South Loop Recommissioning
Early this year (2022), our South Loop site decided to have a sabbatical to explore the new ministry possibilities. Since then, we have tried various fresh expressions such as weekly online gatherings, Saturday brunch, Friday Night Worship at Momentum Coffee, and dinner church. Through these efforts and ministries, we have learned how to start something new without fear by leaning on God, and how to journey together by supporting each other. After 9 months of exploration, we concluded that it’s time to take “Sending and Recommissioning” as our next step. As the first site that opened our doors in 2010, we’ve been the sending church that sent our members to the new site plantings, and we also nurtured and sent our leaders to the local churches, as their ministers, who share the good news, “God loves you as who you are!” And now, all South Loop members will be sent and recommissioned. We will call it “Sending and Recommissioning” instead of “Site Closure” because we will keep walking together for our mission as we’ve been doing since the very beginning of UVC.
Here are some words from our Executive Pastor Christian Coon on this transition:
If you've seen the movie "Groundhog Day," you know the premise: By some mystical fate, a TV weatherman (Phil Connors) keeps waking up and reliving the same day over and over again. After the novelty and futility of all of this wears off, he begins to help others, including a homeless man that Phil brings into the hospital. The man dies in the hospital, but Phil refuses to accept that. The nurse says, "Sometimes people just die." And Phil responds, "Not on my watch." And he proceeds over the next several days to try to save the man...but to no avail. Sometimes people just die.
Weirdly, that segment popped into my head last Wednesday at our Charge Conference (for non-United Methodists, it's kind of like our annual meeting/state-of-the-church gathering) when we prayed a liturgy for the closing of Urban Village's South Loop site. So many mixed emotions, of course. South Loop was our first site. South Loop was the neighborhood that Trey Hall & I targeted for a new church. It was where we commissioned others to start other ministry sites and/or go into the ministry themselves. In the course of the last few years, however, especially because of the pandemic, our worship numbers decreased and our rental costs didn't.
We are part of a faith that rightly proclaims resurrection and new life, but death and the ending of things are also part of that process. Such great ministry happened between 2009-2022 in the South Loop. And perhaps it might again one day. But for now, I cherish the wonderful memories, I mourn the loss of a vital ministry in this neighborhood, and I look around to see where new seeds will be planted.
Sometimes people...and churches...just die. But I know that resurrection still breaks through all the time. Thanks be to God for all of those who made ministry at UVC-South Loop a life-changing experience for me and so many others.
