A Moment of Exploration

Some time ago I found myself on an other than Sunday day wandering around inside a mostly deserted church.  At the end of the time of wandering, I felt like some kind of modern day ecclesiastical explorer.  During my hours of exploration I found the library with its shelves full of books and dust.  I visited a few Sunday School classrooms that looked more like college lecture halls than space where people sat around together talking about some of the tough questions of faith.  A clergy friend one told me that churches  talk if we are willing to listen and that I should be especially attentive the first time I walked into what would be a new appointment.  His words have proven to be true many times. 

After an hour or so I wandered into a room far away from any aisles of pedestrian traffic.  It was a room  that told me to look around which I did.  As I obeyed the inner voice I was hearing,  I saw the tables stored behind the open door, a few open Bibles, and what looked like an altar.  "This looks like a prayer room," was what I remember thinking and as I looked toward the door again, I saw the bronze plaque which read, "Prayer Room."  It looked like it had been awhile since anyone had prayed in that cluttered space.  I wondered how it came to be forgotten.  I wondered, too, if it could be brought to life again.  My guess was that it had not only been forgotten, but had disappeared from the mind and heart of the church that gave it space.    

I remember pulling in a chair and sitting there for a spell.  As I sat there praying, I remembered some rooms like the one in which I was praying that had been set aside in the days of my ministry and I wondered if they had suffered the same fate in the years following their birth.  I knew it was likely.  Sadly, one of the hardest rooms and ministries to maintain is one which covers the church in prayer.  It may also be one of the reasons the church is struggling to survive rather than being a place filled with "signs and wonders."  (Acts 2:43)