My childhood church closed last week. Amalgamated, actually. It seems a kinder word. The few remaining members and attendees voted to take their worship, along with their pastor, across BC’s Fraser River to merge with a larger church.
Uniting the thinning ranks of the good Christian soldiers in both congregations seemed the best solution.
Enthusiastic impassioned believers, my parents among them, built Como Lake Nazarene Church in 1961/1962. People with great hopes that it would become a light in the surrounding urban community. For several generations, it was. Mom and Dad, charter members, stuck to it like duct tape for decades, doing all they could to keep it thriving.
Everything living dies eventually. Even churches. I understand that. But the news, when I heard it, saddened me. I understand that too. The roots from one’s greening years tug hard, especially those entwined with spiritual growth.
I was four or five when the little church that raised me rose from the ground. I recall it well; a steep-roofed building with tall trusses and a ceiling of wide polished planks. Tidy rows of low wooden pews, hard as concrete after an hour of sitting, ran at right angles to its roughly plastered ivory-coloured walls. A long concrete ramp led gradually to its main door — accessibility, generations before required.
Since hearing the news about my childhood church, I’ve reflected long on its place in my life. It played an important role in my faith walk. God used that little church with the steep trusses to teach me, convict me, save me from Hell (several dozen times at least) sanctify me and marry me. I loved most of our pastors, though some visiting preachers terrified me. So did the missionaries, with their tales of dark continents, snakes in their shoes, and paint-faced tribespeople holding spears.
Alongside Biblical truth, I learned much under that lofty ceiling. Few things advance a young musician or speaker’s abilities than repeated opportunities to blunder badly in front of an encouraging congregation.
Sadly, because of my father’s long involvement with boards and committees, I also learned more than I wanted to know about the inner (sometimes sadly political) workings of church life — the good, the bad and the heartbreaking. After thirty plus years of shared church ministry with the Preacher, I look back at some of the church friends and pastors I knew as a child with more understanding and through kinder lenses.
“Hypocrites in the Church?” evangelist Billy Sunday once said, “Yes, and in the lodge and at the home. Don’t hunt through the Church for a hypocrite. Go home and look in the mirror. Hypocrites? Yes. See that you make the number one less.”
I have a praise to raise. Thanks, God, for my little home church. I’m eager for a glimpse of a blaze, a shining bank of lights ignited through the results of its shining; each light igniting another. Then another and another, adding to the Church that Jesus said can never, ever die.
Go softly, friend. Thanks for the memories.
