SPOKANE, Wash. — “Welcome to my church,” Dean Westerman says, greeting believers on a recent Sunday as they step inside what was, a week earlier, the meeting place of the Northside Church of Christ.

But today, a new church meets here.

A week ago, Westerman was an elder of the Sunrise Church of Christ, less than a mile down the road.

But on this Lord’s Day, he’s an elder of this new church, a “church with no name,” as he puts it, in this city of about 450,000 in the Pacific Northwest.

For the first time, members of the Northside and Sunrise congregations are worshiping together as one body.

And though they meet in Northside’s building, everything is changed — from the worship time to the arrangement of the furniture, coffee station and art on the wall. Blank name tags sit on tables in the foyer.

Today, everyone is at least a little bit uncomfortable and anxious — but many are full of joy, excitement and awe at what they see as God’s handiwork.

Merging — by choice

Across the U.S., churches are closing or merging by force — no longer able to maintain membership numbers or funds to support their buildings and staff.

But for Northside and Sunrise, that wasn’t the case. Both congregations were doing fine financially, elders told The Christian Chronicle the day before the first service, as about 40 church members prepared the building.

“Neither church had to do this,” said elder Steve Payne, who came from Northside.

Instead, their union was by choice, borne out of a love for each other and a desire to combine their strengths — and put aside their differences — to point more people to Jesus.

But that attitude did not come quickly — or easily.

The Northside church has a longer history, but it moved to its most recent location in 1958. At its height, the church was one of the largest in Washington, with around 500 members.

Sunrise, meanwhile, had its beginnings in the 1970s before moving near the Northside building in the mid-1980s.

Since then, the two congregations had longstanding friction over some key doctrinal issues — particularly instrumental music, used in Sunrise’s worship.

One of the Northside members, Rob Fitzsimmons, an Oklahoma Christian University graduate who later became an elder, would sometimes go to Sunrise and argue the reasons instrumental music was wrong.

“When I was in my 20s, coming back from OC, being the smart kid I was, I’d look at the Greek, and I’d know exactly what the word ‘psallo’ meant,” Fitzsimmons said, referring to the Greek term from which “making melody” is translated in Ephesians 5:19. “And it meant what we were doing and not what they were doing. … I was so convinced I was right that I wasn’t open to listen.”

But eventually, attitudes began to soften at Northside.

For Payne, who did not grow up in Churches of Christ but was baptized at Northside, his son Travis — a talented, self-taught musician — leaving Northside a decade ago was a pivotal moment.

“He left the church because he couldn’t get anyone to actually show him absolutely that instruments were a sin or going to keep you out of heaven,” Payne recalled. “And he kept pushing at another church (for) the elders there to study with him. And then he finally came to me and said, ‘Hey, Ephesians is really talking more about attitude than it is about instrumental music. And by the way, I’m leaving.’”

Beginning to cooperate

Several years later, in early 2020, newly hired Northside preacher Henry Holub — a graduate of Abilene Christian University — reached out to Sunrise preacher Troy Burns, just looking for a “preaching buddy” to talk to.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, Holub and Burns’ relationship led Northside and Sunrise to host their first event together, a trunk-or-treat, in 2021. They began to cooperate more and more, holding a joint Vacation Bible School, a sweetheart banquet, a picnic, a fall festival and a breakfast for the nearby elementary school.

They had occasional pulpit swaps and joint worship services — a cappella only, at first.

As members of both congregations became friendlier, they began to notice each had complementary strengths and weaknesses, Payne said.

Northside had a strong Wednesday night prayer group, and Sunrise strong small groups. Northside had a lot of good female singers, while Sunrise had a lot of good male singers. 

Northside’s building was a perfect neighborhood hub, right in the heart of a diverse, lower income area of northern Spokane, surrounded by houses and only two blocks from Ridgeview Elementary School. 

Sunrise’s location on a main avenue and bus line offered its own advantages — the newly merged church plans to use it as a base for mission and outreach work and as a new home for the Caritas Food Bank. 

Addressing the elephant in the room

Eventually, the leadership from both churches decided to address what they called the elephant in the room: merging to become one church. Some members had already started asking about the possibility.

The elders first approached members about a merger in February and made an official announcement in June.

The benefits they cited included the ability to fully staff Bible classes for adults and children, twice as many volunteers for church responsibilities, increasing outreach to the neighborhood and providing “a tremendous witness to the world” of Christian unity.

Additionally, though the churches weren’t yet struggling financially, their numbers had declined after the COVID-19 pandemic — down to about 130 for Northside and about 100 for Sunrise. Westerman said there was a sense of stagnation and apathy. He could see a future where the churches wouldn’t survive on their current paths.

“I was just scared to pieces that there’d be a day that I’d be the poor sap that hands the key to the Realtor, saying, ‘Well, folks, this our last Sunday. God be with you. Worship where you think is best.’ And I don't have to do that now,” Westerman told the Chronicle.

Worshiping with instruments

As for music, the elders said it was clear they should use a blended model of a cappella and instrumental music in the new church’s worship. 

Northside leaders hope the addition of instruments will help them better reach younger residents in a region where a cappella Churches of Christ are little known and where churches in general struggle with evangelism.

Washington has 116 historically a cappella Churches of Christ with about 8,500 members, out of a total population of 7.7 million, according to a national directory published by 21st Century Christian. The state is one of only six in the nation with more than 60 percent of adults who say they never or rarely attend religious services, Axios reported, citing an analysis of Household Pulse Survey data.

To be clear, Northside leaders don’t believe they’re compromising on truth — rather, they say some of the doctrines they once believed were vital were really traditions. And they don’t feel they have the luxury of clinging to traditions that hinder their ability to evangelize.

Unity in Churches of Christ despite musical differences is not an entirely unprecedented idea, according to John Young, an expert on the 19th century Restoration Movement from which modern Churches of Christ emerged.

T.B. Larimore — a prominent evangelist born in 1843 who established multiple Churches of Christ in the South and what would eventually become the Mars Hill Bible School in Florence, Ala. — refused to disfellowship instrumental churches.

Larimore supported a cappella worship, but for him, “it was secondary in importance to, as he called it, ‘Christ and him crucified,’” Young told the Chronicle, referencing a 2 Corinthians verse often quoted by the preacher.

In fact, uniting all Christians into one fellowship was a key goal of Restorationists.

But for more than a century, Churches of Christ — including Northside for most of its history — have predominantly held that a cappella worship is required by the New Testament.

Tom Condos, minister for the Richland Church of Christ in southeastern Washington, said he, too, feels the challenge of the large number of unchurched people in the region.

“The Pacific Northwest is a mission field,” he told the Chronicle. “It’s far different. … Christianity as a whole, up here, is just a different way of looking at what it means to even be connected to Christ, let alone our specific fellowship.”

But that doesn’t mean Christians should leave behind the example of worship presented by the early church, said Condos, whose congregation hosts the annual Leadership Training for Christ Northwest. To Condos, it’s a fallacy to think instruments are needed to evangelize young Washingtonians.

“I think what attracts people is not the worship style but rather the passion of those who are engaging in the worship,” Condos said. “And so if that (passion) has to be, you know, manufactured some other way, then that’s the way someone could do it. But for us, I think it’s about how diligent you are in … making it an effort in your congregation to uphold that value of worship.”

Becoming one

Back at the new church’s first Sunday, the focus is on unity and coming together with a new identity.

In the adult Bible class, members create a timeline on the wall with important memories and events from Sunrise and Northside — and envision the future memories they will create together.

Craig Fritsch prays that “these two bodies of believers are woven together, that this new church family would be a lighthouse for those lost in this neighborhood.”

The worship team leads songs including “Our God Is Greater” with instruments — and a guitar solo — and “The Greatest Commands” a cappella.

Burns and Holub preach together — though they won’t be tag-teaming every week — on Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer in John 17, with special emphasis on verses 20 and 21:

“I am not asking on behalf of these alone, but also for those who believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one; just as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.”

Members take ballots to vote on the church’s new name — they will later choose “CityLight: a Church of Christ Family.”

The union does not come without some difficulties. A few faces are missing. One lifelong Northside member walks out during the service.

But for the most part, the 173 former Sunrise and Northside members in attendance are of one accord — and even as they continue to work through their differences, there’s no going back.

“There’s no ‘What if this doesn’t work out?’” said elder Bud Gothmann. “We’re burning the ships. We’re doing this, and we are trusting that God has led us where we are, and he’s going to keep leading us down that path.”

“Get over your differences — we’re about Jesus,” elder Steve Payne added. 

A few hours earlier, Payne lamented the state of the world and the particularly unchurched Northwest.

But he is hopeful that “the darker things get, the brighter Christians will be shining.”

This piece is republished with permission from The Christian Chronicle.

Calvin Cockrell is a freelance digital media specialist, media editor for The Christian Chronicle and copyeditor for Religion Unplugged. He also serves as the young adults minister for the North Tuscaloosa Church of Christ in Alabama.