Its Okay to let go!

Rough Draft

Terrence O’Casey

When is it time to say goodbye to a church? I don’t mean, becoming a "Cruisematic" traveling in a huff to another church. When is it time to say goodbye to the church at 14th and Main…allowing the old building to be sold and, God forbid a fast food restaurant being built in its place? At one time, the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ were the largest and fastest growing faith in Oregon. Yet during that time they allowed something to happen, perhaps something that actually caused the church to birth more congregations. They knew WHEN the time was to die. Of one church it was said:

…like human beings it served its purpose and did it splendidly, and has now passed on to live only in the memories of those who loved the cause.

Grandma was a fighter, filled with spunk. Upon her lap the grandkids would read for hours. The house was filled with chocolate chip cookie aroma when my wife and I would come home from work. What a blessing! And then…

Grandma passed out. 80 years old. Rushed to the E.R. The x-ray showed a brain tumor. Grandma is a fighter. Consultations, dates for surgery, and fears were all capped with a surgically "crew cut" granny successfully coming out of the OR-"Good for another 30,000 miles," she said.

Central Christian Church was a fighter, filled with spunk. For years, her spiritual grandchildren had come through the door. The old church was filled with "oak pew" smells and the creaky hardwood floor syndrome while light filtered through the beautiful olde stained glass windows. And then…

Central Christian began to decline. 80 years old. A church scan showed only beloved seniors, sadly, dwindling fast in sparsely populated oaken benches. Consultations, financial worries, a leaking roof were all capped with an 80 year old church hiring a young new minister (to dumb to know better) having to build a new nursery and expand its Christian Education wing and going to two services on Sunday Morning-"good for another decade at least!"

Grandma was a fighter, filled with spunk. Her grandkids now towered over her, hugging and kissing her at night. Arm and arm they would walk. Driving with grandmother on the highway was an "O Lord, Help! adventure." The inevitable was coming. "Your grandmother has a massive tumor on her kidney, we have removed as much as we could. If she does not go on dialysis she will die." Grandma is a fighter-surely she will make another, and another, and another Methuselah like comeback. "Grandma, we will do more surgery, drive you the 100 miles each week in for dialysis…" "What? You can’t give up Grandma, fight on, we don’t want to loose you!" "No!" she quietly asserted. "I have had a wonderful life kids. No more. Let the end come…quickly. I do not want to waste away in a nursing home." Quickly indeed it came, two short weeks from laughing to mourning.

Central Christian was a fighter, filled with spunk. Her grandkids had moved on. She had a wonderful estate, but no children left to enjoy it. The inevitable was coming. "Your church…is…dying." We fought it by bringing in young seminary grad after young and soon discouraged seminary grad. Dialysis of interim ministers will work we insisted, as it has in the past." Then a note from "Grandma" member of a generation ago was found in an olde RSV pew Bible one Sunday while all 6 verses of Amazing Grace were being drawn out on the olde Wurlitzer Organ.

If years from now this "note in a pew Bible" is found, please take to heart what we say. This beautiful building with leaded windows and hardwood floors was built by us for you…a gift for a time. We not only filled the sanctuary twice each lord’s day but we also weekly watched people join the Lord in Baptism. Laughter filled the halls, and families the basement for the potlucks. Yet there may come a time when this "holy" place is more a living history museum, rather than a cutting edge birthing and nurturing center. Please hear our voices from the past in the future. Please don’t put the church in a nursing home. Don’t let this building, or a sense of obligation to history keep you here, struggling to the end. Its okay to say, "Goodbye." The grandchildren are doing fine! You can let go. Let them share in the joy of building a new, and putting their "note in a pew Bible for their grandkids."

So when should we say goodbye and have a memorial celebration praising a life well lived?

  1. When there has been no significant growth for at least a decade.
  2. When the youngest members of the congregation voted for Truman or Ike!
  3. When there are other congregations in the community thriving.
  4. When there are a string of ministers that come, go, and sadly leave very discouraged.
  5. When the baptistery looks like it has gone through the Prohibition and been dry for a very long time.
  6. When steep front steps, old dark drapery, haunting organ music and bats in the belfry say to the lost-"We value our history more than our mission."

Its time. Yet it is OKAY! Okay to let go.

For

From death comes life:

  1. Grandma’s estate launched not only her grandkid’s college education but her GREAT grandkids! It was money with a beloved memory going for a great purpose. God’s true church is his people, not our place. Many a church could be sold, converted to a bed and breakfast, antique mall (!); a senior center or? Grandma’s estate could launch Bible colleges and new church plants. Please be honest, isn’t that really what grandmother would want instead of just watching the building deteriorate further and further or become some cultural idol of by gone days?
  2. Grandma’s heirlooms were shared among the family. Quilts and antique lathe turned tables, olde leather bound books and beautiful engagement rings. The "gospeled" windows, and old pulpit, the wonderful books from the library and the sterling communion sets, the upright with beautiful woodwork and the bell high in the tower can be "woven’ into the new work. History is not lost, it is saved and "framed" for the grandkids.
  3. The congregation’s grandkids were able to use the estate’s money to enter into the ministry and be trained up to be great ministers of the gospel who now had enough funds to buy that expensive property, build a beautiful worship center that is now filled twice each Sunday with people coming to the Lord

Because of your gift and of letting go.

Its okay, to say enough is enough. It is time to let go. Grandma would want it that way!