It is a sad thing to close the doors of a church. Hard as it is for the congregation’s members, however, the event has a far deeper, though often unseen and uncalculated, impact on the health of the community in which that congregation was practicing its increasingly irrelevant faith. As churches age and weaken, their focus necessarily turns toward survival and away from the world outside their doors.
This is simply about the church (remember, the people are the church) breaking out of its safe routines and dogma, and deeply and lovingly engaging the community it is in.