How To Be Resurrection People

8 Mitchell Street long ago

8 Mitchell Street a year ago

8 Mitchell Street now

It’s been a year since we walked away from our church building on Mitchell street. Some of us went kicking and screaming. Oh not literally, but certainly it was really, really hard. None of us made the move easily. It is hard to face death. And any way you look at it, we were facing a death.

Our congregation had met for generations in that building. It was a big part of the identity for children who had grown up there. They gathered on Sundays got married there, brought their children to be blessed and grew old with their families around them. Many of us could look back at memories like this. As with any life nearing its end, we focused on those happy memories and we hung on to life as we’d known it forever.

But it was time to let it go. It was not what it had been. And we spent far too long clinging to what had been. It was time to imagine ourselves into a new future. It was time for a new life with new energy and new vision. It was time to become Resurrection people.


We’d been listening to sermons about the Easter event, the resurrection of Jesus for all those generations. It was time to take the message to heart. To test our belief. To see what it really means to lay down that old life, take up our cross and pass through the experience of death and move on.

This week, they knocked down our old building. While there was some sadness, it’s not the sadness that marks our identity this Easter week. Because we have been resurrected to new life. We’re almost a year into our new being. We’ve had fun imagining ideas like buying a bus and painting a sign “Nomads for Jesus” on the side as we drive around to pick up members wherever they live, chatting and singing along our route to drop them off again.

We never did that though it’s still a possibility. Anything is possible to this group watching for ways to be real in and for this neigbourhood. Our eyes are fixed firmly on the future and what we can do to make it the best it can be for our neighbours. After all, and finally, we are Resurrection people!

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