I often walk past my local church when there is no scheduled service and hear someone in there, playing the keyboard or drums, a moment of private practice and worship. It reminds me immediately of my childhood.

As a pastor’s kid, my siblings and I spent countless hours at church when no one else was around. Cleaning up after a potluck, practicing music before a special service, decorating for Christmas, printing and folding bulletins, setting up a craft for children’s church, emptying tiny cups of grape juice after communion, strolling around the sanctuary in stocking feet waiting for the adults to finish talking; For a thousand different reasons, I’ve been alone in a church building many times throughout my life.

When there are people at church, the building itself seems to take on life. When no one is there, I have often thought of church as an eerie, spooky place. Still, I always felt a reverence in church, even if it was a reverence that I wanted to sprint up the basement stairs away from.

I’ve been thinking about empty churches. Many congregations around the world have been through and are going through a season of empty buildings.

With services cancelled or moved online, I still doubt the buildings have stayed empty. Pastors’ kids all over the world are wandering the sanctuaries in their socks. Custodians are vacuuming. Administrators are printing newsletters. Pastors are typing and preparing sermons and hosting meetings. Worship teams are standing spaced out on platforms to record a set of songs to be streamed or downloaded. And in many of those buildings, individuals are praying.

I stepped into our church in Cite Soleil one afternoon to let the pastors know that a group had arrived and was asking for them. They were in their office, but out in the sanctuary, on a day without services, three women gathered toward the front, hands lifted, voices lifted. It was a beautiful, holy, intimate moment that I glanced and then tiptoed back out of.

Since that moment, I keep thinking about what a church is with no one in it. Do I think the buildings themselves are sacred? No and yes. There is nothing sacred about the structure or the chairs or the carpet or the concrete. But there is something sacred about a space committed, dedicated to God. There is something holy about a building where people gather to pray and to worship. So even when no one is there, it has been invested in. It has been prayed in. People have met with God there.

I revisit a chapter that has meant a lot to me over the past year, Psalms 77. I read it and remember that God is the one who performs miracles, and I ask Him to perform miracles, and I try and let go of my inability to fix things and hang desperately onto His plan and authority.

Some of my life’s deepest memories of encounters with God have not been during a church service. They have been private moments of recognizing God’s presence in prayer. Sometimes in an empty church. Sometimes in a bedroom or a dorm prayer room or on a swing set or walking along a trail. Anywhere space is dedicated to communion with God is sacred. But there is something special about the spaces dedicated to both that individual holy communion and the relational exercises of Christian community.

An empty church building is nothing to despair. It is space for a miracle-working God to work. His presence makes all your spaces holy spaces. In the same breath, find ways to keep community because we need it. That looks different right now. It’s harder than it’s been before to stay connected, but those efforts are absolutely worth it.

 “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” Hebrews 10:23-25

“Then I thought, ‘To this I will appeal:
    the years when the Most High stretched out his right hand.
 I will remember the deeds of the Lord;
    yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.
 I will consider all your works
    and meditate on all your mighty deeds.’

 Your ways, God, are holy.
    What god is as great as our God?
You are the God who performs miracles;
    you display your power among the peoples.
 With your mighty arm you redeemed your people,
    the descendants of Jacob and Joseph” Psalms 77:10-15