JOURNALING: While driving thru Westerville, I noted that the beautiful stone church I attended years ago when visiting family in central Ohio was no longer St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church. The sign out front said it now was “Cornerstone Community Church”. That same day we passed an old house sporting an Episcopal flag and a sign saying it was “Pray. Think. Love. St. Matthew’s Episcopal House.” What had happened? The internet provided the “rest of the story”. In 2003, the national Episcopal Church consecrated an openly gay man as a bishop in New Hampshire. Like many congregations across the country, St. Matthew’s experienced a rift among its members. About 2/3 of the congregation elected to leave the Episcopal Church and form St. Andrew’s Anglican Church. Those remaining tried to carry on but the monthly cost of the mortgage forced the sale of the building. They became a “church without a building” and use the house only as offices, library, coffee bar and chapel. Church services are held in several locations throughout downtown Westerville including Old Bag Of Nails restaurant. According to their pastor, Father Kovitch, “Losing the building made the congregation vulnerable but also approachable. You find that the coffeehouses, the restaurants, the campuses, the neighborhoods become a parish. And we find that Old Bag of Nails can be a sanctuary, that a 19th-century house can become a chapel, and the front porch can be a fellowship hall.”
CREDITS: TEMPLATE - "Cherish This", Lynn Grieveson, provided for the challenge; PHOTOS - by me; Episcopal shield from internet; KIT - "Lifetime Stories", etc by Danyale; FONT - Times New Roman
