Amy Lu's View

Our congregation officially said Goodbye to our church building today. We’ve sold our building at 6565 Oakley Drive, Fridley.

We’ve sold our building so we can look for a different building that’s bigger, more accessible, more flexible, and that better meets our needs. It’s a positive and exciting step. 

Of course, it’s also a bittersweet transition. Just because our building wasn’t meeting our needs, it doesn’t mean we didn’t love it. We loved it as a community and as individuals. 

Chad and I have been attending MSUS since 2004 so we have so many memories of services, events, and experiences at the church located on Oakley Drive, that I can’t even hope to make sense of them in a blog post, much less make them interesting (obviously that doesn’t mean I won’t try).

My memories of the Oakley Drive building are also inextricably linked to my memories of theater. In fact, this is the 15th anniversary of the beginning of my theater journey (outside of high school) and it began at MSUS with a production of “Our Town.” (Yes, I played Emily at age 37). 

Since then, we’ve done so much theater at our church building on Oakley Drive–both with church productions, and when we were able to rent (on very generous terms) the building for productions with Applause and Duck Soup. (My theater friends who’ve been involved with shows at MSUS are bound to have some feels about us leaving our building, too). 

I don’t think I ever would have gotten into community theater without MSUS, and I probably wouldn’t have had nearly as many or as meaningful theater experiences without it. We did a performance of “Talley’s Folly” in 2013 at MSUS the day my dad died–something that I totally wanted to do and that felt right and important for me to do. 

We also had important personal events at MSUS, and were able to use it for parties and celebrations. We had our 10th Anniversary Vow Renewal, our 40th birthday party, and our 20th Anniversary party at the Oakley building. I think some of our family and friends who shared these events with us will also miss our church space. 

And where to start with all the memories of teaching Religious Education? Yes, there were more than a few moments of “unease” (okay, terror) trying to keep elementary-aged children actively engaged and mostly under control. My fondest memories are of spending time with the young adults of the church, especially of making collages with our “Turtle” class (a class about home) and any time I got to embrace my maternal side and make frozen pizza for the teens. 

I will always laugh when I think about chaperoning an overnight for teens and falling asleep while they were watching “Team America.” Yes, that probably IS an inappropriate movie for the situation. When I woke up minutes/hours later, the credits were playing and the music to the highly inappropriate movie theme song “America, F%$k Yeah!” was on a loop, but I was too tired to get up and try to figure out how to stop the DVD. (Don’t worry, all the teens exposed to the movie are, as far as I know, now all well-adjusted and highly functioning adults so we did not scar them for life). 

I laugh when I think about Chad and I trying to explain Christianity to the teens and kids in our various RE classes, based on our fuzzy memories of childhood and differing experiences of Catholicism and conservative Lutheranism. (Turns out my Bachelor’s Degree in Comparative Religion wasn’t as helpful as one might think). What DOES Easter have to do with Peeps, anyway? 

I’m also thankful for the youth in a recent (perhaps the last?) class we taught that were patient and bemused as a class on spirituality and social justice in popular music often devolved into “Chad and Amy try to remember the 80’s.” (I’m still hoping for this podcast). 

I loved getting to read stories to the children (and adults) of the congregation during services. It was always a treat to get to dust off my youth services librarian skills for a mini-storytime. (Favorite MSUS storytime book: “LIzard’s Song” by George Shannon). 

We’ve experienced so many emotions at Oakley Drive–joy, boredom (#AnnualMeeting), grief, and everything around and in-between. I discovered at our church how profound and moving a Memorial Service can be–not just a rote exercise, but a true celebration of an individual life in all its complexity, a time to mourn and say goodbye and celebrate the accomplishments and challenges of a unique life.

I’m so thankful for all the people, young and old and in-between, people connected to MSUS and those that weren’t, that we got to interact with because we had that building on Oakley Drive to call our own. Some we just knew for a while, some have died, and some (like Deb who I hope doesn’t mind a shout out) are still our bestest friends. 

The building at Oakley is also where I’ve got to see Chad develop and shine as a lay minister (no, that’s not an official designation but I’m using it anyway). Chad has moved and inspired and challenged me (and I’m pretty sure many others) with his thoughtful and insightful sermons/talks, delivered with humor and passion. 

And yes, I have often been just about to burst with pride sitting in the second row watching him, although I’m not sure pride makes much sense since I haven’t really contributed to his success (besides staying out of this way on nights such as this when he is working on tomorrow’s sermon). Okay, maybe I’ll give myself a little credit for occasionally inspiring him with something I did actually learn from my BA in religion. 

Well, it’s cheesy, or at least predictable, but the song “Closing Time” is now running through my head (it really is a great song no matter how overplayed) and appropriate: “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” 

It’s an end, but also a beginning for us as a congregation and as a community, as individuals and friends. 

After our goodbye celebration at the Oakley church today, I left with a bottle of cheap champagne, leftover from some church event. I don’t know if I’ll ever drink it (not because I”m too discerning for cheap champagne but I don’t know how to open a champagne bottle) but it seems like a fitting memento for our dear little church–celebratory, aspirational, unpretentious, full or promise, and a little challenging.

It’s really quite amazing that a relatively small building (at least as far as churches go) can hold so many memories, hopes, and love. Blessedly, the human heart can hold even more.