This Disco Used To Be A Cute Cathedral

Mainline Protestants, the physical church and the local congregation.

It is the end of an era.

On Thursday evening, I stopped by to grab some items and I took one last look at the old place.

This is a picture of what was the sanctuary of First Christian Church of St. Paul. From 1996 until now it was the sanctuary where sermons were preached and music was sung. It’s a 50-plus year building located in the suburb of Mahtomedi. It was the new home for the congregation after they sold their building near downtown St. Paul. It should have been the revival of this replanted church, but like a repotted plant, the church didn’t thrive well in this new environment. The congregation lost members. When I came 9 years ago, there was only a small remnant, but it was a faithful remnant. But COVID made us face that we couldn’t stay in the building if we wanted to remain church. The upkeep was becoming a challenge. The boiler was on its last legs. The building was not accessible at all. We finally made the decision to sell to a developer. Now months down the road, w’ve had our building decommissioning service and we’ve moved our belongings to start worship in a Lutheran congregation in another suburb. In a short time, the building, a parsonage, and a garage will be torn down to make way for townhomes.

The emptiness of the former sanctuary hit me in a way that I can’t describe. We filled this space however imperfectly over the years.

The church isn’t a building. That’s what we normally hear about the church, reminding us that the church isn’t as much brick and mortar as it is people. The church really is a people, but the church is also a physical place and when a building that was once a church is empty or even used for another purpose, you can sense the change. A former church building is a place where there used to be a church. It also says something about the people that worshipped there because something changed in the life of that congregation. Maybe it moved. Maybe it closed. Whatever it is, the empty room is a reminder of what once was. It is a loss that needs to be addressed.

We aren’t closing. In fact, we will take a year to do some sabbath which allows for discerning how best to do ministry. But even though we are continuing on as a church, there is a part of me that wonders if we will survive. Will the members have the patience and fortitude to deal with the massive change of not being in your own church? Two other churches in the Twin Cities that belong to the same denomination also sold their buildings, but they chose to close leaving the area with just two Disciples of Christ congregations in the area. Looking at that empty room, I have to wonder can our little church fill the empty space in our culture? Can we fill the community we are now located with Christ’s love?

There was a time in my career as a pastor that I thought mainline churches could be salvaged and renewed if we just rolled up our sleeves and got busy doing missions in the neighborhood and becoming welcoming especially to LGBTQ people. But these days I’m less certain. Experiencing the church after COVID taught me that the problems facing mainline denominations are deep-seated and systemic. I don’t think they are insurmountable, but there need to be wholesale changes to the way denominations and congregations are run these days in order for them to survive.

For one, we have to remember why the local church matters. I think among many mainline Protestant churches, we have forgotten the importance of the local church. This is only my observation, but among mainline churches, no one seems to know why congregations exist. If we don’t have a reason for congregations to exist then, it becomes a challenge to plant new churches, let alone help struggling congregations turn around.

My home denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is like many mainline denominations in decline and in my opinion, has at times forgotten what the local congregation is all about and why it matters. We do a bad job of even telling folk in our pews why a congregation matters. Because that isn’t taught, people learn the language of the market.

A few years ago I was leading a book study about congregational revitalization.  I don’t know what I thought would happen during this book study, but it most certainly was not what I heard.  People for the most part were pretty much down on the book.  The one opinion I remember was someone who said that if our church closed, there were other churches they could join.

I was floored by the answer.  My hope was this book would spark some ideas on how to best revitalize our struggling congregation  It assumed community and responsibility.  But for this person, this church was a choice among many and if it didn’t work out there was always another church.

So, if we are bad at ecclesiology, then what is the church all about? Again, looking at my congregation, I think the answer is found in the Design of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) our Affirmation of Faith.

“In Christ’s name and by his grace we accept our mission of witness and service to all people,” the Design states. Churches exist as witnesses to Jesus and communities of service. Later on, the Design is more specific of what the local church is all about:

Within the whole family of God on earth, the church appears wherever believers in Jesus the Christ are gathered in His name. Transcending all barriers within the human family, the one church manifests itself in ordered communities bound together for worship, fellowship, and service; in varied structures for mission, witness, and mutual accountability; and for the nurture and renewal of its members.

Church is the place where Christians gather together orderly in the name of Jesus. They gather for a reason: to worship God, to serve others both in and outside of the congregation, and for mutual accountability.

For me, this is something I need to remember as my church regathers and hopefully retools for mission. I’m reading Dietrich Bonehoeffer’s Life Together and he states that Jesus had a physical body that met other people with bodies. It’s a reminder that the church is embodied, it isn’t virtual. While I still disagree with her overall assessment, Tish Harrison Warren is correct about the nature of the church as embodied:

Whether or not one attends religious services, people need embodied community. We find it in book clubs or having friends over for dinner. But embodiment is a particularly important part of Christian spirituality and theology. We believe God became flesh, lived in a human body, and remains mysteriously in a human body. Our worship is centered not on simply thinking about certain ideas, but on eating and drinking bread and wine during communion.

I don’t think mainline churches have done a good job of teaching Christians why their local congregation matters. It’s interesting that a century ago, it was the laity that in many cases gathered together to build a church community. These days, we look to pastors to plant churches. The lay member no longer has an active role in starting congregations and may even become skeptics in planting and even maintaining existing churches. Some have even grown to think that they don’t have to come to a place for worship, they can just worship online instead.

This needs to change. I don’t think it’s going to happen in denominational headquarters; they don’t have the imagination at this point to turn things around. It’s going to come from the “Don Quixotes” of the church who have a passion for the local church and how to empower people to be energized followers of Jesus. Whether to those Don Quixotes are willing to organize as they chase those windmills remain to be seen.

I look at this empty room that was once a sanctuary. The church is gone, replanted to start again.

Back in the 1980s, Steve Taylor made a name for himself as a Contemporary Christian New Wave musician. One of his most well-known songs is called “This Disco Used To Be A Cute Cathedral.” He wrote this song based on Limelight, a dance club in New York City. The club happened to be housed in a former Episcopal Church, the Church of the Holy Communion. The building had a holy purpose, but it no longer has that role anymore. The church no longer filled the space.

I totally understand the church isn’t a building. But the church is a place. Is the big C Church working to plant more places where the people of God gather?