BRANDYWINE - The enormous modern brick and glass church, with its soaring ceilings and pew after pew bathed in purple light, stood mostly empty yesterday morning in this rural Prince George's County crossroads, even though it was in the middle of Sunday services.
It wasn't supposed to be that way. When the new Gibbons-Resurrection United Methodist Church was on the drawing board, the congregation was one of the denomination's fastest-growing in the nation. Its members would eventually number 4,000.
Founded in 1884 by former slaves, Gibbons-Resurrection embarked in the mid-1990s on an ambitious building plan for a $4.8 million church with a 1,200-seat sanctuary and education and fellowship wings.
But a series of construction problems, the defection of a charismatic pastor who took with him most of the flock, and subsequent financial turmoil and foreclosure mean Gibbons-Resurrection's storied history will come to a close.
Now the church has 300 members. About 200 attended services yesterday. Sunday will be the church's last service.
"It's going to be a memorable service. It's going to be a sad service," Rod Holmes, an usher at the church, predicted. "We're all going to be here. It will be beautiful. It will go on as if it's not the last service."
Five years ago it would have been hard to imagine that the church would be forced to shut its doors. At the helm since 1984 had been the Rev. C. Anthony Muse, the church's first full-time pastor. The building was constructed under his watch. (Although it is in use, it is not finished.)
Construction delays and other problems led to inflated costs and other financial troubles. Then in 1999, Muse broke with the United Methodist Church, noting religious concerns, and opened the independent Ark of Safety Christian Church more than a dozen miles away in an old grocery store in Oxon Hill. He took 80 percent to 85 percent of the church members with him, church officials said.
Accusations have flown since then. A lawsuit against Muse by members of his former congregation, which accused him of leaving them with a $6 million debt on the building and of taking church assets with him, was recently settled with a confidential agreement.
Muse did not respond to phone calls to his church and home seeking comment and left before the end of his church's 11 a.m. service yesterday. A former state delegate, Muse is running for Prince George's County executive.
Even though Gibbons-Resurrection will close next week, the church is not expected to be empty long. Muse's new congregation will likely occupy the building - a $3.2 million offer for the church is expected to be accepted by creditors. Muse's assistant, Denise Tyler, confirmed yesterday that the church has put in a bid.
If it hurts for the church to close, it hurts even more that the pastor who left will emerge holding the keys to the building, several associated with the church said.
"This is a 118-year-old congregation that is made up of some wonderful folks who unfortunately are caught up in some unfortunate circumstances," said the Rev. Rodney T. Smothers, the pastor of Gibbons for the past year. "They're the real victims here. Here's the irony of this: His congregants are the mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers of my congregants. He split families. ...
"On Sundays, when [the families] go to dinner, the one thing they don't talk about is church."
The remaining members of Gibbons-Resurrection tried to win back their church building. They had the support of the United Methodist Church. They made an offer of $2.75 million to buy it out of foreclosure but chose not to pursue it.
"The folks at Gibbons-Resurrection decided enough is enough," said James Knowles-Tuell, chief financial officer of the Baltimore Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church. "They determined it would not be good stewardship" to continue a bidding war.
The congregation's members will scatter to other churches. Smothers will be the pastor of a church to be built in nearby Waldorf. He reminded congregants yesterday to attend a meeting where they could learn about their options for choosing a new place to worship.
Instead of being sad, Gibbons-Resurrection's congregants reveled in their time together, hugging strangers and one another, sharing their prayers and triumphs, singing and dancing.
Lillie Pinkney, 96, has been a member of Gibbons-Resurrection her entire life. She remembers when services were held in a log cabin a few hundred feet from where the church stands. It's hard to fathom going to church somewhere else. But she seems resigned to what's about to happen.
"I'm sorry," she said, "but things will happen, and we have to do the best we can."