great toilet paper shortage of 1973. It began with a procurement memo by Wisconsin Congressman Harold Froehlich. Always looking for ways to encourage his state’s paper industry, he noted that the centralized purchasing agency in D.C., then called the National Buying Center, had failed to complete the paperwork on several toilet paper contracts. In November of 1973, attempting to spur the department to move forward with spending money in Wisconsin, he penned a memo suggesting the potentially disastrous result if our soldiers and bureaucrats were to face a depleted national toilet paper reservoir.

The initial memo created nothing newsworthy until a staff writer for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson referenced the shortage as a set-up for a joke Carson delivered on December 19, 1973. That’s all it took. Within 72 hours, frightened citizens emptied the shelves. The presumed scarcity of this irreplaceable commodity forced Carson to issue an on-air apology the following week, but it was too late; the damage had been done. Americans were hunkered down for the long-haul defense of their precious stockpiles.

Which leads me to think about inviting people to church (…of course it does).

Over the years I’ve participated in more than one Administrative Commission for a Presbytery to oversee the orderly closing of a congregation. This usually means a last-hurrah service where Presbyterians pack the pews of a doomed facility for the last time prior to its decommissioning. These services are never poorly attended, and every time someone remarks, “If this had been the attendance all along, this church would not be closing.”

So, here’s the strategy. We need to tell all our friends and neighbors that America is running out of churches! The declining supply of Christian worship space over the past few decades has resulted in a scarcity of Sunday seating supply, given the recent uptick in spiritual demand! Let people know how the leadership of FPCLG has shrewdly stockpiled pews over the past few years and now has a limited supply of Sunday capacity available for those in the know.

Tell your friends how this secret offer is available to a limited number and how you’re sharing this valuable information because you know how much they appreciate a deal. Explain how they may be turned away from the first service (a congregational equivalent to a busy signal), but to be persistent; there will be a second service! On Monday, if they didn’t visit with the first invitation, in hushed tones reserved for an inside trade, assure them that you have on pretty good authority that FPCLG management is considering the possibility of staging the event again next week. On Friday, let them know the great news of a second Sunday opportunity, but tell them they’re going to have to arrive especially early.

Frankly, I think this will be way more effective than telling people how ushers are standing by.

Still clearing out my toilet paper stash from 1973, I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor

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Newfound Empathy for... Empathy
Newfound Empathy for... Empathy

Dear Second Thinkers:

From time to time, an experience occurs that causes me some regret for a musing I’ve previously written. While I will not make a full review of my erroneous confidences, today I am thinking I failed in being too dismissive of empathy. To quickly summarize my empathic dismissal, I expressed concern that empathic feelings were replacing compassionate action, and as Christians we are not compelled to merely feel bad for those suffering—we are also supposed to do them some practical good. (You may read my previous and now somewhat regrettable discussion of the topic here.)

What has compelled me to rethink the whole issue is something I never imagined, and that is a cadre of policymakers completely void of empathic guidance. In the past, public

Unnatural Ethics
Unnatural Ethics

Dear Green-Fire Lighters:

Over the past week or so I’ve been musing over the writings of Aldo Leopold, the great naturalist whose understandings of environmental ethics were collected in 1949 into the posthumously published A Sand County Almanac. As a young man, Leopold longed to attend the Yale School of Forestry, founded by Yale University in 1901 as a graduate program in forest management. Eventually receiving his master’s degree in 1909, Aldo was able to turn his love for the outdoors into a full-time career. 

At that time, however, it was believed that saving nature required altering it. Heavily influenced by intrepid hunters like Teddy Roosevelt, the model of conservancy dominated, which meant manipulating the environment

Lower Your Stress with Ignorance
Lower Your Stress with Ignorance

Dear Devoted Viewers:

A few weeks following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing a research study was done to compare the stress levels of those who were firsthand witnesses to those who only saw the terrorist attack on the news. The study (found here) discovered that those who watched the story unfold through the media were three times more likely to experience ongoing stress than those who were actually present when the bombs were detonated. What’s more, the level of ongoing stress increased proportionally to the amount of post-event media the individuals consumed. In other words, those who watched the most news about the Boston bombings were the most stressed-out. This makes sense. Journalists are trained to create engaging narratives that hold the attention of the viewer, driven by a business

The Art of Peopleing
The Art of Peopleing

Dear Gatherers:

This past week I read an editorial by Jessica Gross (NYT 3/12/25) exploring the decline in religious affiliation as millennials have come of age. Gross explains how they were disenchanted by the ‘malfeasance’ of various faith groups brought to light by both sexual and financial scandals. Quoting Christian Smith’s new book Why Religion Went Obsolete, Gross highlighted, “The scandals violated most of the virtues believed to make religion good. They demonstrated that religion did not make people moral, did not help its own leaders cope with life’s challenges and temptations, did not promote social peace and harmony and did not model virtuous behavior for others.” Gross continues by observing that religions did not make

Is Plate Passing Past?
Is Plate Passing Past?

Dear Plate Passers:

At our February Session meeting, the elders had an interesting conversation as we were rethinking the offering plate. In favor of discontinuing the custom of plate passing, it was observed that almost no giving is received in these dependable brass revenue receptacles. Most contributions occur during the business week through automatic transfers, online giving and mailed checks. What is left for the Sunday receipts are largely green, “I gave online” cards and a handful of envelopes containing some cash or checks avoiding the cost of a stamp. ‘Loose offerings’ (un-enveloped cash) have nearly vanished. The Monday ritual of counting the offering used to take more than an hour; now it’s completed in a few minutes.

Another observation regarding offering plates was the undue anxiety experienced when one realizes they have no cash or are unable to contribute

Design and Direction
Design and Direction

Dear Gathering People:

If you have endured my long-form tour of our worship space, you’ve heard me ramble about the architectural work of Charles Edward Stade, who designed our Sanctuary. Fresh off his commission for the Chapel of the Resurrection at Valparaiso University in 1961, Stade’s Park Ridge firm was engaged by FPCLG to bring modern interpretation to classical Christian forms. To my taste, we caught Stade at just the right moment in the development of his style. Stade’s later designs were stamped by an obsession for A-frame structure. Literally hundreds of churches built in the 1960s and ‘70s reflect his direct and indirect influence. Long sloping roofs covering little checkerboards of windows became his hallmark. You can see local examples, including Winnetka Presbyterian Church, Trinity Lutheran Church of Lombard and Bethel United Church of Christ in Elmhurst. Our windows in both the cloisters and clerestory reflect his early fascination with tiny boxes of color, but unlike later works, ours are muted blues, grays

Practicing the Present
Practicing the Present

Dear Gardening Pianists:

I became a pastor just as mainline Protestantism was on the decline. I’ve never served a congregation that didn’t have members with fond memories of having significantly more members, larger programs and ever-expanding budgets; but that’s okay. My call to and preparation for ministry occurred in the 1980s, not the 1950s, so any wistful notion that I could have been a better pastor if I had started before I was born strikes me as silly. We are called to work, serve, pray and plan in the time we find ourselves; it is the only time in which God is present.  C. S. Lewis noted that the one prayer God almost never grants is “encore.” Lewis wrote that our nostalgia for “golden moments in the past” can be nourishing and sustaining only if we see them for what they are—memories, not blueprints. “Properly bedded down in a past which we do not miserably try to conjure back, they will send up exquisite growths,” Lewis wrote. “Leave the bulbs alone, and the new flowers will come up. Grub them up and hope, by fondling and sniffing, to get last year’s blooms, and you will get nothing.” (Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, 1964)

Perhaps because it is Annual Meeting time, I’m thinking about our past. It’s so tempting to fill in the trend lines and conclude we’re not anything like we used to be, but such

Our Thermal Safety
Our Thermal Safety

Dear Thermodynamic Ones:

In 1892, Scottish chemist James Dewar (no relation to John Dewar of the Scotch distillery) invented the thermal flask. His goal was to measure the specific heat of the element palladium. Dewar needed to stabilize the sample’s temperature before heating it in order to generate consistent data for his calculations. To solve this problem, he formed two brass containers and nested one inside the other. By heating and sealing the space between them, Dewar created a vacuum between the walls of the two flasks. Heat is transferred through the friction of molecules in motion as they crash into each other; the kinetic energy of their movement is absorbed and given off as radiated heat. If you reduce

How's Your Church Been Treating You?
How's Your Church Been Treating You?

Dear Auditors:

The problem with welcoming doorways is how they work both ways—if it’s easy to get in, it’s easy to get out. In the 1980s and ‘90s, the seeker-sensitive megachurch offered a slow and gentle ramp extended to the unchurched. The goal was to make the church experience less churchy and more in line with an individual’s secular tastes. Narthexes became Welcome Centers, Sanctuaries became Worship Centers, and pastors traded clerical collars or suits and ties for waffle henleys and denim. Sunday School became Life Groups, and traditional liturgies were traded for motivational sing-alongs followed by self-improvement lectures.

On the one hand, it worked extremely well. The gathering crowds dwarfed the attendance at more traditional churches, and it appeared the megachurch, with its economy of scale and high production value, quickly outstripped the modest accouterments

What if We Gave it Away?
What if We Gave it Away?

Dear Consuming Congregation:

I’ve been rethinking how we deliver content on Sunday mornings to meet modern attention spans. One concept would be that we would serve donuts and coffee, but after every few sips of coffee, a tiny lid would cover the cup until you listened to two minutes of a sermon; then the lid would open again so you could sip more coffee.

We could also interrupt the last line of a favorite hymn, forcing you to listen to another minute of a sermon before playing the resolving phrase.

Speaking of hymns, I’m going to talk to Doug, who prepares our worship slides, about getting sponsorships