This weekend was a pretty weird time here in Knox Vegas. Friday after work at my part-time job (as a business-to-business sales rep for the local HoneyBaked Ham Store), Emily and I headed to Charlotte for her baby shower. That morning, rumors began circulating that there would be a gas shortage in Knoxville. I filled up at about 10 am, with prices at $3.69 for regular gas. Friday afternoon as we left town, many stations were out of gas, and prices at the stations with gas were hitting $4.49.
Our trip was great, but I worried about not being able to buy gas on the return trip Sunday. However, it soon became evident that although there were stations throughout the Southeast that had run out of gas, most stations had at least regular fuel available at a pretty high price. Driving through South Carolina was nice, since they had ample fuel at pretty low prices. (We usually drive to Spartanburg and up to Charlotte, since it's easy and there's cheap gas.)
Anyway, Monday and Tuesday were strange days. Gas at local stations that had fuel was at least $4.99, and many stations were over $5. We officially had the nation's most expensive fuel prices. It seems that the stations that didn't order more gas from distributors at inflated prices and therefore ran out were not upsetting people nearly as much as those with gas that were charging high prices. (People are funny like that...) Most stations simply had no gas and removed the prices from their signs as an indicator of that fact.
The big takeaway for me in all of this comes from the scene at the local convenience stores that had run out of gas. Our local Weigel's is usally a busy place. It's a neighborhood market and deli as well as a gas station. But when they didn't have gas on Tuesday when I bought milk there, business was dead. There were just a handful of cars. Folks that wanted milk (They have the cheapest, and some say best, around. Maybe due to the Weigel family history as dairy farmers?), beer, bread, and random sundries were in there, but that's it. Checkout ladies were bored. It was surreal when compared to the usual long lines in the store and jostling for a parking spot outside it.
Gas drives our culture's habits. People spend money at Weigels for lots of stuff, but they come there because they can also buy gas. As our nation spends less money on gas and we put more fuel-efficient cars on the road, convenience stores will suffer. They exist to serve the needs of gas-fueled car drivers. When the internal combustion engine really starts to decline with the advent of electric cars and vehicles powered by who knows what, convenience stores will really be in a pickle.
I read recently that The Pantry has 1600 stores. What will they do when everyone is averaging more than 40 miles per gallon in their Civic Hybrids and Toyota Priuses? What will they do when people plug their cars in at home? It seems only the cleanest, brightest, best-located and cheapest convenience stores have a future. Time will tell how it works out, but the future was here this weekend when $5 gas hit Knoxville.
The question is, how flexible are our churches and church leaders? How flexible are our ministries and our denominations? Are we flexible enough to respond to the needs of our extremely fast-changing culture? Are we flexible enough to respond to the changing beliefs of our community members? Are we flexible enough to respond to the next major 9/11-like crisis?
Churches that have Kingdom impact are like the Boy Scouts. They live by the motto "Be prepared." Let's hope that we, as church leaders, are ready for all contingencies and changes in our local communities and we also have prepared ourselves for the likely futures that we will soon live through. Let's not be prepared to serve just the person who lives in our community today, as the convenience stores serve the gas-hungry car. Let's be ready to serve the person in our community 5 or 10 years from now, who is totally different from the current resident. Let's keep an eye to our culture and community's changes so that we can always proclaim the Gospel in ways that resonate with our culture and our people.
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