Moveable church

We're making some long-overdue improvements to our church right now. We are pulling up the carpet in the sanctuary and refinishing the floors under the pews. Everything is out-of-place right now. Pews are everywhere, hymnals stacked on flat surfaces, organ in the hallway...

We had planned today to have church in the fellowship hall. But yesterday my board chair/ custodian called and told me that the fumes from the floor sealant were overpowering. So -- a gajillion phone calls later, we decided to convene church at the American Legion today.

And it was lovely. Since I had called everyone last night, we had lots and lots of people there. Everyone had gotten a personal invitation, after all. We had no piano, so we had to sing songs that we, a non-singing congregation, knew well. And we had to kind of wobble the church service about. It was great.

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine told me about his congregation that had experienced a fire in the sanctuary. For four months they had to meet elsewhere and during that time, they doubled in number. I remember him telling me that the wonderful thing about being church someplace else, is that everyone is a guest. Hospitality is essential.

And I think he was right about that. We're going to be worshipping elsewhere for at least the next two weeks. This might be about the best thing we have experienced in a long while.