My Home Church Closed. A True Story.
I read the news today; oh boy
About another church that failed the grade.
And yes, the news was rather sad
I found no reason there to laugh.
My home church closed.
Even as I type these words, I can’t believe it. And yet, I know it’s true. After 48 years of ministry, the church where I was formed in Christ forever closed its doors. The interim pastor placed the keys in the hands of state church leadership who placed the property on the real estate market. It was then purchased by an investor.
My home church is now a Bed and Breakfast.
“Easy come, easy go,” some might say. But not me. I can’t let it go so easily.
“It’s just a building,” others would observe. No, it wasn’t just a building.
It was my spiritual home.
This wasn’t where I met Christ as Savior, but it is where Christ formed me in my early years in Him.
It was my burning bush and my upper room.
It was my Sinai and my Mt. of Transfiguration.
It was my synagogue of instruction and my temple of worship.
It was my Ziklag of refreshing, my Jerusalem of celebration.
It was all this and more, so much more, to me.
Now it is a place of commerce. The spiritual has been exchanged for the material.
Can you blame me if I feel sorrow and mourning, even righteous indignation?
Can you blame me if I want to go in the building and turn over the tables and beds?
I remember when my church was born. I was there. I was in the room when it came into the world.
I was there the very first Sunday as a dozen or so people gathered in the local high school band room. I remember thinking, “This isn’t church; it’s a class.” Until the worship started. Then I became very uncomfortable with the casual and free worship service in which people clapped along to the songs. I even wondered if it was a cult! I asked God’s forgiveness and promised Him if He got me out of that service safe and sound, I would never come back again. You laugh, but it’s true.
The following Sunday, I was back. I was alarmed by the service again, this time because people not only clapped their hands but raised them as they sang, even individually praising God out loud. Again, I asked God to forgive me and get me out of that cult. I promised Him I would never come back.
This was my pattern for four Sundays until I realized what the church offered was not cultic but only something I was not used to. I realized I was sensing the moving of the Holy Spirit among these people and, more importantly for me, in my own heart. I wanted more. I had to have more.
I was a college freshman at the time, studying economics while working between 25 and 60+ hours a week at a national delivery service in a city 30 minutes south of the university. My days were long and my nights were short. Between work, 16 hours of classes, evenings of study, and drive time, my cup was more than full, running over with stress beyond measure.
Sunday at church was my lifeline. A mature disciple named Terry led a growing adult Sunday School class that set my heart and mind on fire for the Word of God and the God of the Word. Sunday morning services were life-giving for the worship and the preaching by my pastor. Sunday night services were more of the same, but with the added feature of long sessions of prayer in the altars when the men of the church would pray over me. In those services, I found much more than a healing balm for the wear and tear of the previous week; I found an energy drink for the requirements of the week ahead.
My work at the national delivery service, which had been so challenging, soon became an opportunity to invite Christ to join me there. I felt empowered to share Christ with co-workers, even the collection of Jehovah’s Witnesses who saw our center as their territory of operations. Work became my mission field, and I joyfully welcomed the privilege of serving God there on the front lines of life.
School was still a daily grind. Gone were the high school teachers who knew my name and took a personal interest in me. The professors in this major university just taught their classes and told you to keep up if you could. During my freshman year, a few even told us their job was to flunk out the unworthy. That first year was brutal as I tried to juggle the demands of school and work. While my subsequent three years saw me more adept at juggling school and work, moving deeper into the meat of my economics major meant the mental work required only intensified.
I honestly don’t think I would have made it without my home church. My pastor and church family encouraged me in every way possible, helping me put muscle in my soul, muscle that not only saw me through those challenging years but muscle that is still mine today.
I was healed in that church.
I became a disciple of Jesus Christ in that church.
I came to love God’s Word in that church.
I learned the joy of giving and serving in that church.
I learned the joy of serving Christ with others in that church.
I was baptized in the Holy Spirit in that church.
I preached my first sermon in that church.
I led worship for the first time in that church.
I taught my first Sunday School class in that church.
I convened my first ministry group in that church: a children’s ministry.
I received my call to vocational ministry in that church.
I was a part of a family of faith in that church.
I sat with my best friends as they mourned the death of their three-year-old daughter in that church.
I knelt and prayed and prayed and prayed in that church.
I took giant steps of faith in that church.
I was stretched, strengthened, challenged, encouraged, and comforted in that church.
My life was forever and infinitely changed in that church. As were the lives of many, many others.
But now my home church is closed. The building was sold. This family of faith is no more.
And like driving in the funeral procession of a loved one where the people on the streets around you just go on with their lives as if nothing has changed, today, the world just keeps on spinning as I sit in this room and mourn the death of my loved one, my church.
Multiplying my pain is the fact that my story is not unique: all across the United States, leaders are closing and locking the doors of churches for the last time. The buildings are now used as bookstores, BnBs, restaurants, breweries, bars, clubs, wineries, wedding chapels, stores, homes, apartments, indoor playgrounds, business offices, medical facilities, drug houses, and even an atheist headquarters.
According to Lifeway Research, in pre-COVID 2019 (the last year of available statistics), 4500 churches closed their doors for the last time. This means every Sunday, the keys of 87 local churches were thrown into a storage box or handed over to a realtor.
Lest you think the people of these churches are landing elsewhere, studies show this is not the case. The decline in church attendance continues. And no, church planting is not balancing out the shuttering of churches. For 2019, Lifeway Research found we planted 3000 churches across America – a net loss of 1500 churches. In other words, every Sunday in 2019, we opened 29 churches, but we closed 58 churches. In my denomination, between January 1 and October 31, 2023, we opened 206 new churches and closed 278 churches – a net loss of more than one per week.
A net loss not just in numbers but in our collective souls as followers of Jesus Christ.
To adapt the words of the preacher-priest John Donne:
No church is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every church is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
The world is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were.
Any church’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in the body of Christ.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
My eyes facing north toward my old home church now buried, I raise my heart to God. Even as I mourn the end of my home church, I thank Him it had a beginning. I thank Him it had a history of changed lives. I thank God my life was one of them.
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