WHAT ECCLESIOLOGICALLY HAPPENS TO YOUR CONGREGATION WHEN YOUR CHURCH CLOSES?
You Are Still a Church. We Can Adopt Your Congregration as Your Church, Perpetuating its Name and Customs.
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When a person loses an arm, is he not still a person? And, does he not sometimes feel as if his arm is still present? If a family loses its parents to death, or its house has burned down, is it not still a family? Is a parent no longer parent if he or she dies? It is as if one’s house or church and lost family member became an institution everlasting Faith that cannot be erased by any human or ministerial action.
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When a physical church building closes, its formal sacred status is typically lifted through a religious rite such as desacralization or the relegation to profane use. The surviving ecclesiastical community retains no permanent sacred rights to the old structure itself, though the Denomination may treat the people as the true living church. But there is no Biblical text saying the latter, as if the church lives on in spirit.
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It does live on in your heart, however. Thus, it would only be an act of heartfelt devotion by an empathetic Diocese that would convalidate your departed church’s existence in the spirit, and thus Sanctify your operation under its name.
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Our Ecclesiastical Ecumenical Province (EEP) does just this, and even more. EEP, through its ecclesiastical records, keeps your church chartered as an actual church. A Bishop will come and Sanctify the structure that you currently use for it as you invite its departed Pastor to return. Or, NE-TACA will train you or one of your own as its new Rector and Conditionally Consecrate your reborn home anew.
No, your religious home did not die. It is merely in another bifold form–the spiritual and congregational. Without a building it may be “dead” in its ancillary and clerical quotidian, but a structure, starting with your home, as an Oratorium, and then, if desired, a separate bigger structure, could be used and owned by you for your Congregation. It would be, in the latter scenario, Conditionally Consecrated under your church’s current name, as a full active church, once again.
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“For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Corinthians 5:1).
Thus, today your Ecclesia is kept alive and waiting, per se, for the Apocalypse (the official “end of the church age,” etc.) or for a reboot on the ground, so to speak!
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Then, as of today, your Congregation/Church remains alive in the hearts and minds of the beloved: You are still a Congregation and thus, you are still that church by our Agape Love whether in corporeal form one day soon, or in remaining as today’s merely spiritual choice.
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And so therefore if Christ knew us before we were born or reborn, your church is now a church still and can be reborn in the corporeal world, as it is alive at least through your Love. You can, by your choice restart it also on the terrain, via your own inspiration, hard work, investing, Love, and the consulting help of the EEP.
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“And they builded, and finished [the Second Temple]” (Ezra 6:14).
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Maybe you will never decide to re-make its physical building. But under the spirit of true Ecumenism we will be happy to let you have, as its ongoing ecclesia usage of our church in Perkasie, Pennsylvania to hold fresh new services.
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Or, we will host a service under the name of your church if you cannot be here. We would be happy to celebrate it with your actual Liturgy. Or you can switch to our Liturgy (the 1928 Book of Common Prayer).
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We can also train you for free, and your fellow members, to become ministers and ordain you.
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Or, you can just let us merely revere your chartered name in our registry and see you as being a permanent church that becomes integrated into the Church Triumphant upon our Salvation.
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Rebirth of Your Church as a Religious Order:
You can also choose to submit your house of worship, if you decide that you do not want to restart it as a physical church, to change its status to a Religious Order that is part of the Ecclesiastical Ecumenical Province of Northeast TACA. It has its own customary, conventions, and history. A Liturgical and prayer traditions. A “rule” that is in development already, even! This idea would be something different and quite beautiful to think about. You could offer yourself or suggest Christians for training for this new Order, who would become known as Ordinary Priests.
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All of this is up to you just how you would want us to know and help grow or regrow your church. So, let’s review what has happened to you up until now and let’s thus desensitize the trauma of it all, shall we?:
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So, You’ve Suffered the Loss of Original Sacred Building Status . . .
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Decommissioning: Denominations formally secularize or deconsecrate a shuttered building to remove its religious blessing.
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Profane Use: Under rules like Catholic canon law, a closed space is relegated to ordinary use, provided it is respectful and not scandalous.
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Memory and Care: Denominations often hold closing rituals to honor past worship, but legal and spiritual ownership of the sacred designation on that specific plot ends.
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Sale of Building: The building may be sold or donated to another church. Or, so long as the relegation of the property via desacralization is toward the profane instead of its being sold for sordid usage (e.g., a strip club), the Congregation will select a secular buyer if not surrendering the building to the State and its bank under foreclosure or abandonment due to structural condemnation. In either case, heartbreak over loss is hard.
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Merger and Transfer of Records: All baptismal, marital, and other sacramental records are sometimes transferred to another church with which the name of your church is kept in memory but has been replaced by the subsuming church, which transplants memberships onto itself.
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Removal of Objects: Holy items, altars, relics, and the Eucharist are removed before any sale or transition.
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Scattering of the Flock: You and your other parishioners, members of the Congregation or Mission, etcetera, relocate to a neighboring or merged church, while ministers are assigned to other parishes or churches as well.
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What Yet Survives for the Community and Which Merits Our Convalidating of Your True Enduring Body of Faith?:
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The People as the Church: Theology may indeed sensitively view your active Congregation, not the stone or brick, as the True Enduring Body of faith. Again, this Doctrine you are reading about here is not biblical and thus cannot be written into formal systematic theology, but it is a mere action of Hope and Love. Thus, by sheer Faith to be doers of the Word of God, this mission is accepted as being both licit and valid by the Ecclesiastical Ecumenical Province of the Northeast Diocese of Traditional Anglican Church of America (EEP/NE-TACA). We merely see “zero need” to have a “funeral” for anything that is not really “dead.” Period.
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Your church was and is beautiful and it can be carried forth with your old Priest or Minister if he is available. If he likes, he can become incardinated with EEP/NE-TACA.
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Or, if he is no longer available for you, maybe you or an equally extraordinary person whom you know would like to become the new Pastor over your truly surviving living Congregation and hence church.
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Although EEP/NE-TACA cannot fund your church, you will be given the review, training, theological substantiation, Fellowship, Sanctification, biblical and moral support, and, if opted, our Episcopate, its Bishop, and juridical structure to start your own church and/or initiate your own Diocese.
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