When I was working on a degree in congregational ministry a few years ago I did a paper about the life and death of churches and compared the process of a church dying to a patient in palliative care. It was an incredibly moving process for me; for something so beautiful as a church to finally die does not have to be something that happens with fear and loathing, but as something where death can be treated as a necessary part of existence.
I got to thinking about that today. I had to drive a wrestling trip to a community not far from somewhere that I used to live. I knew a number of people at the Church of Christ in that community, but they have all moved away now or died, so I decided to walk a few blocks over to the church building. What I found was quite depressing...the paint on the front is all peeling off; where there is siding it is becoming all moldy, the porch looks like it could collapse at any moment, and it looks like an abandoned building. There was a flyar hanging from the door that looked there for weeks, and I wondered if that church has stopped meeting altogether.
It makes me sad to think about a church that is in its final death stages like this one. Maybe I'm completely wrong...maybe it is vibrant and full of life and they are so busy doing good works that the members don't have time for a building. But likely it's a goner, and the next time I go and visit that community the building will have been raised and Starbucks will be sitting there.
Once upon a time somebody had built that building for a group of people with the great expectation that God would do something great there. And perhaps he did; yet now it's a place that only brings about sadness when we look at it. In so many places the same thing has happened and will continue to happen until the Lord returns. But yet new life is also springing...new churches are being established...new Christians are outnumbering the old that die or fall away. A building may fall down, but God's creativity to bring about something new will never fail.
