This next Sunday is the last worship service at the traditional church I have been serving for the past 3 years. The congregation is 106 years old and they are a lovely group of deeply caring people.  I am so sad that this church is closing and yet I know it is the right thing.  This congregation could have chosen to continue on, but they faithfully followed God’s call to let go and embrace something new. It took incredible bravery and grace to walk this path and they have done so beautifuly.

At the end of my first year with the folks of Capitol Hill we had a difficult conversation.  They had worked with an interim prior to my arrival and the congregation was presented with two basic ideas, one to redevelop and the other to move towards closure. They decided not to decide, which really meant coasting towards closure.  I brought this up and said that they did not seem like people who would be happy coasting.  This conversation lead us to a year long process of discernment.  For the first few months we had brunch worship every third Sunday.  We all brought something to share and sat around tables singing, praying, reading scripture, and talking.  We began by remembering the best parts of the community.  The next month we talked about what we wanted our church to feel like in the future.  In November we brain stormed any idea about what to do with our land, building, and people.  By the early spring we had a set of ideas we wanted to explore and changed from brunch worship into a business meeting after worship on the 3rd Sunday.

The moment I knew we would close came that August.  We had several viable, but risky ideas we were still exploring that required deep commitment.  To make sure we were ready for what was next we had an assessment done of repairs needed on the roof and building.  The total came in at over $100,000.  While the congregation had that much money in endowment funds they sat around the table and decided that it would not be faithful to spend that much money on the few of them left.  “How can we spend what people gave for ministry just to make 20 of us comfortable for a few more years?”  Over the next few months we continued talking about if this was really what they felt God was calling them to do, and then in November we held the official vote to close.

The time from closure until now has been some of the most beautiful of my 13 years of full time ministry.  We were able to work with two different nonprofits to explore options for the building and land.  We have partnered with Habitat for Humanity and using our endowment funds and Habitat’s resources we were able to create an offer that the Conference Trustees agreed to for selling the land so 10 houses may be built there.  God’s felt presence will continue in this place, just in a very different way.  This is resurrection.  

The stuff in the church from pews to books to craft supplies we sold in a couple of giant sales.  All of the proceeds will go to the Upendo Orphanage in Moshi, Tanzania where some of our leaders have volunteered in the past.  We kicked in a little from our leftover monies and we will be giving them $15,000, which is just what the orphanage needs to build a new solar powered well.  On our last Sunday we will host an offering for another orphanage we have partnered with in the past, the Primraj Orphanage in Indonesia.  Any leftover funds from our operating line item will also be sent to Primraj.

We had a campership endowment given in honor of a longtime member who loved camp and saw the beauty and importance of the camping experience for children.  Each of the 3 youth of the church will have a dedicated account held by the annual conference with several thousand dollars each, giving them a $500 a year scholarship until they graduate high school. Any unused funds will go to the conference campership program.  The rest of the money in our campership fund we donated to the conference camper funds.

With the last $30,000 we had left we will pay our apportionments, help the annual conference balance the budget, gift our ministry partner Neighborhood House, and support new ministries of our annual conference (Bethlehem House of Bread, Sunnyside, and to my surprise Sellwood Faith Community).

The people of Capitol Hill know this is the end of one chapter. They will each continue to have a story of following Christ.  Many of them have decided to try the Sellwood Faith Community while others are headed to traditional United Methodist Churches in the area.  They know too that the land was there long before the church and that the story of the land will enter a new chapter with Habitat.

I share all this because it is hard work, this ending well.  Deciding how to relinquish money, power, and comfort has not been easy.  I weep pretty much every Sunday from grief and from inspiration at the incredibly spiritually deep ways this church community continues to live out their faith.  My hope is that our story inspires other communities contemplating what is next in God’s call to be open to ending well and finding a new, different path forward.

-Eilidh