A while ago, I wrote an article about the Chapel of the Annunciation at Holy Cross Episcopal School on Bell Road. The story was about how St. John's Episcopal Church, in downtown Montgomery since the 1830s, discovered an abandoned chapel in a regular shotgun house on Plum Street. For decades, the house had been running down and neglected, its steeple long gone and its beauty obscured by a false ceiling. The church got a phone call one day and a woman claimed that this mere hovel had once been a chapel of some sort. When St. John's investigated, the woman's claim turned out to be true.
The church rallied around the cause and raised funds to salvage what they could of the chapel, and then rebuild it on the then-new campus of Holy Cross school.

I love that story, and how the people in the story took such pains to make it all happen.

It's almost no surprise that one of the ways the chapel is now being used is as a place of worship for a "start up" church...

Yesterday, I interviewed an Air Force chaplain who is stationed at Maxwell in a regular staff position. He's a member of the Orthodox Church in America, and has recently taken the responsibility to help a mission station here in Montgomery grow into a church. The mission station was actually started by local families who had been commuting to Birmingham for services. For a few months, the group met in private homes but now, they get to meet at the Holy Cross chapel on Sundays. It's a turning point for them.

I guess it's the writer in me who loves that this chapel, which was forgotten (or hiding?) for so long is now not only the focal point of a campus but also serves as a home for a congregation that is putting so much effort into growing their church. There are so many parallels to the story, it lends itself well to analogy: you've got this old, forgotten architecture that becomes a loving, integral part of a school; and then you have an ancient faith that is establishing itself today in a vibrant way. For both stories, the amount of dedication (to the building, or to the congregation/ church) is enormous.