Mrs. Eddy sat back to be questioned.
“The continuity of The Church of Christ, Scientist,”
she said, in her clear voice, “is assured. It is growing
wonderfully. It will embrace all the churches, one by
one, because in it alone is the simplicity of the oneness
of God; the oneness of Christ and the perfecting of man
stated scientifically.”
“How will it be governed after all now concerned in
its government shall have passed on?”
“It will evolve scientifically. Its essence is evangelical.
Its government will develop as it progresses.”
“Will there be a hierarchy, or will it be directed by a
single earthly ruler?”
“In time its present rules of service and present ruler-
ship will advance nearer perfection.”

— MY p342

There is a group of Christian Scientists in Spokane, Washington, that has been actively reaching out to the public by sharing Christian Science at a bus plaza. Here are some of their findings after giving away thousands of Science & Healths for 2 years:

STA Outreach – Jan 5th, 2011

Dear Friends,

This week marks the end of two full years of our weekly outreach at the Bus Plaza…which we’ll continue, by the way. It’s been a delightful, productive and growing time for each of us. Thank you for your supporting emails and prayerful assistance! In gratitude we offer this in-depth report and hope it stimulates thought and action throughout our movement:

A person who very much supports the Spokane outreach recently asked, “How many of those six or seven thousand people you’ve shared Christian Science with at the Bus Plaza over the past two years now attend one of our CS churches?” Fair question. The immediate answer, incredibly, is that there have been visitations but we are not aware of anyone who regularly attends services at the several area churches as a result of talking with us or getting a copy of Science and Health from this outreach.

How could that be???!! It just doesn’t seem statistically possible—-there have been many, many people clearly and deeply touched by our words and message over the last 24 months; a number have said they would visit our churches; some have sought out practitioners; some have come back to our table and reported improvements in their lives and even healings through reading S&H; some have reported loving the book, reading and re-reading it; people frequently come back to get another copy for a friend or relative because it seems so important to them; some have subsequently used a Reading Room; and many have been given a slip of paper that lists the Sentinel Radio Program, internet websites and addresses of local churches and Reading Rooms. So why aren’t our churches flooded with curious seekers?

And the follow-on question: What does this imply for our movement? If people like the message but don’t follow up to become “churched”, what does that mean for the human structure of Christian Science?

As most of you know, we have from the very beginning made it our policy to focus on sharing the Comforter in the most loving way, without a hidden agenda to fill church pews. People recognize and respect that stance for its clarity and honesty. We knew that was Christ Jesus’ way. We also knew that people would be led to follow the Comforter in whatever ways made sense to them. Why, then, are none of the 4,400 book recipients in our churches on Sundays and Wednesdays? Some suggest that “younger people aren’t interested in church”, “Science and Health is too hard to read”, etc.

Recently a new and startling thought has come to the surface concerning this outreach and our whole movement: could it be that those obvious weary wanderers/seekers, and even those who already hold the cup of cold water in their hands, here and everywhere, ARE INDEED READY FOR OUR MESSAGE, but perhaps “OUR CHURCH” as currently practiced, is NOT READY FOR THEM?

Are we churchgoers perhaps resistant to the very idea of newcomers who may be less inhibited or less prosperous or less educated or different looking? Have we become comfortable as small, sincere, clubbish groups functioning as branch churches or societies? Do we feel confident our services will inspire newcomers and are not perfunctory excercises? Would newcomers be impressed by an array of loving, healing acts they see or hear about our members performing in the community? And…do some combination of these “repellant” ideas reside in the collective community thought?

Those are definitely provocative questions. And they go much deeper than whether or not there is a gracious greeter at the door of the church, or whether there are cookies after the service, or the nature of the music provided.

As if those questions aren’t quite enough on the plate, in subsequent conversations about this, another universal element was injected: as one church member described it, “our poor lost children”. (That’s not accurate metaphysically, of course, but it represents a heartfelt human expression.) That is, our children who spent their formative years in Christian Science Sunday Schools rarely continue as active students and church participants after age 19. It doesn’t matter what part of the country one considers, or how wonderful the experience was for those young ones, the results are and have been the same for all generations of Sunday School students growing up after the Second World War. And if they, who got all the loving Sunday School teacher attention and picnics and camaraderie and up- close observation of adult Christian Scientists, have chosen not to continue after age 19, is that a flashing traffic signal telling us that what hasn’t been working for our younger generations over the past 60 years must be adjusted before divine Mind will lead them and all those others directly to “church” as Mrs. Eddy defined it?

This offers a great deal prayerfully to ponder.

For starters, isn’t it truly a call to re-examine exactly how we are demonstrating Mrs. Eddy’s beautifully comprehensive definition of “church” in a 21st century context? Does church mean a building where services are held twice a week?….an Internet connection to services or other inspirational activities?….a specific kind of organization and hierarchy? Is it possibly a remarkably flexible concept? These are essential questions.

If we choose to directly face these questions it can become a wonderful opportunity to examine the very nature of our understanding of, and commitment to, this ultimate Science.

Here are some thoughts about ways to address those questions:

1. We need to be honest with ourselves. There’s nothing unscientific about facing the fact that our human church structure is in serious decline. And is that a bad thing? Maybe it’s just an alert to lead us to examine how “church” can best be practiced in very different ways from the traditional brick- and-mortar fashion: maybe a new awareness of how some things have NOT been working will lead to creative new ideas that better fit our contemporary thought community. Mrs. Eddy even suggested that we would eventually outgrow church as constituted in her era.

2. We need to share more directly with each other, individually and collectively. What makes some churches/societies successful? What impedes others? Do our traditional sharing and teaching activities for those beyond Sunday School age rely too much on passive listening? And there are wonderful, practicing students of Christian Science who are not affiliated with a particular church/society; how can their activities best be incorporated into a mutually-inclusive effort to share the Comforter?

3. We need an honest evaluation from a good sampling of those who grew up in our Sunday Schools (and perhaps graduated from The Principia) but are not currently active students of Christian Science.

What were the factors that caused them to move on to other (or no) spiritual pursuits? What would attract them to re-engage? What barriers do they see in that path for them? What are their suggestions?

4. We need to consider how far our human movement has fallen into the trap of having format and organization become sacred. Just as the Pharisees’ religious sentiment focused on ritual, and the Christian movement became the Catholic church focused on ritual, how, in the broadest sense, has our movement become emmeshed in perfunctory ritual that has nothing to do with the impulse to move “from sense to Soul”?

5. And, we need to consider how the growing, vibrant Christian churches around us may have “out- Christianed” us in some respects. Many provide consistent warmth, love, fellowship, compassion, sharing, and giving in ways that are far beyond our norm. Many even work hard on prayer-based healing. We can certainly learn from some aspects of their examples if we are open to learn.

Far from fearing the answers to any of these questions, wouldn’t a clear-eyed introspective look seem, all in all, a wonderful opportunity to examine the essence of what the 21st century Christian Science movment actually is and can be?

Some of the above may seem jarring. But after talking one-on-one with quite a few thousand people during this Spokane outreach, we have come to some inescapable conclusions concerning our particular clientele: (1) our movement is essentially unknown and invisible, especially to those under age 50; (2) many people are open to the Comforter’s message…they just have to hear it in ways that are in tune with contemporary thought; (3) there are very, very few (maybe a dozen out of our thousands of discussions) folks who attack Christian Science or challenge its treatment of children, etc—those old fears are essentially groundless; (4) the questions we have most needed to be prepared to answer are “What is Christian Science?” (in 25 words or less!), “What can I do to escape from an addiction?”, “How can you say there is no devil?—it says so right in the Bible, which is the word of God”, (these questions may vary a bit, but represent the essence of what we CS’s need to know); and (5) we need some better mechanisms to reach and begin the conversation with newcomers, and then some better mechanisms for continuing dialogue/study with them as well as new Sunday School graduates…and each other.

The good news is that we clearly have the tools to address these issues. Let’s do it! Lovingly,
Spokane Outreach group

Check out their site for more: Weekly Reports, also Lessons Learned — (GREAT findings here)

We’re pleased to be developing and hosting the new shared Christian Science calendar located at ChristianScienceCalendar.org. We announced the launch at the Northern California Church Alive Summit earlier this month, and already over 30 churches and organizations have signed up. We’re hoping to reach close to 100% participation, and are focusing on Northern California area churches to start, but plan to roll it out further as we can. Picture being able to open up your smartphone and reliably find upcoming Christian Science events near you. Pretty cool huh? That’s the vision.

Want to be part of it? Sign up here.

Want to share Wednesday Readings or your other citation research on specific topics? If you have a WordPress site you can now install the Pleasant Viewer plugin. It will let you and others easily publish and share citations online. It is Open Source (GPL licensed) and free to use and distribute.

It is the result of the “Hack Your Church” hackathon at the U.C. Berkeley CSO this past weekend. Julian, Cameron, James and Gabriel all worked on the ideas. It uses Cameron’s cskit-rb library to retrieve citations. It’s still a little rough around the edges but works nonetheless. Check it out!

http://wordpress.org/plugins/pleasant-viewer/

{“number”:”1″,”lines”:[{“text”:”THE prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the”,”flyout_text”:null,”paragraph_start”:true},{“text”:”sick is an absolute faith that all things are”,”flyout_text”:null,”paragraph_start”:false},{“text”:”possible to God,- a spiritual understanding of Him,”,”flyout_text”:null,”paragraph_start”:false},{“text”:”an unselfed love. Regardless of what another may say”,”flyout_text”:null,”paragraph_start”:false},{“text”:”or think on this subject, I speak from experience.”,”flyout_text”:null,”paragraph_start”:false},

We’re really excited about Cameron’s work on writing an open source set of tools that will allow for studying, sharing and building new interfaces to the world of Christian Science text.

Check it out on his cskit-rb Github page. If you’re adventurous and nerdy, you might even see what you can contribute to the project. He’ll be presenting his work so far at the upcoming CS Hackathon at the UC Berkeley CSO, which we’re also going to be participating in. See you there?

First there was texting on large stones,
And now there is texting on small phones.
The Word of God is being shared,
On Twitter, Facebook, and everywhere.
God’s Divine Science is out there
On the world wide web,
So that the multitude can be fed,
The fishes and the loaves of bread.
God is being shared.

Here are the slides for the talks Gabriel gave at the 2013 Northern California Church Alive Summit in Sacramento. Each session was attended by around 40 people. The third time he gave it was the best. The notes below were the basis for the talk, but weren’t followed exactly. We didn’t capture video for the talks.

Then, Now, Next: Exploring Outreach in the Digital Era
2013 Northern California Church Alive Summit
By Gabriel Serafini (gserafini@gmail.com) http://gabrielserafini.com/ @gserafini

Welcome, and thank you for coming to this session. Today we’ll be exploring what it means to do meaningful outreach in the digital era. We’ll be looking at what has worked well in the past, what is working today, and where we can go from here. We’ll be digging into the question of where are the missing people in our churches, and share some original research that may shed some light on the topic.

But first, allow me to begin by telling you a story. It is a story of how the loving sharing of Christian Science with a prison inmate leads to me being in this room today. My dad grew up the adopted son of alcoholics, and both parents died by the time he was 12. He did not have a good sense of right and wrong. He ended up on the streets as a young man, and eventually got a felony conviction and was locked up in prison. In solitary confinement he was allowed to bring a single book, Science and Health, to read. What he read changed his life. It saved his life. He became a different man, and ended up being released early, served as a prison chaplin, married my mother, and ended up having four children and a loving family. Without Christian Science, I wouldn’t be here today.

So before we start looking at reaching out, and the activities we do in the name of outreach, let’s take a look at our motives. Please take a quick look at the handout you received. Can we all agree that the primary reason we want to reach out is that we see it as an expression of our love for one another? That we want to do outreach because we want to obey the command that Jesus gave us?

When we look at who our neighbor is, are we looking far enough? Beyond our inner circles of partners, friends, family, church, co-workers, friendly people down the street? Are we including poor people, rich people, people who look different from us, prisoners, people in other countries? Who do we see as our neighbor?

Let’s agree that love is our motivation, and that love does not have limitations. We want to be free of any impositions that would keep us from loving effectively. Sharing, and communication, is one concrete action we can take to love our fellow man in this day and age.

So how have we done this effectively in the past? What can we learn from it, and how can we, as Christian Scientists, be effective communicators today?

Let’s start with the earliest story telling. We told stories around the campfire. We’d share the best places for hunting, gathering food, our dreams, hopes, what our place in the world was. Don’t we still love to do this around a campfire today?

As civilization developed, we invented writing, and figured out how to make marks in clay tablets.

From there we invented papyrus, which was a lot lighter and more convenient than clay tablets.

Writing continued to develop and eventually we gathered our most precious collections of stories into long rolls of paper. These stories documented our family histories, legends, and also the inspired words that we came to call the Bible.

A quick side-note about the Bible, that I didn’t know until I read a book called Misquoting Jesus: Until the Gutenberg Bible, printed in the 1450’s, every single copy of the Bible was different from one another. This was because each one was painstakingly hand-copied, one line at a time, and invariably, changes were introduced, usually unintentionally, but sometimes intentionally. This is one reason that there are so many different translations of the Bible — it is a whole scholarly field to try to figure out what the most authentic, most original version of the stories are. This collection of stories has had an immense impact on the history of the planet, so I think it is interesting that we’re still figuring out what the most true version is.

Printing presses eventually replaced individually hand-copied books and became very effective means of sharing information. In the late 1800’s, when Mary Baker Eddy first discovered Christian Science, she started sharing it using pamphlets, books, newspapers, and magazines.

As you might know, reading rooms were the standard way that publishers of books would share their goods with the world, much like the car showrooms of today. It was a way to view an expensive purchase before you bought it. Amazon didn’t exist back then, Barnes & Noble was still just a printing business (they wouldn’t open up their first book store until 1917, seven years after Mrs. Eddy passed on), and you had to have your own distribution channel if you wanted to get any exposure.

Radio hadn’t been invented yet, so if you wanted to hear about something, you had to physically attend a talk, or lecture, on the topic.

The primary ways that we have traditionally thought about doing outreach in Christian Science are directly tied to the best means of sharing available in Mary Baker Eddy’s day: in-person lectures and publisher-house reading rooms for previewing books before you make an expensive purchase.

Since 1910, there have been a few innovations in our abilities to tell stories and share with one another.

We’ve invented radio, and used it to communicate with millions of people all at once.

The telephone revolutionized one-to-one remote communication.

Movies transformed our traditional story telling into a new art form, that remains one of the most powerful ways of connecting even today.

Television brought storytelling to the masses. We landed men on the moon, and watched it as a nation together. How many of you got to see that? How did that make you feel to be part of that event, to get to see it? Pretty amazing right?

We started to get even fancier when we invented cellular telephones. Suddenly we had freedom of movement with our communications. And the bills to prove it!

Computers and the Internet started to really change things, didn’t they? We are in a new age now, the age of computers. The age of always-on, always-connected devices that allow us to talk, tell stories, and communicate in ways we’ve never before been able to do.

We have smart phones now, that we carry in our pockets, that are really tiny computers that can be transformed by the touch of an app icon into 1000 different devices. We are in the age of magical devices.

With all the huge advances in communication, story telling, and technology, where are we as a group of people? Are we still fixated on the state of the art from 1910 when we think about doing outreach?

Have you asked yourself, where are the young people in church? Where are the new people? Where are the people that used to be part of our church family?

I’ve asked myself these questions too, and I decided to see if I could find some answers. I wanted to find those missing people, and I think I know where some of them are.

To find them, I did a survey of over 30 church websites, and asked for estimates of the number of unique people who interacted with the normal activities of the church. This includes members and visitors to Sunday services, Wednesday meetings, the Reading Room, lectures, and Sunday School students and teachers, in the first quarter of 2013.

I’d like to ask each of you to picture what that number might look like for your church — the total number of people you touched from January 1 through May 31. Do you have that number in your head?

Would anyone like to share their estimate? Don’t worry, there are no wrong answers here, this is just a rough guess.

I’m going to share some interesting results we got from our survey. Five churches and one nursing home responded in time for this presentation.

What we found may surprise you. On average there were between approximately 3 to 10 times as many online visitors as there were in person physical visitors. Here are the numbers.

First Church, Yuba City
Estimated in-person visitors: 10-15
Unique online visitors: 60

First Church, Hayward
Estimated in-person visitors: 40-50
Unique online visitors: 143

First Church, Orinda:
Estimated in-person visitors: 50-100
Unique online visitors: 463

First Church, Oakland
Estimated in-person visitors: 100-150
Unique online visitors: 98

Oakland was the only church to have estimated more in person visits than online visits. There are two possible explanations for this: they had a lecture in February, and their website is still pretty new.

First Church Pasadena
Estimated in-person visitors: 200-250
Unique online visitors: 766

Fern Lodge
Estimated in-person visitors: 90-100
Unique online visitors: 955

What can we take away from these numbers? It suggests to me that our congregations are actually already significantly larger than we can see each Sunday and Wednesday, but we just don’t know it. This is translating the thing of our church building walls into the thought of a limitless world-wide ministry.

Our congregations extend beyond our walls, when we, ourselves, are willing to go there. When we share online, we find people who are hungry for what we have to offer.

I’m going to share one more statistic with you, and it was almost exactly the same for each site: For each single story (post or page) on the websites I shared, there were an average of 6 unique visitors. Fern Lodge, with the most visitors, had the most pages. This is a very important point, and it directly relates to what we might do next as a group. 1 post = 6 people came and interacted. What kind of activities do we have in our toolbox that yield that return on our investment? I don’t know of any.

By the way, those numbers were only for their websites, they don’t include Facebook or Twitter visitors, which would only increase the online visitor counts. So consider these numbers to be conservative.

Where are the people? They are on the Internet. They are literally searching for answers. Two of the churches reported getting new members as a direct result of having up to date websites.

We can’t ignore the world we live in today any longer. So what’s working today? Sharing our stories online.

And that’s just what we’re going to do.

I’m going to tell you a secret. If you are willing to do a little work, each member of your church can reach out directly to 18 people per quarter by following this simple process:

Step 1: Picture in your mind someone you care about, who doesn’t already know about Christian Science.

Step 2: Write that person 3 emails. Each should include one story from your life that you can share that speaks to the question of why it is that you love Christian Science, what it has shown you, the experiences you’ve had as a result of it. Keep it short, sweet, and jargon-free. Remember, they don’t know all the lingo, so make it understandable for them.

Step 3: And this is the most important step: Add these emails to your church’s website under the Healings category. (You can still send those emails too by the way).

If the numbers hold true, for every single story you share on your church website, you will gain 6 new online visitors. How about that for a recipe for growth? This is the direct translation of putting our gratitude to work for us as a tool of love, and one that not only blesses us, but blesses our wider community.

You may be thinking, well that’s nice for Mr. Fancy Computer Pants, but I don’t know how to make an online post.

Let me ask you: How many of you have an email address? How many of you feel like you can do email reasonably well?

If you can do email, you can do WordPress. We use it for all of our websites, and using just your web browser, you too can add your stories of healing to the Internet, for others to find. WordPress. Write it down. Google “WordPress tutorial”. Watch some YouTube videos. You can do this, I promise you. Remember: 1 story = 6 online visitors. And this works for you 24/7. It is incredibly easy.

Next, let’s talk about the mysterious world of social media. You’ve probably heard that term a bit lately. Facebook, Twitter, Google+. How many of you have a Facebook account? A Twitter account? If you are not already connected to this world, sign up. Do it. It is very, very simple. This is where all the kids are spending all their time. Don’t be intimidated by the fact that it’s a new thing, revel in the opportunity to learn. Make some new friends, share your stories. How else are they going to know?

If Mary Baker Eddy were alive today, I guarantee she would be tweeting, blogging, writing, friending, sharing, healing and communicating with people all over the world. We cannot call her our Leader and not follow in the footsteps she would be taking in today’s world.

This all comes down to one thing: expressing our love for one another. If we understand that as our true priority, it is a small thing to learn new methods of communicating, it is a small thing to try new experiments. Let’s get out there, and be the loving, compassionate communicators that we hope to find in the world. By doing so we may rediscover our missing church family. We might reconnect with the broken hearted. I truly hope that we can reach out successfully to people like my dad, the people who really need to hear the message of hope.

Let’s reexamine what it means to be Christian Scientists and be willing to discard any limitations that are holding us back. Let’s boldly experiment, let’s connect fearlessly, let’s burn the bushel baskets that might hide the flames of our love. Let’s determine to keep up with our fast moving kids, grandkids, and neighbors down the street. Let’s find our path for the next 100 years and be the kind of people we want to see in the world.

Thank you.

References:
On Christian Science Reading Rooms:
http://www.marybakereddylibrary.org/collections/research/ask-a-researcher/reading-rooms

Invention of Radio (Wikipedia):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_of_radio

Invention of Movies (Wikipedia):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movies

Barnes & Noble Founding Date (Wikipedia):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnes_%26_Noble

On the varying versions of Biblical manuscripts:
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
by Bart D. Ehrman, 2007

Web site statistics:
Google Analytics, phone interviews for estimates

We’re happy to announce our public support for the 2013 Christian Science at Burning Man project. There is an ongoing discussion about the camp, art car, sharing contributions and artwork to bring. We’re excited about it and see this as a truly cutting-edge place to explore sharing spirituality with a broad and diverse group of people. As part of our involvement we’re sponsoring the web page for the group: spiritualplaya.org. Check it out!

Guest post by Alex Cook

In order to live our way successfully from the now into the next we must conceive of ourselves as being on a journey. We must see ourselves as being on a robust and demanding road that leads from what we have known, into what we don’t yet know.

Certainly, if any of us were setting out on a trip like this we would want to bring with us all the best tools. We would bring appropriate clothing, supplies, food, money – all the things we could think of. And in this metaphor that means bringing with us all the best ideas we have. Best practices, best spiritual insights, best models of behavior, best qualities.

The wonderful thing about being on a journey with God is that in addition to all the tools we bring with us, God is always giving us brand new tools that fit perfectly with the needs we encounter along the way. The Bible quotes God as saying “Behold, I make all things new”. We must be willing to accept that new ideas will come to us, and they will be God’s provision for our journey.

As a kid growing up in a CS Sunday School I didn’t relate to the music in church. It wasn’t speaking a language I understood. I couldn’t get anything from it. (Thankfully, as an adult I have come to see and feel its goodness and utility much, much more!) So, several years ago it was a deep delight to me, to find that my creative world was revealing to me that I could create music that would speak about the deepest and best spiritual ideas I knew of, AND include the best, most expressive musical and poetic ideas I could arrive at. It was a revelation. Just as language evolves naturally over time so must our expressions of church and spirituality.

I have come to see that this is not a choice. It is God who makes all things new. It is not we who get to choose whether or not to make one or two things new. It is God who makes them ALL new.

When I began making this music I thought, like everyone else who heard it, that it would be the youth in the CS movement who would most get into it. But, in the following years of performances it was fascinating to see that what was really happening was very different. In fact, the most powerful responses that I have come across have been from an older group of Christian Scientists who were LONGING (and some didn’t even know it!) for the beloved ideas of Christian Science to be expressed in a new way. It has been moving to me to see and feel the way this music has found some people – like water in a parched land. The journey began with one thought, but revealed a different success along the way.

One of the realities of being an artist is that you have an idea you know is good, and then you have to show others why it’s good. Sometimes people think it’s actually bad, only because it is new! Anyone bringing a heartfelt new idea sometimes finds themselves in that case. But it’s good because it causes us all to be patient and demonstrate new love for our ideas, willingness to stand for what we truly believe in, and learn unselfishness.

How do we know which new ideas will be useful and which won’t? We can only do our best. Just as in music there are songs we remember from decades past, and countless others we don’t. Eddy says that sincerity is more successful than genius or talent. We must be sincere, and sacrifice ego and opinion for the sake of recognizing the new, holy ideas that God is providing.

Also published on Alex’s blog here: http://thevoiceandthesong.blogspot.com/2013/01/how-can-we-be-made-new.html

I’ve been a church builder for a long time. In fact, I think we are all church builders – if we apply Eddy’s definition.  It doesn’t matter what religion, faith or creed we align with.  We all subscribe to loving good and loving love itself – these are native attributes of each human being.  So you could reason that all of humanity are church builders in that we each cultivate and express goodness and love in our lives.

The Dixon church is where my grandmother belonged to for 50 plus years and raised her children and many grandchildren in its Sunday School. However last year it was torn down because of toxicity in the underground due to contamination that happened a hundred years ago.  Although it was a very busy church in years past with many members, today there are less than a handful of people that have taken on the decision to rebuild.  They were immediately receptive to my offer to join them remotely and agreed to incorporate teleconferencing and broadcasting into the church services and operational meetings so that I can fully participate.  It’s a rebirth really.  Where other diminished churches around the country are faced with making decisions on whether to disband, sell their building, join with another church, etc. – this little group has decided to resurrect.

I find it ironic to be building a physical church edifice while at the same time broadening the church tent to include physically absent members and participants. But I also reflect on Eddy’s definition of church and feel that less reliance on physicality is moving in a spiritually progressive direction.  I feel drawn to support their effort, to help do some of the heavy lifting and to continue growing the gift that my grandmother was part of. The gift is Christian Science and its healing certainty.