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'God lives
not in
structures,
but
in you
and me.'

by Holly Slaugh

Acts 17:22-31
I Peter 3:13-22
John 14:15-21

The conversation started in a hospital room. The nurses had finished their jobs for the time being and his one other visitor had left. Paul, a young person from one of our congregations, lay there thinking.

This was not his first stay in a hospital. He has been in and out of hospitals frequently during the past 14 years ? since he was 6. Even now he is waiting to be transferred to Johns Hopkins Hospital Seizure Ward.

Finally he spoke. 'Pastor Holly, can I ask you something? Can we invite the two people in our Venturing Crew who are in wheelchairs to come to church, and can we have the worship service in the social hall? Would that be okay?'

You see, Paul himself had made the social hall wheelchair-accessible as his Eagle Scout project last year. At his board of review to become an Eagle Scout, he told the convened Scout leaders that he would like to form a Scout troop for other special-needs boys like himself, who couldn't fully participate in all his troop had done through the years.

From that desire sprung Venturing Crew 1777, the only Venturing Crew in Maryland, for people with special needs. The Scout leaders at the hearing suggested that it be a Venturing Crew because a Venturing Crew, as opposed to a Boy Scout Troop, includes not only boys but girls, men and women as well, with no age cap. This had been only a dream for them until this young man stood before them with his own dream.

And so the Crew was launched, chartered last summer, and was now a reality. They meet in the social hall and have chosen for the Crew project a mission to bring puppet shows to nursing homes, schools and other venues.

But Paul, because of his very nature, wants more for them.

He wants to include them in worship at the small, historic Pipe Creek 'Brick' UMC he attends, which chartered the Crew. He is thinking ahead and has identified two other Scouts who will be ready for their Eagle Scout projects in the not-too-distant future. He plans to ask them to make the sanctuary wheelchair-accessible; but in the meantime, 'Could we have the worship service in the social hall?'

Almost 2,000 years ago another Paul is reported to have said, 'Men of Athens ? the God who made the world and everything in it ? does not live in temples built by hands.' (NIV)

That's your answer, Paul. God lives not in structures, but in you and me and all who call on God's name ? whether challenged physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, socially or not feeling challenged at all ? we can all be living 'temples.'

Last month we celebrated Resurrection Sunday, singing 'He lives within my heart.' Christ lives in all of us and makes abundant living available to all who would receive. And we can make communal worship available to all who come.

So the answer is, 'Of course, we can worship together in the social hall.' We will worship wherever we can all be together.

Holly Slaugh works with her husband, Pastor Charles Slaugh, in the Pipe Creek Larger Parish Charge in New Windsor.