‘We’re dying, but they’re rising’: Spokane Lutheran church sells to Ethiopian Orthodox congregation
News Story by Elena Perry | The Spokesman-Review
Though their prayers came from the depths of a church basement, God heard the appeals for a new place of worship.
The congregation of St. Mary Ethiopian Orthodox Church had been worshipping in the basement of Messiah Evangelical Lutheran Church for more than four years until their ranks outgrew the small sanctuary.
Asking God for answers, the congregation searched for a new space until they struck a deal with their upstairs neighbors, with Messiah already intending to close its church after 73 years in North Spokane.
‘An act of God’
Though Messiah mourned the loss of its church-home, each party considers the sale an act of God.
“It’s only right,” said the Rev. Bob Kenyon, Messiah’s pastor. “Seems to me that’s really the way it should be.”
Messiah held its final Service of Holy Closure on a Sunday in November to officially recognize the shuttering of the church in what was a grief-filled ceremony for many. They sold the space at 4202 North Belt St. for around $550,000, raised by the St. Mary congregation. The plot is worth around $1.2 million, Kenyon said.
After 73 years, the Messiah congregation was simply too small to continue operation. Fewer than 10 worshippers regularly attended Sunday service, though that wasn’t always the case. In 1974, the church had 1,000 members, according to Spokesman-Review archives from the time.
“When they think of Messiah, that’s what they’re thinking,” Kenyon said, describing churchgoers’ memories of the congregation in its prime. “They’re thinking of the ’60s and ’70s, when they had 400 people at church. Now it just feels empty, very empty.”
‘Thrilled to get their own space’
In contrast, the Orthodox congregation is growing. Any given service sees around 70 members packed into the basement, many of them children. That’s part of why they’re thrilled to get their own space.
“Our kids run around, they shout, they scream. It is really difficult to kind of coexist,” said Dagnachew Uma, who is on the church council at St. Mary and a mediator between the congregations.
Kids nearly outnumbered their parents at the Orthodox service one Sunday in December. When it began around 7 a.m., many were curled up on the pews, sleeping softly as adults tucked them in with coats as blankets. As they stirred, they colored or whispered to each other, allowed to entertain themselves with minimal parental interference. As the service continued, kids meandered through the pews until it was time for Sunday school in a separate room.
Beginning prayer with the sun rising
Worship starts early for the Rev. Sahilu Leyew. The Orthodox priest arrives at the church basement just after 4 a.m. to begin service with the clergy, though congregants filter in around 7 a.m. They begin prayer as the rising sun streams through pulled blinds, entering the sanctuary with bare feet and as the priest brings a cross around the room for worshippers to kiss and touch their foreheads to.
A fragrant, smoky incense drifts through the room draped in velvet portraits of religious icons like Jesus, Mary and the saints. Plush rugs layer the floor to warm worshippers’ bare feet.
The service is in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia, with written English translations on screens around the room.
Women cover their hair when they go to worship, draping white cotton weaves around their face. Men also don the large linens, wrapping themselves in such a way that the cloth ends form an intentional cross over their hearts. Men and women sit on opposite ends of the sanctuary while their children wander, often passed from person to person during the long service.
The children’s choir sings God’s praise
The service concludes around noon after several hours of singing, prayer and reading from the Gospel and other holy books, each Ethiopian Orthodox congregation around the world reading the same passages each day.
Near the end of the service, before worshippers lined up for sips of holy water, the children’s choir trickled into the space dressed in colorful uniforms meant to resemble angels. The 24 kids sang worship music in Amharic, accompanied by the thuds on a traditional Kabrero drum and the trilling ululation of the Ethiopian women in the pews, a vocal expression of celebration and praise.
As one church spreads out, another one begins its exit
The congregation is eager to fill its new space with the sounds and aroma of their worship, with ample room to socialize after service and for kids to roam and play as loud as they’d like.
“We never had a space as big as this to do anything other than just sneak in, just quietly praise and sing and go,” Uma said. “Because our tradition is different; we use incense and we sing loud and whatnot. We worry about, does it bother them? What do we have to do? Are we too loud? Is the incense too much? It’s just so much stress.”
While one church prepares to assume its new space, another is in the gutting and bureaucratic process of closing.
In the weeks after Messiah’s closure, its hymn books will be enjoyed by another church in Davenport. The iconic organ is in storage, the set of handbells sold to the bell ringer, the archives moved to Pacific Lutheran University, and the communion chalice and paten gifted to another church.
It’s odd to think of the 73 years of history sprinkled so far.
“It’s sort of like grave-robbing a little bit; you feel kind of creepy about it,” Kenyon said.
Saying goodbye
The handfuls of regular Messiah attendees were bereft at the closure. Most had spent their lives worshipping there; some imagined their funeral services held in their home church. Kenyon said he tried to prolong the inevitable church closure until the last of the aging congregants passed on so this could be realized, but bankruptcy was too near a threat.
“Many of them have their kids confirmed here, or their parents were buried, or their spouses were buried out of this church. They remember the dinners, they remember the special programs, they remember all the hard work they did, how much they loved all that,” Kenyon said. “The other things I think they’re losing are, in a real sense for the ones who have been here the longest, a real sense of connection to God through the building.”
The church is two stories, with colorful stained-glass windows peering down a staircase and towering ceilings that reverberate chimes of bells and the Werner Bosch pipe organ during services. When they purchased the organ in 1969, it was the first mechanical-action pipe organ in Spokane in 50 years, according to Spokesman-Review archives. Until a new church is identified for the instrument, it’s to be deconstructed from the church walls and kept in storage.
Another point of pride for parishioners are the building’s two customized Harold Balazs sculptures hanging from the walls, one depicting the Messiah and another several “Christian Symbols,” as the piece is called, in Balazs’ signature geometric style. Massive, it hung at the head of the church.
The art is to be donated to Whitworth University, Kenyon said.
Messiah’s last service
Messiah held its Service of Holy Closure on a November Sunday to officially and theologically disperse the congregation, drawing around 100 congregants past and the few present attendees. Two baptisms were included in the final service – congregants who wanted their babies baptized at their family church.
Attendees sang, prayed and took Communion for the final time in their church. Kenyon delivered his last sermon there, until finally Bishop Meggan Manlove from the regional Synod delivered a declaration of leave-taking to officially close the congregation.
“May the witness of the people who have ministered in the name of Jesus Christ through Messiah Lutheran be undiminished and continue as they leave this place.
“Amen,” she said.
“Amen,” the congregation responded.
Ethiopian Orthodox congregation joins Messiah Lutheran to share gratitude
Leyew spoke at the service, translated into English by Uma. He thanked the Messiah congregation for their sale of the building, and each group exchanged blessings. The Orthodox children’s choir sang, worshipers from both groups beaming.
Many tears fell during the Service of Holy Closure. Long time parishioners gathered after the service, sharing memories and gossip over cookies and coffee. They flipped through old church photo albums, catching glimpses of decades-old pictures of themselves and friends. “Bittersweet,” many described it.
“They’re losing, they’re grieving really, a part of themselves that will never be the same. And they were hoping they wouldn’t have to do that. For the older people in the parish, this is really like the death of a child or a mother, a mother church,” Kenyon said. “They’ll go somewhere else, but it’s never going to be the same.”
Messiah Lutheran’s final gifts
Kenyon is also the pastor at Zion Lutheran Church, and he expects some of the Messiah congregation will worship there. He’s connected with leaders at other local churches to make the transition easier for his flock, some of whom came to Messiah after their original churches closed. He’s concerned they may be overwhelmed in the larger congregations, used to their intimate gatherings of fewer than 10.
“They can get lost pretty easily,” Kenyon said.
What brings some solace in an otherwise mournful time is Messiah’s legacy: the people served by the charities receiving the hundreds of thousands from the sale of the building.
The Messiah congregation directed about $230,000 as a scholarship fund for studying pastors at the Northwest Intermountain Synod. They’ve also split $100,000 to charities Lutherhaven Ministries, Second Harvest and Christ Kitchen of Spokane. Groups Northwest Intermountain Synod, Vanessa Behan Crisis Nursery, Shalom ministries, Lutheran Social Services and Meals on Wheels each received a portion of $40,000.
The building’s new owners help soften the blow of a lost church, Kenyon said. It’ll sting less than when Messiah congregants drive past their former church-home, they’ll see it still as a house of the Lord rather than businesses or apartment buildings that could have occupied the space. The way the pieces fell into place is divine intervention, Kenyon said.
“I think the way this is all coming out is really God’s will,” Kenyon said. “They believe that 100%; I think they’re right about that. I call it a God thing. It’s kind of one of those things that you look at and then you go, ‘Oh, wait a minute, we’re dying, but they’re rising. Why shouldn’t they have it?’”
Children keep churches thriving
Miracles are fundamental in the Orthodox Christian faith, Uma said, and he sees the sequence of events that led to the church purchase as a miraculous act of God.
“We as Christians, we would like to think it was what was meant to be,” Uma said.
What the Messiah congregation was missing, St. Mary has in droves: children. A thriving generation to inherit a church is essential to keeping it thriving, Kenyon said.
“When you lose your children, that’s the clock ticking,” Kenyon said. “These people can’t live forever.”
Uma wants a church in which to raise kids to instill in them the principles of his faith. With their new acquisition, congregants can raise their children to be proud of the space they paid dearly for, harking back to the humble beginnings in the basement of the church they now own.
“Even if they just come out here to the church and play and run around and whatnot, they may hear one or two things that’s going to be helpful for them when they grow,” Uma said. “That’s how you continue to exist as a church for generations.”
Elena Perry’s work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story is republished from The Spokesman-Reivew under a Creative Commons license.
