The Church on Melbourne

By C. E. Urich

An ambitious pastor buys a church to fix up and expand his congregation. When his family confronts him about the reckless purchase and burdensome renovations, things sour and quickly go from bad to worse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. E. Urich
• Release date: Feb 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224553358

Book preview

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When my dad bought the church off Melbourne Road, we were all surprised. It had previously belonged to the church of Calvary and as far as we knew they never sold church buildings, they only bought them or built them. We figured that if the Calvary church had deemed this particular building to be unfit for their congregation, it must have something severely wrong with it.

Another reason why it surprised us that dad took it on.

He wasn’t the type to flip properties but perhaps he intended to grow our own congregation, which had been growing, but not to the length of acquiring another building - at least that’s what I thought.

Regardless, my dad, mother, sisters and I all went down with Sal (my father’s business partner) to look at the place.

It was a rectangular shaped building on the outside made of brick, surrounded by a parking lot that was shared with a business park. The interior of the church had a hallway that wrapped around the inside which was U shaped with a kitchen on the far end and the chapel stage at the base of the U. Here, the hallway continued behind the stage, although interrupted with two peeling push-bar doors as if to create some kind of green room. There were small one-stall bathrooms on either side of the chapel which smelled of sulfur and resembled something out of Resident Evil, especially the men’s. Throughout, the walls were all burlap, the floor, inside-outside carpeting, and the ceiling decorated with fluorescent lights and stained ceiling panels.

The most astonishing room was the kitchen. We weren’t sure if the previous congregation had simply left their old appliances and dishes behind or if a group of squatters had made