I just got news yesterday that another business in Argyle is closing at the end of the month. In the past ten years we’ve lost our only industry, the clothing store, a handful of small businesses, and the bank has changed hands. Even one of the bars has closed – and you know you’re in trouble when that happens!

A comment I got from a member of our church when he heard the news was this, “Just one more empty building to look at each day.” He sounded so depressed.

I didn’t know what to say to him.

I wanted to compare the community to the church and say “Just as the church isn’t the building but the people, so too with Argyle, a building may be empty but the community remains,” but I don’t think the analogy works.

The empty buildings sit as another sign of a small town moving in the wrong direction. And with the loss of business is the loss of jobs, and with the loss of jobs we have been seeing the towns population has decreased, especially the young.

I feel like the empty buildings are like corpses on display. And the fact of the matter is that at least we can bury a corpse. But here are the empty buildings in plain sight for everyone to see – day and night, week after week and year after year. And with the passing of time, the buildings decay. It’s not a pretty sight. I think the community collectively see’s itself in those buildings.

When our one big industry left town, we had faith that some new business would move in. None has. When the small stores and businesses closed, we bolstered ourselves by saying, “We can get by with that loss.” But now the losses are adding up, and at the end of this month there is going to be one more empty building in town.

Are any of you going through the same thing? If so, how are you dealing with it? What are you saying? How are you communicating hope to a community that isn’t very hopeful and off in the distance there are no prophets announcing things are going to get better again.

I’d love to hear from you, for at the end of the month there is going to be one more corpse on display.

Thanks for hope in advance. God bless, Dan