Anniversary trip

Jeannie and I began our 30th anniversary trip in the small Austrian village of Hallstatt. Hallstatt is amazing and can hardly be described in words (so I’m adding a couple of pictures). Only 1200 people live here and they built the town on the side of the mountain right next to the lake. The buildings are literally built into the mountain and you can’t go anywhere very far without climbing steps! The town itself is really old, going back thousands of years because of the salt mines. Most of the people are Catholic and, in fact, it wasn’t until the 18th century that they even allowed a Protestant church in the town. Of course, we took tons of pictures and enjoyed the quiet, slow pace. Because of our travel schedule, we didn’t plan to eat until late and the most fun part of the dinner was sitting across from a group of young men from Thailand who were filming a travel commercial/movie! They ordered this huge feast of grilled fish, steak, ham and more and then proceeded to film all of it while two of the guys talked about what they were eating in Thai. It took forever for them to arrange the shots and close-ups to get the right angles and to show the guys eating the food in the right order, etc. By the time they actually started to eat, everything was cold! But they explained that this is what they always do and the restaurant people took the stuff and heated it up again. It was a fun bonus “floor show” to our dinner!

In Hallsatt, we decided to forego any big tours of stuff like the salt mines in favor of quieter days of relaxing and walking and taking pictures. We went to the “Charnel House” located behind the Catholic church. This Charnel House contains about 600 painted skulls! This is a cultural tradition of the eastern part of Austria where people are buried for 10 years and then they dig up the bones and bleach them in the sun and then paint them and put the bones in this Charnel House. They would then re-use the grave space. Most of the skulls in this house were from the 18th century, but one was as late as 1983 and you can still see the lady’s gold tooth in the skull! This is just one example of some very unusual religious traditions that we have observed in Europe, but definitely one of the most strange! The people connected this tradition with the passage in Ezekiel 37 where Ezekiel was in the valley of dry bones and God brought life to them again.

The sad thing is that what really needs the breath of God’s life are the religious practices we have observed. What is it that turns a church that was once the center of life in a community into a museum of the past? One of the things that I am praying that God will impress on me during this time is how to lead our church to avoid becoming only admired for our architecture or valued only for historical interest. My desire is for First Baptist to continue to be a vital force for God long after I have passed off the scene and that requires giving much thought to the future, not just the past!