For many years Cove United Methodist Church occupied the northwest corner of Clifton Boulevard and Cove Avenue in Lakewood, Ohio. The name of the church was not an arresting identifier. The church just named itself after the street on which it was located.
What was arresting about Cove United Methodist Church was the design of the building. The congregation gathered in a contemporary structure whose brick walls were punctuated on the north and south sides with tall windows rising from street level to roof. The eastern wall facing Cove Avenue was a solid, plain, sweeping matching brick but shaped like the bow of a ship.
The building catches one’s attention for several reasons. The first is because of the roof’s steeply pitched angle stretching from above the tops of the windows and culminating in the ridge line over 50 feet in the air. Then, on top of the ridge line over the eastern bow shaped wall is a high steeple structure which used to support at its very top a commanding cross.
Another reason the Cove United Methodist Church building caught one’s attention became evident when a person went inside. The sanctuary was bright with natural light. It was a wide open-space made possible because of the wooden truss structures supporting the steeply pitched, 50-foot roof. The wooden trusses – stretching from floor to peak – were dark in color. Those trusses served not only as strong supports but also set off the high ceiling which was constructed of light-colored planking reminiscent of the deck of a wooden ship.
Hanging over the sanctuary worship space underneath the steeple on the exterior and suspended over the altar was a large cross made in the likeness of a huge ship’s anchor. It was a most engaging worship space in a most engaging church building. It all made such sense for a church building just several blocks south of Lake Erie.
The congregation that gave life to Cove United Methodist Church was once a vibrant community of faith. But over the last 50 years that congregation – like so very many congregations – did not weather the storm of secularization and all the other natural forces that resulted in Cove United Methodist Church becoming a ‘ghost ship’ on the corner of Cove Avenue and Clifton Boulevard.
Over four years ago this August, the district trustees of the then NorthCoast District of The United Methodist Church sold the building that once housed the congregation of Cove United Methodist Church. The exterior cross atop the steeple and the suspended anchor-shaped cross hanging over the altar and the altar itself were removed by the new owner.
The new owner of the building is the City of Lakewood. And now, outside of what was once Cove United Methodist Church is a large sign identifying the building as housing the City of Lakewood’s DEPARTMENT OF STORMWATER MANAGEMENT AND COMMUNITY CENTER.
A sign of our times.
I have always thought that a church should be, among other things, a place for storm water management in people’s lives and a wide-open community center. One of the great hymns of the church even included this line by Charles Albert Tindley, “When the storms of life are raging, stand by me.”
But the powers of secularization in our western world have shown us that too many churches have become dying social clubs while storm water management and creating community centers has become a municipal function.
Today we have an agonizing plethora of raging storms along with swirling flood waters of violence, war, death, and all manner of conflict. We have an urgent need for community centers as religious, racial, political, and cultural conflicts divide us. And tragically in the face of all this need there are an abundance of churches that have become ‘ghost ships.’
But the message of Christmas is as it has always been.
No matter how bad things get or seem to be getting there is cause for hope. New life is born – not in a church, or synagogue, or mosque, or political movement, or among religious zealots of any stripe seeking to wage a war on culture – new life is born in an unexpected place.
It is true today. It is true in this season when the news is so bad that good news seems so very out of place.
But here is the truth. Hope is newly alive in some manger. God is still God. God’s angels still sing because with God there is always a reason to be singing.
Merry Christmas! Amen!