A sunny Friday. A warming trend in the works. By Sunday afternoon, we'll be seeing grass. It'll be brown and ugly, but it will be grass. And have you noticed that even though it's been cold, the sun doesn't go down until after 5:00 now? All hopeful signs.
But not an excuse to start talking about gardens--although the Valentine's Day Dance will benefit the Courtyard. I want to talk about hopefulness in another context. Consider what follows as a riff on a mantra that Pastor Matt has been chanting nearly since he got here, one which may be getting a bit louder. I'm coming at this from a sort of backwards direction, so bear with me.
As you no doubt heard, our brothers and sisters down at Holy Name Cathedral had a bad fire the other day. In more troubling news, somebody deliberately vandalized and set fire to All Saints, Saint Anthony's in Bridgeport. Scary and sad? Sure. But the good news is that while the damage at the cathedral is serious, it's not fatal, and the damage at at ASSA is "minor." Holy Name held mass yesterday and Cardinal George is expected to say mass today. No word yet, but I have no reason to believe that the parishonors at ASSA won't have mass in the next day or two as well.
Meanwhile, there's a gaping hole in the budget at Bethel. Membership numbers are stubbornly static. Folks whisper in grim tones about the church's future. Not so fast, I say. There's another fire story I want to share. I found it in a comment to a post about the Holy Name fire on Street Prophets. (Scroll down to the fourth or fifth comment.)
St Paulus Lutheran of San Francisco has been around since before the 1906 earthquake. (The picture below is of St. Paulus in 1899). The church's long and sometimes difficult history is here. What's germane to our discussion is the fact that the church was destroyed by fire in 1995. At that point it looked like the church was done. But God and its members thought differently. In 2007, the church made the decision to leave "the safety of its church facility, the old elementary building of its closed day school, and become a 'church without walls' in the Fillmore district of San Francisco, learning once again the importance of ministry in the streets, in the neighborhood, and in the lives of those who are not part of the church community. For the next three or four years the congregation will experiment with such ministry, and develop a sense of identity which
does not rest on the security of a building, but on the ministry of Jesus in the world." [From the church's web site.]
As Pastor Matt keeps saying, "Death and Resurrection."
Is this a model for Bethel? Yes--not necessarily in the sense of selling the building and moving elsewhere--but in the sense of reminding us that churches can survive way worse things than a budget hole. Will St. Paulus' experiment work? Who knows? Is this St. Paulus what the German immigrants who founded it had in mind? Probably not. But going forth in hope to do what we are called to do--feed the hungry, care for the sick, do justice and preach the gospel--seems like a much better plan than giving up.
God doesn't abandon his people because of a fire or a budget hole. We need to remember that.
Just sayin'.
"
While I realize it might not be proper to "mourn" a building I fondly remember this one as refuge. I was a very young runaway (castaway) boy in SFO and the people here at this church were kind and tolerant of me. At the time I was displaced by my family to the streets I was studying the organ. At St. Paulus was allowed to play and practice on the Werner Bosch organ that was in the building. I helped me maintain an illusion of normalcy in my life while at the same time I was really just a homeless teenager ousted from my intolerant mid-western family. Practicing here meant that for a few hours a week I could feel useful and human. It stabbed me in the heart to learn of the old church's destruction. I wish the congregation well and want them to know of my gratitude for all they did for me back then.
Posted by: Michael Way | July 26, 2009 at 05:51 PM