My uncle crossed the living room and sat down next to me.
“Tell me what’s going on at your church,” he said.
I don’t see my uncle a lot. This year, though, we had essentially decided at the last minute to get the whole family together for Thanksgiving, and he and all my west coast family made the trip. Plane tickets were bought, airport pick-ups planned, spare rooms made up, sticky buns prepared, and I drove two weekends in a row to get there and back. This Thanksgiving was a lot of hurry up and wait, which gave us all time to enjoy the woodburning stove, play Wingspan, and chat with each other.
He’s pretty deep in the CRC, being a pastor of a CRC church himself, and stays up to date on all the goings-on. Thanks to his videos, I believe at times my own father, who has never been a member of a CRC church, knows more of what is happening in my denomination than I do.
I gave him the lay of the land: our small group meetings, our congregational meeting, disaffiliation, where we are thinking about going, the politics of our particular classis. We talked about what it would look like being taken over by another church if my church didn’t do anything; he told me how it was different out in Cali, being removed from the Grand Rapids epicenter.
“I’m pretty sure we are leaving,” I said. “But I’m not sure if leaving the CRC will force out some of the key members of our congregation. If that happens,” I raised my eyebrows and blew out a breath, “I’m not sure what we will do.”
“You’re such a small church,” he said. Every person counts, I could hear him saying.
When we as a church were reflecting about our strengths and our weaknesses, a lot of people, including me, cited the family and close-knit community as a positive. But I remember also thinking of it as a negative. Over my past six years here, I’ve had some departures that have felt like knives to my gut.
The person who took over playing piano on my worship team, my accompanist, who set up the livestream and taught me how to work the soundboard, sent an email one September to the worship team that he would be leaving the church. Around the same time, our guitarist also left the church. Both these people, who were some of the only people I got to see outside of my housemates during those strange COVID months, people who I loved deeply and were solid and dependable, left, and I had to figure out who was going to make music on first Sundays now. A woman who I still view as a spiritual mentor felt called to leave. A family who I had learned from, both from the pulpit and in church leadership and whose kid was one of the first I connected with in nursery, decided it was time to move on. People leave; others come. It is the natural cycle of churches. It just feels so much more personal at a small church.
As I was signing Christmas cards at the end of fellowship hour this Sunday, I overheard a few people exchanging goodbyes. Someone mentioned something about a final week, and my heart sank. She was talking to one of the key members that I had in mind when I was talking to my uncle.
After that person had left, she came up to me to say goodbye for the day.
“You didn’t know that they were leaving?” she said, head cocked to the side. She let me know another member was leaving too, one who I hadn’t even considered on the list of potential departures. All people that I cannot imagine my church without.
This Sunday we will say goodbye. And in the coming months, I will remember their absence again and again. The loss of a gentle smile during the greeting time; the lack of birthday cards in the church mailboxes; another uncertainty with who will accompany my worship team; fewer people who remember key points in our history.
My church will continue forward in the path we believe God is guiding us in. Other people will step in and ease the phantom pain. Other people will eventually leave, too. It’s not a permanent goodbye; I know I’ll see these people elsewhere. And yet, I will still be heartbroken when they exit the doors for the last time as regular attendees.
I know we are doing the right thing. I know there is joy and love and life in my church, both right now and in the future. But this Sunday, we will sit in this painful goodbye.
Alex Johnson (‘19) is a virtual computer science teacher and a proud resident of Grand Rapids. When she’s not brainstorming the newest project to inflict on her students, she’s cooking semi-vegetarian food, reading too many romance books, and playing rhythm games.
