A Sending, Not an Ending: Pentecost and Church Closure
We all wore red that Sunday.
Along with Christians across the world - and with the generations of people who had worshiped at Union United Methodist Church since its founding as a Union-sympathizing congregation in Missouri during the U.S. Civil War - we observed Pentecost Sunday by wearing red.
A few weeks earlier, when I had invited our community to don our scarlet, I had heard grumbles, and not a few people mentioned that they thought we ought to be wearing black instead. Pentecost Sunday, after all, would be the final time we gathered as a worshiping community. Wouldn’t mourning clothes be most appropriate?
And though I secretly agreed, something in my spirit stirred me to be steadfast in this invitation. Whether due to dogged devotion to the liturgical calendar, or because I desperately needed an infusion of hope myself, I insisted that we were going to celebrate Pentecost, even in the midst of our congregation’s death.
It would have been easy for us all to live in the grief of it all–to bury ourselves in mourning. All of it seemed unfair. Our community hadn’t chosen to end; rather, decisions were made at a denominational level that sealed our fate months, if not years, before. Just as the community had re-embraced its identity as a community dedicated to social justice and felt the winds of new life stirring within both the hearts and halls of the congregation, the hierarchy of the denomination cited financial instability as good reason to end the ministry swiftly. The entire ending felt undignified, unjust. No wonder we wanted to curl up in bed and pull the sackcloth over our eyes.
But in the months and weeks leading to our closure, we chose a different path. Instead of hiding in our mourning, we decided to hold a long wake. We told each other stories: the stories of our community’s long history, the stories of our own arrival to the community, and the stories of transfiguration we witnessed in the years we had spent coming and going from this building. The stories made us laugh, made us cry, made us wonder. But more than anything, they helped us remember that perhaps this church closure was not an ending, but a sending.
In my reading, the Pentecost narrative in Acts isn’t so much about the disciples being rewarded with an outpouring of the Spirit for their faithfulness. Rather, Pentecost is a coming out. Finally, the crowds gathered can perceive for themselves that being a disciple of Christ wasn’t only about crucifixion, death, and mourning. They saw how companioning with Christ through their life, death, and resurrection actually led to life. New life in the Spirit.
Pentecost isn’t for the disciples. Pentecost is a gift of the Spirit for everyone else.
On our final Sunday of worship, the sanctuary of Union United Methodist Church was full. Fuller, honestly, than it had been most Sundays since I’d pastored there. Not everyone wore red, because a good number of the people who attended hadn’t been present in previous weeks to hear that invitation.
They hadn’t attended on the day when I announced closure from the pulpit. They hadn’t attended on the Sundays when we cried over the broken bread and the emptied cup. They hadn’t attended on the day when we blessed our handbells and sent them to service in another community. They hadn’t been there when we left our inheritance to area ministries we believed in. They hadn’t been there on the day when we anointed each other and then anointed the building, leaving our greasy fingerprints on the spaces that had just been sold to another congregation.
But enough of us had been present on those days to show up in red, fully expecting the Spirit to show up. And show up, it did. We sang, we laughed, and we cried. But more than anything, we celebrated. And then, once we decommissioned the congregation, we sent each other forth with blessings. We would all scatter–to different churches, communities, even cities. But we smiled through our farewells, if not giddy with Spirit, at least trusting that we would not be lost in grief and death forever.
This was the most joyful funeral service I’ve ever attended, a number of people told me after (none of them wearing red). And I smiled. For even if they didn’t have words for it yet, I could see by the way that their eyes danced in wonder, that they had some sense that this was not an ending, but a great sending.
The message of Pentecost remains alive for us today. Though mainline Christianity faces substantial decline, though congregations face closure, we are not in a time of great ending, but of sending. And though much of our church hierarchies, whether congregational or denominational, still only perceive death and destruction, for those of us who wear red, we see the power of the Spirit pouring herself out mightily upon those who attend to endings with faith.
Though the new life of our faith will require the Church to loosen its grip on the powers it believes sustain it (cultural relevance, financial sway, oppressive modes of control), each time we show up in red and wait for the Spirit, we bear witness to the continuous power of the Spirit to light us up. To send us forth.
If you are facing congregational ending, know that it is possible for the Spirit to guide you to new life. And though it might be tempting to focus only on new life for the assets, objects, and holdings of a community that is ending, the Good Friday Collaborative believes that the true power of Spirit’s sending comes by attending well to the people and stories of ending.
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