Sitting Vigil in a Dying Church
January 6, 2009
So in Boston, the Catholic church has had to close a lot of its parishes, selling them off to raise money.¬† Four of those churches, however, have decided that they don’t want to go gently into the good night, and have been sitting vigil in the church buildings around the clock, prevening the diocese from locking the doors.¬† They’re putting on their own clergy-less worship service, and apparently the feeling of community has grown tremendously.
Personally, I’m a realist about church life – keeping a building open costs a lot of money, and building mainteance isn’t always the most Jesus-like way for a church to use its resources.¬† I don’t think that churches dying is a tragedy as long as new churches are planted.¬† Cells in our body die all the time and are replaced with new ones, and it’s a natural part of the life cycle.¬† That said, I think that these vigils are an amazing testament to the bottom-up nature of the Body of Christ.¬† Just like a mustard bush, the Church of God springs up like a weed in places that the gardner doesn’t always want it to, and it can be really, really hard to get rid of.
My prayers are with both those holding vigil and the diocesan leaders, and I’ll be watching how this develops with interest.
You can read more about it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/us/06vigil.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&em