Last week my presbytery travels took me to western Ohio, and somewhere between Celine and Greenville I noticed a sign indicating the stretch of two-lane highway I was on is the Annie Oakley Pike. On my return trip from Greenville, just south of North Star, I saw the sign pointing to Annie Oakley’s grave. I took the detour.

Annie Oakley is a name from my Baby Boomer past. The details of her life are compelling, but not what I remember about Annie Oakley. I suppose my earliest memories of Annie Oakley come from an old TV western series that used Annie’s name but fictionalized just about everything else about her. And then there is the slightly more accurate musical Annie Get Your Gun (“There’s No Business Like Show Business”). In fact, Annie Oakley was in show business along with Buffalo Bill Cody and Sitting Bull.

So, I have been thinking about Annie Oakley and those childhood memories connected to her. You know, it was a good thing to have at least one cowgirl among all those cowboys of 1950s TV. But mostly those memories take me back to a time long ago. It would be easy to say simpler, even better times, but I am guessing my memory would be failing me. Simpler, maybe. Better?  Probably not.

The dictionary defines nostalgia as “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past.” We Baby Boomers seem especially prone to fits of nostalgia.  We love the  music of our youth and want to believe our geriatric rock stars are forever young. We keep remaking our movies and TV shows, drive retro cars, and suppose there has never been so idealistic and noble a generation as ours.

I suppose Boomer nostalgia is harmless enough when confined to conversation in bars with names like Abbey Road, Yellow Submarine, or Honkytonk Woman.  And no problem if we reminisce about the good old days while on our Princess cruises of the Caribbean. But I don’t frequent such bars and cruising is not my thing. The church is my thing, and I can tell you that Boomer nostalgia is toxic to the life of a healthy congregation.  And there is a lot of Boomer nostalgia in too many churches.

From the Saddleback and Willow Creek Churches to all their wannabes, from suburban mainline churches to little country chapels, Baby Boomers have been in a lot of churches for a long time. Their good old days are not so much the 1960s and 70s, but the 80s and 90s when they began to run things.  Arguably, we did an okay job. At least for a while. But as we settle into our dotage, we tend to think our way of doing things was not only the best way, but sometime the only way of doing things. (Over-) confident of our past and relying on selective memory, we just want to pass it on (and soon all those around will warm up to its glowing.)

If only the younger folk would just learn to shout to the Lord or open the eyes of their hearts. Shine, Jesus, shine!

Nostalgia insists that we had more kids in Sunday School, better VBS programs, awesome family camps, wonderful women’s groups, and pastors who really understood us. If we could just go back…

The idea of just going back is what makes nostalgia so deadly in the church. Insisting that ours were the glory days tells the Xs, the Millennials, and Zs that there’s really no reason to try. You’ll never “do church” as well as we did.

I once served a church with a sign that read “No Smoking by order of the Session.”  Yeah, those were the days. But what if we had a new batch of signs made and posted that read “No Nostalgia by order of the Session.” Let the Boomers reminisce in their bars and on their cruises. The Christians can get back to being the church.

There’s no business like church business.