Unfortunate is about the best way to describe the end of the Deer Creek Harmony Presbyterian Church congregation after 184 years in Darlington.
The congregation and its 145-year-old building are part of Harford County's history, and while it's sad to see the congregation pass from the scene, we have every reason to believe the building will live on in some capacity, possibly religious.
A spokesperson for the Presbytery of Baltimore said last week the congregation of Deer Creek Harmony decided to disband.
The building and property will revert to the Presbytery, which has no immediate plans for it. The church cemetery has a fund established for its perpetual care.
Sunday's final service, reported on Page 3 of this edition of The Aegis, brought out 65 people, many of whom expressed their regrets at the closing of the church, which has been around long enough to have a road named after it.
"It's just a fixture of the community. I have friends buried back in there, in the graveyard," Nolan Gallion, a member of Churchville Presbyterian, said following Sunday's final service at Deer Creek Harmony.
Gallion suggested the health of churches is negatively affected by people having other interests. One he mentioned is recreation. That, perhaps, and many others.
According to people associated with Deer Creek Harmony, the congregation basically aged out, and that's a problem experienced not only by the Presbyterian denomination. It wasn't too many years ago that the historic St. George's Episcopal Church in Perryman closed for the same reason: too few congregants.
Conversely, there have been many new Christian churches and congregations established in the county over the past 25 years that are thriving, along with quite a few of their more well-established fellow congregations.
The dynamics of why and how people choose to worship are far too complex to explore in this space and, frankly, are well beyond our expertise to opine about. Like many institutions, churches ebb and flow with the times and conditions. Nothing in the physical world is guaranteed to last forever.
A congregation with a proud history such as Deer Creek Harmony won't soon be forgotten, regardless. Even if they are no longer with us in body, they'll still be there in spirit.
Perhaps, the end of Deer Creek Harmony was best summed up by 25-year member Millie Kreider, who said: "We need to remember the work that the church has done. I have tried, but I cannot write a closing statement for the church. Maybe that is because God is not finished with us yet."