Local Church Congregation Abandons Building to Serve Community

If you intended to attend Sunday morning worship at Park Terrace Community United Methodist Church on Sunday September 23, you arrived at the church to find that worship had been canceled. Large signs in the church's front lawn informed you that the Church had left the building. What? They just painted the choir room. Nursery school just started. The bills are paid and pews are comfy-why would they leave the building? You turn into the parking lot and notice it is full of cars. Maybe the signs are a joke. As you walk through the open church doors you find a lady in a bright red shirt sitting behind a table in the entryway. You hear sewing machines humming and dishes clinking in the fellowship hall.Babies are making noises down the hallway. A group of people are leaving the church. Noticing your confusion, the lady in the bright red shirt explains to you that instead of worship, the congregation has decided to spend the morning out doing community service. The church is still being used, but the Church has left the building.

On her table are a list of projects: yard cleanup, handicap ramp building, home rehabilitation, child care, sewing walker bags for a local nursing home, visiting nursing homes, feed-the-hungry, planting a flagpole garden at a fire station, baking cookies for soldiers, painting, and a bottle drive to raise money to help train landmine sniffing dogs. So much for remembering the sabbath and keeping it holy.

But wait-aren't these services holy too? Does holiness occur in only church sanctuaries? The Pharisees confronted Jesus with a similar question regarding proper observation of the sabbath, to which he replied, "Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and life it out? How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath" (Matthew 12: 11-13, NRSV).