SOMETHING HAD TO GIVE: St. Matthew’s church and cemetery, Florence.
By Lawrene Denkers
I'M GOING TO START at the end of the story.
The end of the story is that my church, St. Matthew’s, Florence, is a Worshipping Community.
It is an experiment.
It is divested of its church building, still maintaining its separate church hall, and growing, learning, teaching, reaching out, praying and worshipping.
I wanted to tell you that part first so you wouldn’t read my original first sentence and assume this was the same old story, another closed church. My original first sentence was:
Something had to give.
So now I’ll restart with that.
Something had to give. We are a tiny church, hopelessly rural, the last one standing in a village that once (circa 1900) had five churches, Wesleyan Methodist, Methodist Episcopal, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Anglican. The Anglican was the first (Church of Ireland,1843), and when the United Church closed in 1994, it became the last.
By early 2023 we had a problem. We had a beautiful, historic, neo-gothic, ruinously expensive problem. Our church building drained our bank account so dry that we were holding many services in the parish hall across the road just to save on utilities.
And that was just the beginning. I’ve written in these pages about the species-at-risk snakes in the basement and the bees in the walls. Between dealing with whatever might be next and covering the costs, the place was wearing us out.
It’s a lot, physically and psychologically, closing the last church in town, but it seemed all we could do. We were down to a handful of worshipper-workers, and we had vowed (formally, at a board meeting) that we wouldn’t keep those exquisite doors open with fundraisers. Fundraisers here are for outreach. If we were going to start having to use fundraisers to pay utilities, then we were no longer relevant.
If you keep your doors open with fundraisers, good on you! We all do what works in our vastly differing communities and situations. It wasn’t a solution in our case. We were out of solutions.
How did we get from there to here?
We did it through discussion.
We talk in this church. Some of us talk while walking the bounds of our village, a visible presence in town every morning.
We talk on Monday nights, via more formal Zoom learning sessions, with our friends at Christ Church, Dresden, about our faith, about justice issues, about climate issues, even about dying. (Ask us about our Death of a Christian series! While you’re at it, ask us how Revive and The Way of Love carved a path for us.)
We talk during church. Every third week, when we have no clergy or lay reader present, we gather to say Morning Prayer and, in lieu of a sermon, we prayerfully discuss the Scripture readings of the day.
We talk about the Bishop’s plan, Turning to Grace, during meetings and when walking, learning and worshipping. What could creating a plan, transitioning, embracing the moment, prioritising “people first and then material things,” do?
Sure, we could close St Matthew’s, Florence, and scatter to other congregations. But maybe there was another way. Maybe we could embrace the moment, make a plan.
Maybe we could turn the church building back to the diocese – to sell maybe – and use our modern (1994) hall, and our very modern Zoom capabilities, for worship, study, and ministry. Maybe we could focus on teaching and learning and social justice rather than on paying utility bills for a building that was being served (by us) more than it was serving anyone.
We met after church every week for three months. We read the canons. We asked questions. We made that plan. Specifically, we made a community Rule of Life, an Annual Learning Plan, and a Proposal to become a Worshipping Community.
First up in the way of obstacles was our larger community.
Folks who hadn’t darkened our doors for a generation popped up to tell us how wrong we were. A man from miles away and with no affiliation stopped at my house to confirm the news that we were acting so selfishly.
Dealing with that takes so much explaining that you get tired of the sound of your own voice, but it’s worth it. People do come to understand.
Next up was the sheer amount of work it takes to change anything that’s been done one way for a century and a half. It really helps to have your Archdeacon, and other patient and kind souls at the diocese, in your corner.
What we came up with, and have implemented, is this:
We are no longer responsible for the church building. It is surrounded by a cemetery, so the cemetery committee is separate from us as well.
We report to Christ Church, Dresden, and contribute enough to the Rondeau Bay Transfiguration Partnership to have clergy on six Sundays per year. Thereafter we bring in clergy at our own expense, and use this rotation: Week One is Eucharist with clergy in the worship space of the hall, Week Two is Morning Prayer in the hall with the people as leaders, Week Three we visit another congregation for Eucharist. We often visit Dresden, but also the other churches of the Partnership and go further afield if something special is happening somewhere. We also Zoom our Week One and Two services for anyone who cannot attend in person.
We continue to meet for study on Monday nights with Dresden.
We have turned our hall into, not just a worship space, but a ministry space. St. Matthew’s has never been busier! You can tell at the door, where a red dress hangs to honour and remember the missing and murdered Indigenous women of our community, colourful quilts sit ready for delivery to shelters, and posters announce the low-income tax preparation clinics, foodbank distribution and community medical clinics happening inside.
It's not the end of the story at all. It’s a new beginning. One year into being a Worshipping Community, this February, we are energized and even growing. We have some new folks on board for worship and study.
And we would love to show you what we are doing. We’d love to walk you through it. Come visit us or write to us to ask what can happen when you make a plan.
You can find us at www.stmatthewsflorence.org
Lawrene Denkers is a St. Mathew's, Florence parishioner.