Exile

After the fire, our congregation went into exile. We were in every respect, homeless. There are many churches in our situation. Our insurance company says that there are as many as 2,400 churches each year which have been the victim of a fire (just insured by them!) and have had to find temporary quarters for some period of time. I call it "living out of a suitcase" if a church could have something like a suitcase. Some of us rent space in a school, others camp out in other churches, some in convents or hospitals. The creative possibilities are almost endless. But none of them are home.

We are homeless. In exile. Living out of a suitcase.

You've traveled. You know what it's like. Your soap, toothbrush and pillows are not where they should be. Your underwear no longer have their own drawer. Socks keep moving to another part of the case. Sorting out dirty laundry from clean becomes a major complication. People who are professional travelers may have a sophisticated regimen of identifying their belongings in strange situations, but for those of us who like the settled life, this is not much fun.

I've had some horrible dreams about getting ready to move to the next phase of whatever dreamy journey I'm on and the bus is leaving in 5 minutes and everything I have is scattered all over the room I'm in and I don't have time to get it all together. I wake up in a sweat.

Ground Breaking

We're breaking ground for our new church on August 19th of 2007.

Here's the backstory. Our church, the Evangelical and Reformed United Church of Christ in Waukesha, Wisconsin, burned to the ground December 4th of 2005. A Sunday night it was. About 10:15 or so. Or at least that's when I got the call from a church member who said, "Our church is burning... I mean, it's really burning." I was not yet undressed for bed, so I rushed out the door. It was a bitter cold night and I was not altogether prepared for the cold. It was a horrible night and the cause of the fire would not be revealed for some weeks.

It was finally, a carelessness on our part. We left candles burning on the communion table after a funeral in the afternoon. It had been a long day. Worship for the second Sunday of Advent at 9 a.m. then a funeral for a dear woman at 4 in the afternoon. We had a marvelous meal with her family following the service and no one went up to check to see whether or not the candles on the table had been extinguished. They weren't.

Then the youth group met at 6 p.m. and we left at 7:45. The fire had been in its infancy at that point, but there were no hard-wired smoke alarms that would have warned the youth group that a fire was in the making. We all went home.

Then the call at 10:15 and the long night of running from one fire command post to another began.

But just now we are breaking ground.