The Building: the beginning, the middle, and the end.

         

I drove into the all-familiar driveway, now hidden among the apartment buildings surrounding it. The familiar church building with the high steeple, once standing proudly in a wide-open field, in the last decade stood amidst the modern apartment buildings, often hard to find unless you were specifically looking for it.

When the building was first erected, there was hardly anything surrounding it but a few homes and a pig farm next door. There were many a Sunday morning where you would pull into the parking lot and exit from your car to the wafting smell of pig poo and the sound of squealing.

But now, as I pulled into the parking lot, grass reaching out high between the cracks, all that remained is a makeshift fence and a “No Trespassing” sign. A little, wooden shed, sticking out amidst the high grass the only building on the property.

The Iowa City Church of Christ was struck by lightning and burned to the ground on what would have been my 34th anniversary.

Memories had flooded back when I looked online at the pictures of the remains. Barely a frame of the front, brick entryway remained. Anyone who wasn’t familiar with the church might not know, at first glance, the building that had at one time stuck out among the fields.

My late husband, Ed, and I were young Christians when we first started attending this church.

The groundbreaking ceremony was my son's very first "outing" at one week old.

This “church” first began meeting in a daycare. Our first-year attending was in that daycare, often with things like paper ghosts, snowflakes, or flowers hanging from the ceiling tiles.

Ed and I attended sometimes in our Army uniforms. We were in the National Guard, and during drill weekends we had an hour to attend a religious service. A couple of times we brought along a couple of other guardsmen with us.

The church construction relied heavily on volunteer labor, and I remember many times working on the building. I was “schooled” on how to use a hammer there, by the minister, Merv Moberly.

Ed and his dad hung shingles on the roof.

Ed and I arranged for the church to borrow our National Guard’s medium sized, O.D. (Olive Drab) green tent so we could do a “chow hall” for the volunteers. I made spaghetti once and brought it to feed the workers from that tent.

I remember doing Vacation Bible School (VBS) in the building before it was complete. I remember decorating it for VBS, volunteering for VBS crafts or registration at that building.

When the building was first built, the small congregation couldn’t afford custodial services, so I, along with other members of the church, took turns with other families cleaning the church building. I knew every closet, cupboard, nook and cranny.

Both of my kids were baptized in that building.

I was involved with Ladies events there, mothers’ day events, and fathers’ day events. I attended funerals there and weddings. A decade ago, we held my in-laws’ 50th anniversary there.

I found out my grandmother passed while in that parking lot.

The building had an apartment built in on the upper level. Merv and his wife lived there while he was the pastor. Over the years, I think several people were able to stay there when needed.

One couple stayed there because their house flooded unexpectedly. The homeless family was welcomed into the apartment and lived there for a while.

Ed first started leading worship there, and I watched he and my kids play on the worship team on that stage. The Elders at that church ordained Ed.

We had a memorial tree planted there after my husband passed away. Ironically, months prior to the fire, the tree had unfortunately been chopped down. 

Now, the building and the tree are gone. As much as that greatly saddens me, the building and the tree only served as a gathering place and a reminder. The tree was not my husband, and the building is not the church.

And in hindsight, the Iowa City Church of Christ was always about the people, and not the building. Before the building we served alongside those people setting up for "church" in the preschool. We served alongside those people working on the building, hammering, painting, cleaning. We served with many people throughout a multitude of events that were held in that building. 

            Even after we moved away, they remodeled the inside and it looked VERY different than it originally did. But more important than the location of the stage and the nursery was the many, many strong relationships we built at that church building. Some of those people attended Ed's funeral in Chicago. There is no fire or axe that can ever take those relationships away.

The church is now meeting in a hotel downtown. Good for them continuing through this adversity!

I look forward to hearing about their future impact on downtown Iowa City.

Ed used to say that churches should ask, "Would anyone in the community notice if our church was no longer there?"

             I hope the answer to that for Iowa City is, “yes”.