‘Where have all the churches gone?’ redux
In 2022, The Christian Chronicle spent a year reporting on churches that were closing, merging or reinventing themselves — and on organizations that supported them and the root cause of a nationwide reshaping of Churches of Christ.
The Chronicle reopened those conversations to see how things are going. At least three congregations have found widely varied ways to share the Gospel in their very different communities.
San Diego
The building sold by the La Mesa Church of Christ four years ago was a traditional, A-frame structure with stained-glass windows and lots of empty seats. Once home to several hundred members, the congregation had dwindled to about 30. So it sold its building with help from Heritage21 and began meeting in a building at a San Diego County park.
They’re still in a community center, but now it’s by design.
La Mesa Church of Christ members eat on a patio.
“We function in the community as a community center and have a lot of activities throughout the week — some through the YMCA,” said Graham Clifford, minister of Kindred Church. “We host a couple other churches through the week. We have a nonprofit counseling group sponsored by the City of San Diego that works with at-risk and runaway teens. We’re trying to be a safe place for people.”
And at 10 a.m. each Sunday they gather for worship. They have filled up the space in their new-to-them facility, a remodeled law office just a block off Main Street in La Mesa. That was their plan all along — to fill the space — divide into two and keep growing.
Their first new launch is planned for February.
They’re happy, and the community around them is happy, which is important and surprising in a city so secularly focused that churches can’t control property on Main Street itself.
“We have good relationships with our neighbors,” Clifford said, “all in all a pretty good fit for La Mesa.”
Graham Clifford preaches for the La Mesa Church of Christ in San Diego County on a Sunday morning.
Those good relationships have led to growth.
“In one month, we had four baptisms, which for a small church is a lot,” Clifford said.
“One was a young man who had grown up in the church but just kind of went and never claimed the faith as his own. He has since really found a calling and wanted to recommit his life.”
Another was “a woman from a Jewish background in Virginia who had made her way to California and was practicing a version of Buddhism,” the minister added.
A few days later, a young woman from a nearby beach community where they practiced “Buddhist-ish” meditations, as Clifford described it, was convicted and baptized after spending time with Christians at Kindred and building relationships there.
“And a week later, another young woman from Orange County with whom we made a loose connection through one of the guys in the band … she started asking questions,” Clifford said.
Members of the La Mesa Church of Christ in San Diego County worship on a Sunday morning.
That led her to a Bible study with Breanna Clifford, Graham’s wife.
“She spent a day and a half chatting with her,” the minister said.
Two days later, she was at the Cliffords’ home for a Bible study, and that afternoon Graham Clifford baptized her in their backyard.
“The people we’re reaching have little or no knowledge of God and faith but have been searching for a long time for something spiritual and never been able to find it.”
“The people we’re reaching have little or no knowledge of God and faith but have been searching for a long time for something spiritual and never been able to find it,” Clifford explained.
Meanwhile, funds from the sale of the old La Mesa Church of Christ building are being invested in planting and growing new churches in San Diego County.
“We’re not just planting,” Clifford said, “but helping other churches in similar situations with rejuvenation. … We’ve had several events that have reached out to local churches, including one in November called Flourish with 10 churches and representatives from Heritage 21 and Kairos talking about opportunities.”
The La Mesa church’s former auditorium during the COVID-19 shutdown in San Diego.
Together, they hope to start a campus ministry/campus church plant but are still looking for the right couple to lead that. Eventually, Clifford said, they want to have two plants on the massive San Diego State University campus and one at the University of California San Marcos.
Clifford takes no credit for the progress:
“It has been impressive to see what God was already preparing to do and that we get to be a part of it.”
Cincinnati
Members of the Indian Mound Church of Christ and Kennedy Heights Church of Christ began talking about a merger even before the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Conversations resumed in earnest in December 2021, and when The Christian Chronicle visited the newly named Church of Christ at Kennedy Heights in August 2022, the transition was officially complete but still challenging.
Today, minister Greg Jasper says the rewards have been worth the hard work required to blend two congregations into one.
“Attendance is solid — we’ve had 20 or so baptisms, maybe more, in two years,” the preacher and Cincinnati Fire Department chaplain said.
Members of the Kennedy Heights Church of Christ in Cincinnati gather to worship.
“Just over the last two weeks we’ve had five baptisms,” Jasper said late last year, “and at least 10 this year, probably more, and they’ve been faithful.”
Attendance averages around 100 on Sundays, up from about 70 right after the merger. As significant as the numbers, Jasper said members have been very evangelistic, bringing friends and family members every Sunday.
A Spanish-speaking congregation with about 65 to 70 members also continues to meet at the building on Sunday afternoons.
The Church of Christ at Kennedy Heights in Cincinnati.
“Contributions have been holding very strong,” he said. “We have seen people get involved in ministry work that may not have in the past.”
“We’ve had ample time for both church families to gel together and get to know one another,” he added. “That was a concern up front, but from day one I was very optimistic.”
The Indian Mound property was sold, and proceeds allowed the church to purchase a house and property adjacent to the Kennedy Heights campus. Jasper and three other men have been ordained as elders — two from each of the previous congregations — and leadership has aspirations to build an expansion with a gymnasium and classrooms to better serve the community.
Dallas
In June 2022, a majority of Skillman Church of Christ members voted to become the Dallas campus of The Hills Church of Christ of North Richland Hills, a Fort Worth suburb. Except they didn’t.
Bylaws required a two-third majority approval to proceed. The motion failed — by two votes.
A group that had opposed the merger, led by former elder Don Williams, hoped to create Skillman 2.0, as he described it, using “outside consultants on best practices for reenergizing Churches of Christ.”
The outside of the Skillman Church of Christ building in Dallas. The sanctuary at the Skillman church has not been used for worship for over two years.
But as the congregation approaches the three-year mark of that decision, only about 25 to 35 members of the Skillman congregation still meet Sundays at 10:30 in the chapel of the massive Dallas campus. They listen to sermons livestreamed from other congregations, often Rick Atchley, senior minister of the The Hills congregation.
Elder George Dishman said, “It became obvious pretty quickly that 2.0 was not going to be a productive effort — we weren’t getting anywhere.”
So, though no merger could take place, The Hills now leases space on the campus and has begun building a separate congregation that meets in the gymnasium at 10 a.m. on Sundays.
Skillman church members cast their ballots on whether to merge with The Hills.
Dishman said the elders wanted to find a way to “use the 6.3 acres that comprise Skillman’s property to make sure the Gospel continues to get preached.”
A year after the merger vote failed, The Hills had not found another location for a Dallas campus, “so we approached them and asked if they’d be interested in leasing some space.”
“The lease was for the auditorium, but they have to do some things to it to make it accommodate their needs,” he said, so in the meantime the group of between 180 and 200 meets in the gym.
Christians worship in the Skillman Church of Christ chapel.
A third congregation, calling itself CASA, which stands for Christians at Skillman Avenue, also meets at the building. Formerly a home church, it began looking for a little larger space and found it there.
Dishman said the result is that three congregations totaling about 250 or so people “are being reached for the Gospel. So for us that’s a win, whether it’s labeled Skillman Church of Christ or something else.”
CHERYL MANN BACON is a Christian Chronicle contributing editor who served for 20 years as chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Abilene Christian University. Contact [email protected].
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