On Sunday, September 29th, 2024, my church gathered to worship together for the final time. It was a day we knew was coming, and I don’t just mean in the sense that we’d made the announcement a few weeks earlier.
Throughout 2024, our congregation prayed about what the Lord would have us do as we sought to move past a season of living in survival mode. Perhaps we were to replant or merge with another congregation at some point. Possibly, the Lord was preparing to send more people hungry for deep fellowship. Or, perhaps, he would make it clear to us that the works he had prepared for us (Ephesians 2:20) had been accomplished. After months of prayer, that was where we concluded the Lord was leading us.
Embracing the End
There were several ways he made it clear to us; some were extremely practical while others were a bit harder to put into words. But what encouraged us all was how God kept us united through the process—and through all the years of our ministry here. While no church is free of conflict, we were blessed to avoid major blowouts or drama. The pandemic years and the discord sown by contentious and never-ending election cycles didn’t destroy us. There was no looming split on the horizon. We were all all in until the very end.
Our final gathering was what we expected:
- Songs celebrating the gospel.
- A pastoral encouragement to stay focused on the gospel as we scatter.
- A final baptism.
- Congregational prayer as we thanked God for all he had done and commissioned one another out on to be blessings to our next local churches.
Grief and Gratitude
In all of it, we all experienced a mix of grief and gratitude. To see the Lord clearly at work in all of this and to see our entire church faithfully follow God’s leading is something I know we’re all grateful for.
But it’s also not easy, which is where the grief comes in. For Emily and me, this church has been our de facto family, grieving, celebrating, crying, and laughing together through many good and challenging seasons. I’ve been blessed to play a role in pointing them to Jesus in children’s ministry, as a community group leader, and as one of the church’s teachers. And even though the relationships we have won’t end, we know they will change. They can’t not.
So here we are: grateful for where we’ve been, grieving what we’re losing, and looking toward what’s next.
The Part of a Church’s Life We Don’t Talk About Enough
I know our congregation isn’t the only one to experience this. But it isn’t something we talk about much, especially among North American evangelicals. We focus almost exclusively on longevity, numerical growth, and multiplication. We laud the concept of a church lasting 10, 20, 50, 100 years or more. The same is true of churches that draw large congregations or spawn multiple plants and satellite locations. We look at all these and try to figure out their secrets and replicate their methods.
We tend not to talk about this because, typically, we equate a church ending with a church failing. And we’ve got plenty of examples of churches dying because of sin.
But not every ending is a failure because longevity may not be God’s intention for every church. Some are only meant to exist for what might seem like a brief period of time. And while their lifespan might be short, their effect on the people, the community, and the broader church is no less meaningful. God was at work in and through them. What he set out to do, he accomplished, even if we can only see it in part.
There is much to be grateful for in that, if we’re willing to see it. It just might take some time.
Photo by Josh Eckstein on Unsplash
