Death of a Church

As you might or might not know, when Ned & I moved here we began attending a church plant in a coffee shop. (I think I might have blogged about it once). It was less than a year old when we started going and had less than 15 attendees (which included us). Since the church was so small, it quickly became family, and in a way we felt like we were involved in a church planting team. Ned helped lead worship and I once preached a sermon. Although it wasn't perfect, it was definitely home, and before we moved here we had specifically talked about wanting to be involved in a coffee house church plant- and voila!

This May, the pastor announced that we would be having a meeting immediately after the service. He sat the less than 10 of us down and announced that we would have 1 more service, and then the church would be closing down. He said he had spoken and prayed with many people about this, and that is what he believed God was telling him to do. This came as an absolute shock, but at the same time, once he announced it, Ned & I felt like "yes, this is right". That does not mean we were happy about it, it just meant we had a peace about it, and knew it was the right thing. But it still really sucked. Less than 2 years after this church opened its doors, it closed them for the last time.

Now, six months later it seems to be sucking much more than it did that Sunday it was announced. Finding a new church has been a struggle. We have found one that we have been going to, and we enjoy the services, but we know virtually no-one there, and it has been hard to make connections. It has not become home. Yes, they offer small groups, but they always happen to be meeting when I have classes. We try to keep in touch with our friends from the old church, but with everyone being so busy, this is hard to do. It has become lonely.

This past week the new church we've been attending celebrated their 2 year anniversary. This was especially difficult. While I am happy for this new church and celebrate what God has accomplished, I can't help but think about our old church, how it never made it to its second birthday. How this new church averages 100+people every Sunday and how our old one on its most crowded day barely passed 25. And I just don't understand why. Wasn't our old church also faithful? Don't get me wrong, I'm not jealous of the success of this new church, I am genuinely happy about it! It is doing great things in the community and impacting many lives, and I praise God for it. But why couldn't they both succeed? Why does God seem to bless some ministries so much and let other ministries fizzle out and die? It just doesn't make sense to me.