A Tale of Two Churches:
One “Aband-o-lized”
By Robert Miller

Saturday, hoping to show my family a bit of their history, I took them to see where I grew up. They saw my grandparent’s home and their church. Their church started at a tent meeting where many people met on a hill and after prayer and worship decided that on top of this hill was where God wanted them to worship. So they moved an old church building from five miles away and these farm families came here and worshiped.

My grand parents are long dead and their home has been locked many years. Their church, though full of praise in its day, has remained empty in recent years. When we were there, we saw that someone had broken in and torn up the place.

Sunday morning at breakfast my five year old son said to me “Daddy, on our field trip I wish repair guys would have pulled up right next to us and fixed everything.” I had to ask what field trip he was talking about. He said the one to the “aband-o-lized” church. Aband-o-lized, I had never heard that one. He was running the words abandoned and vandalized together. He asked if his great-grandparents house had been aband-o-lized too. I said no. It was just falling down because people were not working to fix it. I then said that once some people took some things from the old house that didn’t belong to them. He asked how. I said I guessed they just pushed hard on the door; the whole house was not as strong as it used to be. He said “One day they might not have to push that hard”. He was concerned about what kind of people would do such a thing, but that is another conversation for another time. The wonderful things kids say.

When I went to church, I noticed the contrast between my grandparents’ church and our church. One a cold empty space where the only sound was the wind blowing through the broken glass that once were windows. The other was a place full of life and the presence of God. One a sadly quiet place where a hymnal lays open, pages flapping in the breeze. The other was a place where praise to God was sung out for all to hear and there was dancing before the Lord. The one was a building standing high on a hill, where it could be seen for miles, surrounded by wheat fields that have many harvests in their season. The other was a building without a wheat fields, or a hill, but one that will have a great harvest in the right season and that the harvest will be seen for miles around.

Our church has definitely NOT been aband-o-lized. It is full of people seeking God’s will, full of God’s presence and God can be seen everywhere. But what about the world outside of our doors?

We live in a world that does not know Christ. They feel like they have been left alone, neglected and forgotten. And as bad as that is, it gets worse. While they were out there, the enemy has kicked in their doors and torn up or taken what is not his. They have been aband-o-lized! They need someone to help them, to remind them that they are not alone. To remind them that life to it’s fullest can be theirs. To let them know that God loves them.

These people live and work a stone’s throw from our church, our homes, our schools, and our work. But even so, don’t throw stones, that’s what the world thinks about church. Or maybe they just think of old buildings with steeples sitting on a hill. The church is not what the world thinks it is, it is not the building. It is all of us, and God’s love within us. We need to take the church to them. We need to flood the streets with His love. We need to let them know that God heals the broken and makes the old new. We need to come along beside them and let the people know that God loves them and they are not aband-o-lized.

Robert Miller is a member of our Elders Resource Group

The prophet Haggai called the people to not just tend their own house but to come together and focus on God. Then they would know he was with them and they would be blessed.

2011 A Year of Tending: Focus, Faithfulness and Fruit