The Church Without a Building That's Still Quite Alive

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Between 1967 and 1976 we lived in Culver City and attended a small mostly Chinese church. I taught a sixth grade girls Sunday School class there for several years. I was also head of the junior department for many of those years, so I knew all the children. One student who was very special to me was N. She was only in my class for one year. Later I was also one of the adult leaders for the junior high group, so we were still in touch then. She was also in a special group of girls I spent more time with. Sometimes I picked her up at her parents' Chinese restaurant to give her a ride to the meetings. When those sixth graders moved into higher grades, I stayed involved with them. Sometimes I was a camp counselor or helped at high school youth group events. When we moved, the church remained. We went to reunions of the college group we had advised long after students graduated and started families of their own. We adopted our children. Even though we lived an hour away, we were still in touch with those students, and they were among our closest friends. In 1991 we attended the 25th anniversary of the founding of the church. We found it was going through a tough time. By this time Jason was 14 and our only child still at home. My husband decided we should go back to help out the church, since the church leadership had asked for that help. We renewed our relationships with the few people at the church who had not moved out of the area. One of those was D, who had been in my junior department. He was musically gifted and was by this time teaching music in a school. He was married and had a daughter. This church experience was quite different for my son than the one he was used to at home. He didn't know anyone. He was friendly, but not used to a culturally diverse group, since we lived in the suburbs. Still, he was a good sport and tried to make friends with the few people there who were his age. He was finally starting to feel more at home. A few weeks later he died in an accident. Because of the circumstances, we felt our pastor would need help with the memorial service. We asked the pastor of the church we'd been visiting to preach the eulogy. D agreed to come help with the music at the service. (He is playing the guitar in the photo above.) He not only had met Jason when we were visiting the church, but he and his wife had also been in our home. Our friends who had grown up in that church and been in the youth groups also traveled a long distance to attend the memorial service. Afterward, they spent the afternoon with us at home. These were still our closest friends. Within a year the old church had fallen apart. Everyone had found a new church. Evey few years we still got together for a reunion somewhere in Los Angeles or Orange County. By this time we had moved to our current home in San Luis Obispo County, about 200 miles away. Last night D called us. He knew I'd been N's Sunday School teacher way back when she'd been in sixth grade. He told us N's husband had terminal cancer. He thought she'd want to hear from me, even though we hadn't seen each other since the last reunion at least three years ago. Tonight I called her. Sometimes God gives people a special connection. I had many classes of sixth grade girls. N is the one I had the deepest connection with, even though we rarely saw each other after we moved in 1977. Somehow, though, the people in that church, both the adults and those we met as children who grew up in the church, hold together in spirit. We communicate. We pray for each other and attend each other's memorial services. We get together when we can. We are still very connected in spirit. Most of us have never found another church that means as much to us as that one did. It's not a building that makes a church come together. It's the people. I'm delighted that after forty years, I'm still connected enough to N that I may be able to comfort her now. She had wanted to contact me but didn't know how. D knew how to get us in touch and did. Two others we met when they were young also get messages out to the connected group -- one in a regular email list and another who knows who needs to know what about whom. These people all still live in Southern California and are in touch with the others who live there. It's strange that although we've all moved on to other church buildings, when we think of our church, it's still that group of people. There was nothing special about that church except that we were all really involved in each other's lives in and out of the building. The people didn't always agree, but they loved each other. They still do. Is there a special group of people outside of your family that holds together through thick and thin and is always there for each other even though the miles separate them?