Why I Love My "Charlie-Brown Church"
My humble Sunday morning home has turned out to be a surprise blessing
by Camerin Courtney
July 16, 2007

They talked about it being a sacrifice.

Those of us who decided to be part of our church’s new satellite location would give up the comforts of our modern building, complete with banks of windows and a cool steeple, in a chi-chi Chicagoland suburb.

Instead we’d meet at a tired community center in the one-block downtown of a nondescript ’burb. We’d gather there for a year or two—until the nearby building we purchased underwent a transformation from a business into a church.

I felt called to this new congregation. So for the past year and a half my church home has been this “gymnatorium”—a hardwood-floored room with basketball hoops and gymnastics mats attached to the walls, as well as a big stage flanked by dark wood paneling and a heavy red velvet curtain. There are a few high windows covered with bars (no doubt to protect the glass from stray basketballs), occasional winged visitors, and one lonely bathroom stall off the main sanctuary that mysteriously always seems to be out of toilet paper.

It’s the kind of place where Charlie Brown and his gang might stage a rag-tag but heartwarming Christmas play.

And I love it. the rest (h/t Anglicans Ablaze )