In 2022, The Christian Chronicle spent a yr reporting on church buildings that had been closing, merging or reinventing themselves — and on organizations that supported them and the foundation explanation for a nationwide reshaping of Church buildings of Christ.
The Chronicle reopened these conversations to see how issues are going. At the very least three congregations have discovered extensively diversified methods to share the Gospel of their very completely different communities.
San Diego
The constructing bought by the La Mesa Church of Christ 4 years in the past was a standard, A-frame construction with stained-glass home windows and many empty seats. As soon as dwelling to a number of hundred members, the congregation had dwindled to about 30. So it bought its constructing with assist from Heritage21 and started assembly in a constructing at a San Diego County park.
They’re nonetheless in a neighborhood middle, however now it’s by design.
La Mesa Church of Christ members eat on a patio.
“We operate locally as a neighborhood middle and have a variety of actions all through the week — some although the YMCA,” stated Graham Clifford, minister of Kindred Church. “We host a pair different church buildings by way of the week. We’ve a nonprofit counseling group sponsored by the Metropolis of San Diego that works with at-risk and runaway teenagers. We’re attempting to be a protected place for folks.”
And at 10 a.m. every Sunday they collect for worship. They’ve crammed up the house of their new-to-them facility, a transformed legislation workplace only a block off Principal Avenue in La Mesa. That was their plan all alongside — to fill the house — divide into two and continue to grow.
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Their first new launch is deliberate for February.
They’re pleased, and the neighborhood round them is pleased, which is necessary and stunning in a metropolis so secularly targeted that church buildings can’t management property on Principal Avenue itself.
“We’ve good relationships with our neighbors,” Clifford stated, “all in all a fairly good match for La Mesa.”
Graham Clifford preaches for the La Mesa Church of Christ in San Diego County on a Sunday morning.
These good relationships have led to development.
“In a single month, we had 4 baptisms, which for a small church is lots,” Clifford stated.
“One was a younger man who had grown up within the church however simply sort of went and by no means claimed the religion as his personal. He has since actually discovered a calling and needed to recommit his life.”
One other was “a girl from a Jewish background in Virginia who had made her strategy to California and was training a model of Buddhism,” the minister added.
A number of days later, a younger lady from a close-by seaside neighborhood the place they practiced “Buddhist-ish” meditations, as Clifford described it, was convicted and baptized after spending time with Christians at Kindred and constructing relationships there.
“And per week later, one other younger lady from Orange County with whom we made a free connection by way of one of many guys within the band … she began asking questions,” Clifford stated.
Members of the La Mesa Church of Christ in San Diego County worship on a Sunday morning.
That led her to a Bible examine with Breanna Clifford, Graham’s spouse.
“She spent a day and a half chatting along with her,” the minister stated.
Two days later, she was on the Cliffords’ dwelling for a Bible examine, and that afternoon Graham Clifford baptized her of their yard.
“The folks we’re reaching have little or no data of God and religion however have been looking for a very long time for one thing religious and by no means been capable of finding it.”
“The folks we’re reaching have little or no data of God and religion however have been looking for a very long time for one thing religious and by no means been capable of finding it,” Clifford defined.
In the meantime, funds from the sale of the previous La Mesa Church of Christ constructing are being invested in planting and rising new church buildings in San Diego County.
“We’re not simply planting,” Clifford stated, “however serving to different church buildings in comparable conditions with rejuvenation. … We’ve had a number of occasions which have reached out to native church buildings, together with one in November known as Flourish with 10 church buildings and representatives from Heritage 21 and Kairos speaking about alternatives.”
The La Mesa church’s former auditorium in the course of the COVID-19 shutdown in San Diego.
Collectively, they hope to begin a campus ministry/campus church plant however are nonetheless in search of the correct couple to guide that. Ultimately, Clifford stated, they need to have two vegetation on the large San Diego State College campus and one on the College of California San Marcos.
Clifford takes no credit score for the progress:
“It has been spectacular to see what God was already getting ready to do and that we get to be part of it.”
Cincinnati
Members of the Indian Mound Church of Christ and Kennedy Heights Church of Christ started speaking a couple of merger even earlier than the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Conversations resumed in earnest in December 2021, and when The Christian Chronicle visited the newly named Church of Christ at Kennedy Heights in August 2022, the transition was formally full however nonetheless difficult.
In the present day, minister Greg Jasper says the rewards have been well worth the exhausting work required to mix two congregations into one.
“Attendance is stable — we’ve had 20 or so baptisms, perhaps extra, in two years,” the preacher and Cincinnati Hearth Division chaplain stated.
Members of the Kennedy Heights Church of Christ in Cincinnati collect to worship.
“Simply over the past two weeks we’ve had 5 baptisms,” Jasper stated late final yr, “and a minimum of 10 this yr, in all probability extra, they usually’ve been trustworthy.”
Attendance averages round 100 on Sundays, up from about 70 proper after the merger. As important because the numbers, Jasper stated members have been very evangelistic, bringing family and friends members each Sunday.
A Spanish-speaking congregation with about 65 to 70 members additionally continues to fulfill on the constructing on Sunday afternoons.
The Church of Christ at Kennedy Heights in Cincinnati.
“Contributions have been holding very robust,” he stated. “We’ve seen folks become involved in ministry work that won’t have prior to now.”
“We’ve had ample time for each church households to gel collectively and get to know each other,” he added. “That was a priority up entrance, however from day one I used to be very optimistic.”
The Indian Mound property was bought, and proceeds allowed the church to buy a home and property adjoining to the Kennedy Heights campus. Jasper and three different males have been ordained as elders — two from every of the earlier congregations — and management has aspirations to construct an growth with a gymnasium and school rooms to higher serve the neighborhood.
Dallas
In June 2022, a majority of Skillman Church of Christ members voted to change into the Dallas campus of The Hills Church of Christ of North Richland Hills, a Fort Price suburb. Besides they didn’t.
Bylaws required a two-third majority approval to proceed. The movement failed — by two votes.
A bunch that had opposed the merger, led by former elder Don Williams, hoped to create Skillman 2.0, as he described it, utilizing “outdoors consultants on greatest practices for reenergizing Church buildings of Christ.”
The surface of the Skillman Church of Christ constructing in Dallas. The sanctuary on the Skillman church has not been used for worship for over two years.
However because the congregation approaches the three-year mark of that call, solely about 25 to 35 members of the Skillman congregation nonetheless meet Sundays at 10:30 within the chapel of the large Dallas campus. They hearken to sermons livestreamed from different congregations, usually Rick Atchley, senior minister of the The Hills congregation.
Elder George Dishman stated, “It grew to become apparent fairly shortly that 2.0 was not going to be a productive effort — we weren’t getting anyplace.”
So, although no merger might happen, The Hills now leases house on the campus and has begun constructing a separate congregation that meets within the gymnasium at 10 a.m. on Sundays.
Skillman church members solid their ballots on whether or not to merge with The Hills.
Dishman stated the elders needed to discover a strategy to “use the 6.3 acres that comprise Skillman’s property to verify the Gospel continues to get preached.”
A yr after the merger vote failed, The Hills had not discovered one other location for a Dallas campus, “so we approached them and requested in the event that they’d be fascinated by leasing some house.”
“The lease was for the auditorium, however they must do some issues to it to make it accommodate their wants,” he stated, so within the meantime the group of between 180 and 200 meets within the health club.
Christians worship within the Skillman Church of Christ chapel.
A 3rd congregation, calling itself CASA, which stands for Christians at Skillman Avenue, additionally meets on the constructing. Previously a house church, it started in search of just a little bigger house and located it there.
Dishman stated the result’s that three congregations totaling about 250 or so folks “are being reached for the Gospel. So for us that’s a win, whether or not it’s labeled Skillman Church of Christ or one thing else.”
CHERYL MANN BACON is a Christian Chronicle contributing editor who served for 20 years as chair of the Division of Journalism and Mass Communication at Abilene Christian College. Contact [email protected].
