Who Holds the Building

I served at Weaver First United Methodist Church for seven years. Candy Sefcik was the trustee chair. She sat near the front, came early, stayed late, and knew things about the building that nobody else knew. Which door stuck in the summer. Which outlet needed a different breaker. Where the folding tables were actually stored versus where they were supposed to be stored.

She called me once to report that someone had painted on the altar table. She had already cleaned it up. She said we should give thanks for the diversity it represented.

She prayed scripture with me at 6:15 in the morning. Not every week. Every day.

Then there was Evelyn Thompson. Evelyn organized the meals. After every Sunday service, after every funeral, whenever somebody in the congregation lost a job or a parent or a pregnancy, Evelyn made sure there was food. The July community meal was weeks away and she was already working on the menu. Nobody had asked her to start yet. She just had.

She kept the list in her head. She did not need a spreadsheet.

What they were doing was not decoration. The congregation was behind them, deciding together that a marriage mattered to everyone in the room, that a death in the community was everyone's loss, that they had a stake in each other's lives.

That is what makes the casserole different from DoorDash. Not the food. The decision behind it.

When I think about what Ecclesia is trying to be — a fresh expression, a gathered people, pilgrims moving together — I keep coming back to Candy and Evelyn. Not as an ideal. Not as a program to replicate. As a question.

Who among us already knows where the folding tables are? Who has already started on the July meal?

The institutional church has underestimated this work for a long time. Called it women's ministry. Called it the hospitality committee. Built a theological framework around the sermon and a logistical framework around the people who made sure the sermon had a room to happen in.

The people who hold the building often hold more than the building. They hold the memory of who was here. They hold the grief of who is gone. They hold the fabric that makes it possible for a stranger to walk in and feel, however briefly, that they belong.

Candy retired from her role while I was still at Weaver. I tried to find someone to replace what she did. I could not. Not because nobody else was capable. Because what she did was not a function. It was a presence.

This is the question I carry into everything we build here: who is holding the building?

Matt Headley

Founding pastor of Ecclesia Community. Ordained United Methodist. Flower farmer. Builder. I walk with a limp. That is why I can walk with you.

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