Calling Time: Notes on closing a church

1 Theology and Spirituality

Churches are more than just halls which are used regularly for certain religious purposes. They are sacred places; important repositories of local cultural history¹; places where liminal and important moments in people’s lives have been celebrated or commemorated. Not surprisingly, many have deep attachments to these places and feel passionate about them. The purpose of this chapter is to try to untangle the various elements which are present in the background and foreground whenever there is a threat of closure mooted for a particular place.

To call something sacred is to declare that the holy is regarded as being present in some way. Holiness belongs to God, so anything that is sacred touches what we believe about God and how we commune with God. This is emphasised in churches being consecrated, set aside for ‘sacred use and service’². Their consecration brings with it a whole panoply of taboos and expectations, codes of appropriate behaviour and disgust when these are infringed.

A place becomes holy when God is encountered there. It is sacred to our worship and adoration of the divine. For the ancient Israelites, the land was sacred, it was the fulfilment of promise (Deuteronomy 26). Possession of it was dependent on keeping the covenant with God and when that was broken exile and calamity were seen to be a direct consequence (Deuteronomy 11:26-28; Jeremiah 11).

For some God was seen to dwell in the soil and there is a story in the Old Testament book of 1 Kings (5:17) where Naaman (commander of the army of the King of Syria) takes several cartloads of soil away with him after he has been healed so that he can ‘keep’ something of the sacred event that has occurred. Is there something deeply psychological about this and do we see it in some of the desire to capture the essence of a holy place we may visit today through a special souvenir which reminds us of a holy day? God has met us and has felt tangible in a way that may be enlivening, so we want to keep hold of it in some way, rather like Peter wants to build shelters to capture the moment of transfiguration (Luke 9:28-36).

Yet we find time and time again that the God of the bible refuses to be tied down and confined by us. This is the God of Surprises³. This is the God who will make sacred places desolate (Jeremiah 7) and declares the profane acceptable because it has responded to the holy (Isaiah 56:3ff). If our souvenirs cease to speak of the holy and become a substitute for it then virtue becomes vice and they cease to be helpful.

It is not without poignancy that one of the Ten Commandments is against idolatry. There is a world of difference between being attached to something as a vehicle through which God can speak to us and on the other hand crossing that line where the thing becomes a substitute for God and is thus idolatrous. Church buildings are places to encounter the living God and they have to be supported and sustained by a living community, one that is in touch with God. The place is sacred because that encounter goes on, it is not the encounter itself.

All of this gets emotionally confused because important moments of lives are solemnised, celebrated and conducted within churches. For some the most profound and heart breaking tears are shed in them. It is not easy to disconnect those kinds of emotions from the feelings which talking about closure brings to the surface. These are very human and genuine emotions and need to be handled with great care. These pains are themselves holy ground and need to be respected with all the Christ-like compassion we can muster.

With all of that in mind, it is important to be clear that there is a difference between a living church and a mausoleum. The fact that something important once took place there does not on its own mean that this place should be preserved for all time. Without the living encounter then the church itself will die.

Sites of martyrdom and where the saints have been buried have been sacred places for centuries. Their sacredness has arisen because people have gone there to use them as places where they can find a point of contact with heaven. Is it sentiment that we feel when walking round the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey or Lindisfarne Priory? Is there some inherent holiness in these sites? It is difficult to be certain about this, but if there is, then it is because they are places where God is able to speak and as with Moses and the burning bush (Exodus 3), God does not need a temple of stone through which to commune.

If there is a holiness which cries out of the stones, then the question naturally arises as to whether money MUST be found to maintain and sustain them as living churches. That has not happened over the centuries - witness Glastonbury Abbey and Lindisfarne Priory - and if the holiness continues then it is a tribute to the glory of God that will not be thwarted by our follies and failures. Holiness is not in itself dependent on keeping the roof watertight and generally staying on top of quinquennial inspection reports.

Churches are venues for communities to meet for worship and they are sustained by those communities. When a community can no longer manage them and/or turns away from them, then they die as churches. The word church has at its root the ekklesia, the gathering of the people of God. Their status as museums of a community’s history and culture, as Simon Jenkins⁴ sees churches, is a different issue and the preservation of these items is a proper concern of conservation. Provision for this is made by the various bodies and more will be said about these in later chapters.

Facing the closure of our church, the one to which we look and on which we focus our religious and spiritual stirrings, is nothing short of a disaster. The ancient Hebrew people felt the same and some of their anxiety is captured in the psalms. The psalm ‘By the water of Babylon, we sat down and wept... How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land’ (Psalm 137) expressed this well. Yet the people found that they could ‘sing the Lord’s song’ in any land and indeed found that they could turn moments of darkness into points of growth, where attention was focussed on what was particularly important to their identity. We also find their culture being influenced by the new surroundings and there is much in the Old Testament which owes a debt of gratitude to the exile - both for shaping identity and also for the creative cross-fertilisation of traditions and stories.

In the sixth century AD Columba knew this pain when he left his native Ireland to establish his monastic community on the remote island of Iona. In turn Aidan also knew it when he left that island to become a missionary to Northumbria in the seventh century. These saints had a spirituality which was prepared to leave the very place they loved as a sign and spiritual exercise writ large that their love for God was greater than for anything or anyone else⁵.

There is a spiritual maturity here that we only reach through the pain which such deep losses bring. It has at its heart a deep faith that God is bigger than any one place or tradition. It requires something to die so that something greater may live. What has to die is the attachment which imprisons and keeps us locked up in a narrowness of vision. That death brings its own Easter day where a new life in God’s grace opens up. But it is not for nothing that the language of death is used and the biographies of the saints refer to such leaving as being a hard thing to do, spiritually and emotionally.

So the closure of a church does not declare that God doesn’t live here any more. But it does proclaim that a church community has died or declined to such a level where it needs to be released from the burden which has become too much for it; that it is time to call time. The ray of hope comes in the faith that God does not need any churches in order to have somewhere to live. Early in the Old Testament there is a record of a prophetic outburst when King David first says he intends to build God a house. He is told quite bluntly that it is not he who will build God a house, but God will establish his house (2 Samuel 7). He still builds the temple! Churches are therefore for people to give glory to God and encounter God. God will do his own thing regardless and frequently chooses to assert his independence by encountering people wherever he chooses! We commit a blasphemy when we refuse to allow God to do that.

This is all helped by having an understanding of ourselves as a pilgrim people. We are on a journey and while we may set up camp for a while, it will never be our permanent home because the day will come when God calls us on to the new Jerusalem, the heavenly city. In that place there is no temple, but the very throne of God (Revelation 21:22) and everything in this life is merely a reflection of that, it is never a substitute and never to be regarded as God’s throne itself. With such an understanding being called to move on is a challenge to refocus our vision and heart on our true spiritual home, nothing short of the kingdom of heaven.

Closing a church challenges us to the core. Invariably it speaks of death: a community is no longer able to sustain its living witness and that rarely has neat edges. For some this will be imposed and met with resistance. It challenges us to take a hard look at what matters most in our spirituality and in our priorities. It may be a sharp statement that a community doesn’t care enough to keep it going and then the tirade of prophets like Haggai, at the disgrace of the temple lying desolate while houses are panelled, become relevant (Haggai 1). The encounter goes on and God will not be thwarted. The closure of a church calls for spiritual maturity and sensitivity, but above all for renewed faith in God who is ever present in Christ and whose Spirit will open up to us a new place to sing the Lord’s song however strange that land may be.

Footnotes:

¹ Simon Jenkins (1999) England’s Thousand Best Churches Allen Lane: The Penguin Press pp viii, xxviif
² Philip Pfatteicher (1991) A dictionary of Liturgical Terms Philadelphia: Trinity Press International p36
³ Gerald Hughes (1985) God of Surprises London: DLT
⁴ see footnote 1
⁵ Ian Bradley (1996) Columba: Pilgrim and Penitent Wild Goose Publications p 17; David Adam (1997) Flame in my heart: St Aidan for Today Triangle p 30f

18th May 2002

Last updated February 2008