Drive down a country road anywhere in the United States and you're bound to see them.

They may be standing stately atop a knoll or snuggling up close to a creek or river. They may be the only building visible for miles around, or part of a little community or ghost town. They may be shining white in the sunlight or turning pale gray as the sideboards age with time and neglect.

I'm talking about church buildings. And they need our attention.

Church buildings, from the one-room rock buildings of the Ozarks to the multi-storied brick or stone buildings of the Midwest, and from the hewn-log churches of the mountains to the majestic, white-steepled edifices that dot the plains, hold a unique place in the history of our country.

For many, they were the only common buildings in the sparsely populated areas of an expanding nation. They were the meeting hall, the school house, and the place of worship for area residents.

Today, find an old church house anywhere in our nation and you might find a restaurant, a wine tasting parlor, a dance studio, or an art gallery. Many have been turned into homes. Once the most prominent and culturally important structures around, some old church buildings are standing in disrepair, former caretakers now gone and younger folks not caring enough â€" or connected enough â€" to save these sacred places.

Some have already succumbed to weather, time, neglect, or worse. In one Missouri county alone a tornado destroys a church building over 100 years old and a fire erases all that once was of another church building with a rich history traceable back to the 1860s.

Sadly, these stories are repeated regularly across our great nation. New buildings may stand where those once stood, but the history they held is hard to regain. I recently read that in North Dakota alone, some 500 rural churches stand abandoned, some nearly in ruins.

Places of worship built with the blood, sweat and tears of European immigrants, common hill people, Appalachian coal miners, prairie settlers, benevolent land barons, and weathered frontier preachers now stand alone.

And they call to us.

What will be our answer? Will we watch as they are bought up and turned into ballet studios and wine tasting rooms? Will we wait until time and weather take their inevitable toll on these places of worship and community and they fall to the ground? Will we stick a roll of high quality black & white film in our 35 mm cameras and shoot a portfolio full of ghostly images that look back on what once was?

No matter what we do or don't do, let us not forget the place these structures hold in the history of our nation, and in the hearts of its people.