In its heyday, my childhood church in suburban Detroit was a megachurch before megachurches existed. The building was a wonderful mishmash of church architectural styles from the 1940s, 60s and 70s when various additions were made. It made a great home for the children of the church, where we children freely roamed the educational wing, obediently heading to our classrooms when the bell rang for Sunday school or evening Training Union.

Until the evening someone dared Billy to stick his head through the bars of the stair’s railing. Billy was an average size kid with an average size head, and as good Baptist children, we loudly voiced our opinions about the dare, but before a consensus could be reached, Billy took the dare and stuck his head through the railing.

We were in awe, until Billy realized he couldn’t pull his head back out. The bell for Training Union went off, no one moved and then chaos ensued. Teachers ran out of the classrooms and tried to pull Billy out. Someone ran down the stairs to the church kitchen for a tub of lard. Billy twisted and turned his head and started to cry. Then off in the distance, a siren wailed. We began to breathe easier. Help was on the way, and despite that nasty-sounding electric saw cutting through the railing, Billy’s head remained attached to his body.

I’m happy to report that we all made it safely to adulthood and today communicate mainly through the church’s alumni Facebook group, since my childhood church no longer exists. It wasn’t abandoned but demolished, unlike the roughly 1,100 former churches currently for sale in the U.S. according to an article in The New York Times. It was the headline that caught my eye: “For Sale: Hundreds of Abandoned Churches. Great Prices. Need Work.” I am still deciding what bothers me more—the demolition of my once-vibrant home church, the abandoned churches put up for sale all over the country, or the buyers snapping them up to convert them into one-of-a kind private homes.

In early church history, houses became churches—not the other way around. In 1 Corinthians 16:19, the church in Aquila and Prisca’s house sent hearty greetings to the church in Corinth. Paul deepens the definition of a house when he instructs the believers in Galatia to “do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” (Galatians 6:10) Paul’s personal greetings at the end of his letter to the Romans use the language of family to describe the members of this new household of faith—Andronicus and Junia are kinsmen (as well as fellow prisoners), beloved Stachys and Persis, and Rufus’ mother—who has been a mother to Paul.

The church is at its best when it is a home for the lost, the found, the sick, the ones who are sick but don’t admit it. It’s a home where the door is left open for a prodigal’s return, or gently closed on the clamor and chaos for the world weary to find rest. It’s a place where you and I are “no longer strangers and aliens, but . . . fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” (Ephesians 2:19)

In the end, the church is home to pilgrims who are looking forward to a feast set on a table that overflows with the bounty of grace and mercy in a home that lasts forever.