Visiting My Childhood Church After Being Gone for 24 Years

I went to the church I grew up in for the first time in over two dozen years. I had no idea what to expect. It was a bittersweet and somewhat depressing experience.

Almost nothing has changed except the painted wood beams. Also, there is no organ.

Last summer, I flew to California to visit one of my best friends who would be celebrating his 40th birthday. It was going to be a big ordeal: he was planning a giant birthday bash with lots of people, silly party games, barbecue, ice cream, and more.

When I bought my airplane ticket to Fresno (where he lived), I realized that his party would be on a Saturday, and I wouldn’t be flying back until the next day, on a Sunday afternoon. That meant I’d have a free Sunday morning, so I could go to church while I was there.

I thought about where I might want to go on Sunday.

Should I go to my friend’s church with him and his wife?

Should I visit the church my parents went to when they lived in Fresno when they were first married?

Then I had a wild idea.

What if I took the time to drive up to Stockton, where I was born, and visit the Mennonite church from my childhood that we attended in Lodi?

I did some quick calculations, then gulped hard after realizing that if I wanted to do this, I’d have to drive 2.5 hours there, then another 2.5 hours back. After adding in gas stops and bathroom breaks, I would be spending over six hours in the car for a one-hour church service.

I figured it would be worth it, and I wouldn’t regret it as long as I didn’t get stuck in traffic on my way back and miss my flight. I would be cutting it really close, but it would be nice to go back to the church I grew up in and see who might still be there.

I woke up uncomfortably early in the morning on Sunday, got ready for the day, packed my rental car, checked out of my Airbnb, and hit the road, driving north on I-5.

I drove as fast as I could within the speed limit the entire way there, and three hours later, FINALLY pulled into the parking lot. Even with all that, I was already late.

I turned off the very loud engine on my rented sports car and listened to the quietness of the morning while staring at a building that looked so unbelievably familiar to me, but that I hadn’t seen in many, many years.

As I walked from the car to the building, I could already hear people singing.

I timidly walked through the outer gate, then through the brick courtyard where I had spent every Sunday for the first decade and a half of my life. It felt like I entered a time warp as I wrapped my hand around the glass door handle and pulled.

I felt an unbelievable, almost urgent sense of nostalgia when the music wafted out of the building and washed over me as I walked into the foyer, slowly taking in the sight.

There, before me, was a church building and interior almost entirely unchanged from my very earliest childhood memories.

An usher found me and handed me a bulletin. I was almost embarrassed to take it, knowing that my presence had been acknowledged. I was no longer a ghost from the future, quietly visiting a location of childhood memories from the past. I’d been seen, and it was too late to turn back.

I slowly found a place to sit near the back, a few pews behind the very same pew my family used to sit in decades before, and I joined in the singing.

Well, I don’t know how much I actually sang: I think I just sat in silence (and stood in silence when we were asked to stand) and tried to take it all in.

It was hard to put into words just how surreal it all felt.

I was back in church. This was my family’s church. My childhood church. The one where I was dedicated as a baby. The one I always think of, still to this day, when people talk about “church” in general.

I was the same person sitting in the same sanctuary at church that Sunday. But nothing was the same. I had changed, and the church had changed.

Actually, what made the biggest impression on me that day was noticing just how similar some things were and how different some things were.

Some aspects of the church service, the church building, and the church congregation were totally different than when I grew up, as one might expect. Yet some aspects were completely, absolutely unchanged even after almost two and a half decades.

The building’s architecture was almost completely unchanged.

The stained glass was the same, the popcorn ceiling was the same, the carpet was the same, the “old building smell” was the same, all of the furniture was the same, and even the ancient, enormous lighting fixtures hanging from the sanctuary ceiling were the same.

There were only two small updates I noticed to the building itself: the giant laminated wood beams that held up the ceiling had been painted white and were no longer exposed wood, and they had re-upholstered the pews, but that was it.

Aside from that, everything else was completely untouched, and it felt like no time had passed whatsoever.

I can smell this picture. Can you? I call it: “Eau de old building.”

The music was quite different.

This probably wouldn’t surprise anybody since most praise and worship music has changed in most American church services over the past few decades, but it was still very noticeable to me.

When I was young, sitting in this church, in this sanctuary, in the 1980s and 1990s, we had a choir that sang during services, and they wore very formal green, flowing robes. We also had an organist who accompanied most songs.

But on this day, looking up at the stage, I immediately noticed there was no choir, and the organ was gone. I don’t just mean they didn’t have an organist this particular morning… I mean, the organ was gone. From what I could tell, they didn’t use it anymore. For some reason, I was surprised to see this.

The music itself was more modern: there was still a pianist playing piano, but there were also girls wearing blue jeans standing on the stage singing into microphones, accompanied by electric keyboards and electric guitars. This was new and different.

Somewhat shocking to me was how the hymnals that formerly sat on the backs of the pews were completely missing, as were the hymns themselves. Today we weren’t singing hymns from a hymn book: we were singing modern Chris Tomlin choruses with lyrics projected on a screen.

Now, I’m not SUPER old. We had just started to see the very beginning stages of projected lyrics when we attended here in my early teens. But we also still had hymnals even then, and we still sang hymns.

But no more.

There was no offering plate.

When I was growing up, we always passed an “offering plate”, which I always thought was a dumb thing to say, because the “plate” looked a lot more like an upside-down Top Hat than an actual plate.

But no matter how it looked, it was always part of our Sunday morning ritual: take the plate from the usher, put in your offering, pass it to the next person, and so on.

I even took an “ushering” class once when I was younger since the young boys would take the offering occasionally on certain Sundays.

I dreamed about the days when I’d grow up to be a full-grown adult man and could be a legitimate usher who helped people find their seats, handed out bulletins, and passed “the plate” to collect the offering.

But at this service, the offering plates were all gone, as were all the ushers.

There may have been offering boxes somewhere, but I don’t recall seeing a single one. Perhaps most people these days give their offering online, but I’m not sure.

Everything seemed smaller.

The biggest shock for me was just how small everything seemed. The building itself felt smaller, probably because I was a short, skinny teenager when I left, and now I was a married adult man approaching forty.

But even more surprising than how downscaled the building felt was how downsized the crowd felt. To put it somewhat ironically, I was overwhelmed by the underwhelming congregation size.

When I was growing up, we had two Sunday services: a “traditional” service super early in the morning, (7:00 am, if I recall correctly), and a “contemporary” service later, around 9:00 am, if I recall correctly). This was the practice since the church was first founded in 1907, where the early service was held in German, and the late service was held in English.

No longer.

Now, they only have one service each Sunday, and there is nothing traditional left. As I mentioned, boy, is it ever contemporary. As I gazed at the crowd attending the church’s one single Sunday service, it felt like the sanctuary was only half full or even slightly less. I wondered why.

• Was this particular church experiencing an unusual amount of attrition?

• Was everybody just getting older and dying out, and no new blood was being added?

• Was this just part of a larger trend where Americans, in general, are becoming more and more secular and have stopped attending church en masse?

I don’t know. But it made me sad.

The congregation had aged significantly.

Another big impression from attending this service was just how aged the congregation had become.

With perhaps two or three exceptions, all of my peers had grown up and (like me) moved away and not returned. Many of the families who attended when I was growing up were still there, but by now, they were all empty-nesters in their 60s, 70s, and 80s.

On this Sunday, the sheer amount of white hair in the sanctuary was truly remarkable. Also, there were very few children and almost no babies at all.

This led me to a puzzling question.

Where have all the babies gone?

When the service was over, on a whim, I walked over to the nursery room to take a look inside. What I saw when I opened the door made me emotional.

The nursery was completely empty, and all the lights were off.

When I was growing up, in this same church, in this same building, this same nursery room was a raucous, energetic space filled with crying babies, nursing mothers, and toddlers giggling and pushing around plastic lawnmowers that made bubbles and pulling around rainbow-colored xylophones on wheels.

They laughed, screamed, bit each other, threw things, snacked on goldfish crackers, barfed, and needed their diapers changed, with ointment rubbed on their diaper rash.

(Note: I specifically remember the diaper rash because I will never get the smell of DESITIN out of my nose when I think about this room.)

But on this day, from what I could tell, there hadn’t been a single baby in the nursery at all.

When we lived in California, my family had seven kids. We were the largest family in the church and, therefore, utilized the nursery more than just about anyone. We also frequently pitched in with “nursery duty,” helping take care of the many, many children whose parents attended what we called “big church.”

At times, my siblings and I would even fight to see who could help Mom or Dad run the nursery so we didn’t have to sit and listen to the boring sermon.

But today, I stood in the entry of the nursery where I grew up, looking out at a room that hadn’t changed since I was a child.

It was completely empty.

It was completely quiet.

It was completely dead.

Almost as if to insult me and rub it in, I noticed there was a GIANT spider web hanging ominously from the ceiling right in the entryway.

This proved that the nursery had to have been abandoned that day because if anybody had come into the room that morning, they surely would have noticed the massive spider web by walking into it, or they would have removed it.

This morning, there was nobody in the nursery except me and the spider.

Actually, I looked and looked but didn’t even see a spider. This was just the web: even the spider was gone.

It was only me and an abandoned spider web.

Just looking at it made me so depressed that, in anger, I jumped up on the countertop, grabbed that monstrosity with my bare hands, and ripped it down from the ceiling. I went into the nursery bathroom with the little, tiny, baby-sized toilet and flushed it down.

After I calmed down, I walked deeper into the nursery, opening the side doors and peering into the smaller rooms where my sisters and I used to hold precious newborn babies, feed them their bottles, and burp them in the blue velvet rocking chairs.

An empty feeling hung in the air as I was saddened to see that it may have been weeks, months, or maybe even years since these rocking chairs had rocked their last babies as their parents sat in church.

I might be wrong in my assessment. I don’t know any of this for sure. I was too afraid to ask anybody specifically. But I definitely spoke to a couple afterward who lamented the serious lack of children, babies, and young people in the congregation.

The nursery, after I ripped down the spider web.

Some people instantly recognized me, and that was nice, but it was also awkward.

One of the men playing in the praise band and leading the singing was an amazingly influential man from my childhood who noticed me right away.

I was very glad to see him. It didn’t seem like he had aged at all: he was the same kind, smiling, funny guy, still with plenty of hair on his head and a deep, loud, hearty laugh. That was good to see and hear.

Others recognized me, but I didn’t even know who they were. More than one elderly person came up to me and said: “You’re Ron Stauffer? You’re Ron’s son, right? Your father is Ron Stauffer?”

“Yes,” I assured them. “My dad is Ron Stauffer.”

They would tell me something like: “Well, I don’t remember you, but I remember the Stauffer family.”

They would ask me questions about how my dad was doing or they’d tell me to pass along their regards to my dad. One woman went on and on about how helpful my dad had been in her life many years ago when she was going through a divorce.

“Okay, I’ll tell him,” I said.

(On a side note: Dad, if you’re reading this, Carla said to tell you how helpful you had been in her life many years ago when she was going through a divorce).

Some of these people I knew by name, and some I didn’t know at all. But several of them knew me. This happens often, especially when you are the oldest son in a family with lots of kids, and you have the same name as your dad.

One older gentleman, Cal, recognized me in the bathroom when I was getting ready to wash my hands and shook my hand, then asked me: “How is Ron Stauffer doing?”

I asked him to clarify, “Ron… my dad?”

Of course, I knew he didn’t mean me, but it’s always awkward when people ask me, Ron Stauffer, how my dad, Ron Stauffer, is doing.

Some folks were dead. Some were remarried. This was more jarring than I expected.

One thing I never expected to see was how some people who were getting up there in years had died while others hadn’t. I found out that some folks who really weren’t that old at all had died. And I found out how other folks, who were much older, were still alive and well. This is strange to observe, and it doesn’t always make sense.

One of the older ladies I knew and loved as a dear friend told me she had gotten divorced and had remarried another man in the church whose wife had died.

When I found out who that man was that she had remarried, it almost knocked me off my feet.

It was the grandfather of one of my friends!

Now, I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that… widowers can get married, and that’s fine. Of course, I know that…

But to find out that your friend’s married grandfather is now married to a woman that you knew who was married to someone else before, that was just a very weird experience!

Do you think they’ll recognize me? Do I still look like a small 13-year-old boy?

I saw some people I knew but was too shy to say anything.

There were two or three young women I saw who — wait, hold that thought: if they were older than me, that means they were probably already 40 years old, so… that’s a WILD thought! I don’t think I can call them “young women” anymore.

Anyway, there were two or three ladies that I recognized but didn’t appear to recognize me.

Why? I’m not sure. Do I not look like myself? I probably do.

But if you’re not expecting to see a friend you haven’t seen in 24 years, it might be easy not to notice. I mean, I’m about 75 pounds heavier now than I was when I left this church, and I’ve got a big beard and gray hair.

Maybe in their eyes, I don’t look at all like my former self at all.

But it was so strange: where I was sitting that day, I was about eight feet from a girl I knew fairly well growing up. She was still very pretty. It looked like she was still single. And she really hadn’t appeared to age at all, even though she was older than me.

I looked over at her, instantly recognized her, and I don’t know if she saw me or not, but she certainly didn’t recognize me.

And at the end of the service, I wondered: should I go say “Hello?” but I hesitated.

It could be amazingly awkward to just walk up to her and say: “Hi, it’s me, Ron Stauffer, remember? I haven’t seen you since 1998.” So I decided against it.

I don’t know if I’ll regret that or not. Should I have introduced myself? I’m not sure.

I was caught off guard when the pastor asked me a question I wasn’t prepared for.

One thing I didn’t see coming at all but looking back now, it shouldn’t have surprised me, was that the pastor noticed me after the service.

After we sang the last song and were dismissed, I started gathering my things and rose to my feet. Almost instantly, the pastor, a slightly bearded man who appeared to be not much older than myself, came up to me and reached out his hand. As I shook it, he introduced himself.

“Hi there. I’m Pastor Joe,” he said.

“Hi, I’m Ron Stauffer. Nice to meet you,” I said in return.

“You look new. Is this your first time here?” he asked, or something to that effect.

This completely and utterly blindsided me. My head was spinning as I tried to understand the question, contemplate its meaning, and formulate an answer.

I think I sputtered like a maniac as I tried to babble out something—anything—that could be somewhat coherent.

“Oh, uhh, wow, I, um, well, yeah, uhh, kind of, no, uhh… actually, no, it’s not my first time. Nope.”

“Oh, you’ve been here before? Sorry, I didn’t recognize you,” he said, apologizing.

“Well, umm, actually, I grew up here. I was raised here. But it’s been 25 years since I’ve been here? So, yeah, kind of… it’s been a long time. This is all very weird for me.”

He was very polite. But for whatever reason, that question was so shocking and I was completely unprepared for it.

In any other church, I would totally have expected to answer a question like that after the service. But at this church, I knew that just saying “Ron Stauffer” out loud would cause many of the people in the building to look around in recognition of the name, and it did.

But this guy, Joe, was new to the church. So in a bizarre sort of role reversal, I almost wanted to force the question back on him. I felt defensive, like saying: “How dare you? Actually, YOU look new. Is it YOUR first time here?”

I composed myself after this exchange and spoke to some folks I recognized, but inside, I just kept laughing at how awkward it was.

How insulting… “Are you new here?” Man, you’re the new guy! I started going to this church almost 40 years ago!

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Overall, the whole experience was a little bit sentimental, a little bit fun, a little bit awkward, and a little bit sad. It was worth doing. I’m glad I made it a priority, and while the drive back to Fresno took longer than expected, I didn’t miss my flight after all.