Yesterday evening, I took a self-guided tour of New Chapel Church. I obtained a key from the
departing pastor the day before and was eager to wander through the building with no particular agenda, except to experience this historic building absent the bustle and noise that will fill it this coming Sunday. I intentionally turned off my thinking mind and focused on the sensual – the colors, hues, light and shadows, smells, sounds and tastes of this building that has stood along New Chapel Road since 1883.
Before entering the building, I walked the grounds. They are well-kept grounds that communicate a people’s love and respect for this sacred site. The Church building that sits at its center is red brick with a tall white steeple. Large, arched stain-glass windows run the length of the sanctuary on both sides. In 1955, an annex was built onto to the rear of the original structure. The annex looks like it belongs, which is not always the case with some building additions.There are large, branching trees standing among the grounds, providing welcome shade and a sense of permanence. The parking lot is freshly sealed with a basketball goal on one side. A Boy Scout trailer sits on the rear of the parking lot. A large picnic shelter sits behind the church building alongside a playground. These are good indicators of a Church who has an interest in being a part of the neighborhood, not just an insular social club. To the right of the church when facing it from the road is a well-maintained cemetery lawn, green and lush with the names of families with whom I will become familiar in the weeks and months ahead.
After surveying the grounds, I entered the double doors of the Church building from the 
cemetery side, which open into a common area. It is welcoming, open, airy, with comfortable chairs and a few tables that give it a sense of walking into a spacious living room or the lobby of a small New England inn. In this room I met the Church leadership team last week for my “take in” meeting with the Associate District Superintendent. To the right of the common area is a music room that doubles as a copier/administrative room. A piano topped with hymnals and sheet music sits in the center of the room. A few pews, some cabinets and a small copier fill out the rest of the room.
On one side of the music room is a large nursery. On the other side of the music room is what was perhaps a small office that became a room to store and collect records, files and Church history. In this room I found old framed pictures of past Church events, such as the 175-year anniversary celebration in 1976. I found photographs from the 1960s and earlier with names like King and Schlosser to name a few. Historical pride spills out into the common area where pictures, plaques and trophy cases archive a history of community service and Church fellowship. Notably is a list of pastors from the Church’s founding in 1801 through, I think, the early 2000s. Among the pastors who served here is the famed nineteenth-century itinerant backwoods Methodist preacher Peter Cartwright from Kentucky. Next to the history room is a small room with a circle of chairs and a coffee pot, no doubt where the Sunday morning Coffee & Conversations are held at 10:30 a.m. each Sunday, according to the Church website.
Next, I wandered toward the sanctuary, opening a few closets along the way, stuffed with the
usual clutter that accumulates in church buildings over decades (I can hear someone saying, “Don’t throw that out. We might need that someday.”). I detoured to the basement to see a clean, open kitchen and fellowship area and then returned upstairs. Off of the common area and before entering the sanctuary is a small library with dark-stained wooden book shelves containing Annual Conference journals, retired hymnals and popular Christian paperbacks. It smells and feels old, in a good way that would warm the heart of any antiquarian or lover of books.
To the right of the library are two framed glass double doors with the same dark-stained wood of the library. These open into the sanctuary. When you step into the sanctuary you step into living history and living faith. Arched, stained-glass windows adorn three walls of white stucco. The pitched ceiling is covered with narrow, stained, slatted planks. Two groups of pews fill the sanctuary’s nave, which is covered in a light maroon carpet, that has seen a good deal of foot traffic. The pews are separated by a wide center aisle and two more narrow aisles between the pews and the outer walls. At the front of the nave to the left is a baby grand piano that looks well-maintained. Behind it is an organ that is no longer in use. I’ve been told it does not sound “too good” in its current condition.
A solid communion rail fronts the chancel. I knelt at the altar to offer a short prayer below the large dark cross on the wall behind the chancel. The centerpiece of the chancel is an ornately-carved pulpit. Behind the pulpit sit the communion table and two candelabras on either side of the table. Flanking the candelabras are the obligatory Christian and American flags. On the right of the chancel are three rows of pews for the choir.
After a short prayer at the altar, I sat on the front pew in the nave to sit silently and take in the still moment of this space. As I settled into a meditative prayer, I could feel and hear the inhalation and exhalation of my breath. I noticed a faint, pleasant odor of history and wondered if the odiferous cells that I was taking in had been buried in the wood or stucco since construction in 1883 or one of the many baptisms or funerals over the last several decades and were just now released for me to experience. I don’t even know if that is scientifically possible, but it was a nice thought.
My self-guided tour of the church lasted about half an hour. As I rose from my pew meditation,
left the sanctuary and locked the building behind me, I felt a heavy burden come over me. I considered the storied history of this place and my role in seeing this church’s missional work continue and grow in this community. New Chapel is the oldest, continuously operating congregation in Indiana, and is presently reimagining its missional role in the contemporary world where so many people are atomized, alienated, nihilistic and lacking faith in a bigger Reality than the material and individualistic world presents to them each day.
The frantic speed and fragmentation of modern life have robbed people of slow time and space to find their place in the Reality of God. Religion (which, etymologically means to “bind again”) once served to hold together man as a holistic organism of mind, body and soul and as the cohesive glue of neighborhood and village. Following a few centuries of what poet William Blake called the “single vision” of scientifically-guided urban industrialization, we now find ourselves a people who are tragically unbound and untethered. This great untethering has fragmented once healthy and whole psyches, torn apart families, and deconstructed entire communities. My hope and prayer is that as new pastor, I and the people of New Chapel, led by the Spirit of Christ, who holds all things together (Col. 1:17), can secure and strengthen the tether that is the Church and reconnect lives to God. This is our calling and work. We can build off of the great history of New Chapel, its more than adequate facilities, and its dedicated members and strong leadership to achieve great things for the Lord.
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