"Abandoned Church - Winter" by Brian Wallace
Across the stretches of rural areas and in the midst of
urban neighborhoods lay grim reminders of communities and congregations which
have literally given up the ghost. Abandoned and delict church buildings belie
the ever optimistic challenge to renew, revitalize, transform a congregation
which is just waiting to die, waiting for the last few members to die, waiting,
waiting, waiting.
What witness do these buildings give? What hope do they
offer? What consolation do they bring to others who are creepingly moving toward
the same fate? No longer do hymns resound from them giving glory to God and
fortifying the worshippers. Today, they stand like skeletons which were not
buried. They are monuments to a past and warnings for the future. Mercifully
some have collapsed in the wind, or have become a pile of ashes from a
consuming fire. The agony of those still standing presses upon the souls who
pass by them traveling to another destination.
Current congregants of declining congregations look upon
them as a portent of things to come to their own frail existence. Even as the
last gasps of life bleeds from the lungs of the dying ones, they insist, “That
will never happened to us.” Some will seek to rally the troops with tales of
the exceptional resuscitation of one which had been on the edge of demise. “If
it could happen to them, it may be God’s will for us.” There is no one to play
the piano or organ. The paint and wallpaper are stained with water from the
leaking roof. A window, here and there is cracked from foundation settlement
and bulging walls.
In far flung regions where the railroads and highways
by-passed once communities fill of promise the people moved on rather than
being starved of commercial and industrial energy which would have kept them
alive. Yet their edifices of stores, homes, schools, saloons and churches stand
in resistance to the primal elements. Only those who go seeking them find them
standing lonely against the horizon. The “pickers,” the human vultures, have
carried off anything which might have a few pennies of value. In the urban
areas some have been repurposed into breweries where there is more life and
fellowship than the congregation knew in its last decade or so. Others have
become squatter havens and crack houses for those as bereft of life and hope as
the cold and drafty buildings themselves.
Vestries, sessions and boards did their best to keep the
spirit alive as along as possible. Dioceses, presbyteries and associations
sought to provide the necessary life support. In successive efforts to save
themselves from death only ensured their death. More tightly they drew their
huddling. Insisting on maintaining their solo existence, and refusing to join
forces with others near or distant to share resources, to reduce expenses, and
to expand mission and ministry.
Has God abandoned them, abandoned us? It is God’s will or
our stubbornness which has left these wreckages littering the landscape? Vainly we struggle to delineate a new identify
to carry into a changed and ever changing world. What witness shall we leave
behind us, decaying structures of yesterday or vibrant communities of grace,
peace, and reconciliation? Do we hasten our death in seeking to save ourselves,
or do we boldly proclaim and demonstrate a new and vibrant life spending
ourselves for the sake of others?
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