(Posted by the WestsideConnect.com). GUSTINE, CALIF. — A local church will be closing its doors in coming weeks after serving the community for more than a century.
Community Presbyterian Church of Gustine will hold its final service May 7, Pastor Mark Hollingsworth confirmed.
The church was organized in 1910.
Hollingsworth, who has served the church for nearly 25 years, told Mattos Newspapers that a dwindling congregation proved to be its downfall.
“Six of our members died last year, and some people have moved away. There are just not enough people and not enough money to keep it going,” he commented. “It was a difficult decision. It is very sad.”
The Presbyterian church has long been a part of the fabric of the community, with the involvement and generosity of congregation members extending well beyond the church.
As pastor, Hollingsworth said, he viewed his mission as helping foster a church home where everybody was welcome to become part of a caring, faith-based community.
“I wanted this to be a place of grace, with people who were graceful and gracious in their lives,” he reflected. “Our folks have been so good…..grace, generosity and gratitude are things that I think are here.”
But the congregation size had reached a point where continuing was no longer feasible.
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The woes of the PCUSA and its churches are legion. Many self inflected, some matters of demography and population trends outside of its power to control. Much like the local beaten down shopping mall or distressed retail, it is simply over franchised and oversupplied in real estate and footprint. Close to a third, 30% of all active PCUSA churches will not exist in 7 years. Some will go into a form of hospice care, others simply quit.
But the core of the PCUSA church problem is there is simply not enough Presbyterians in the PCUSA. Not in any Reformed or classical sense of the faith. There are many, many neo-Quakers. Folks who share Quaker ideology and politics, but none of their spirituality. Most contemporary PCUSA church goers fall into the broader definition of Unitarian, Pantheistic, Native or Pre-Christian nature based belief and value systems. Some would affirm some concepts of Eastern theologies of reincarnation, migration of souls, and divinity in nature paradigms. Add a strong dose of secular scientific concepts, contempt for evangelicals, militant environmentalism, identity race politics, and you get the rather weak soup that is the current PCUSA. and most of its churches. At best that mix has very limited appeal, nor does current PCUSA theology or identity offer any strong reason or rational to go to church in the 1st place.
But simply, there is nothing special, unique or different about the PCUSA that cannot be had or produced in the secular culture at large, done far better and cheaper than what the PCUSA offers, without the baggage of message incoherence and managerial incompetence in many levels of the organization. Hence churches close, and many, many will going forward.