Work Zone

From 1 Oct

Soon-to-be-Sanctuary - Oct 2009

All these buildings and mountains,
Slowly they'll arise
Before our eyes.

How do cities understand?
We drink our wine, and wonder why we're really here. . .

-From the song 'Buildings and Mountains' by the Republic Tigers

Three congregations. Three different building campaigns.

There was the mega-church outgrowing its physical space.

Then the inner-city church and its crumbling infrastructure.

Now, the historic church and its forced relocation.

Building, it would seem, goes hand in hand with ministry.

Several months ago, the people of Luther House successfully obtained access to a piece of property (no small feat in a country where officials can, at times, be 'reluctant' to assist those from ethnic/religious minorities) and have set about turning this former film production facility into a place of worship, fellowship, and learning.

While raising funds and collecting tenders/bids for renovating the space, Sunday mornings have been filled to overflowing as members meet in what will be the upstairs fellowship space and spill over into the adjacent office and down the hallway to the toilet. Nearly every vacant seat is filled.

Now construction has started in the basement, an unfinished screening room with jagged holes in the concrete floor. The hope is that by Christmas this space will be completed and a new worship space capable of seating nearly two hundred people will be ready to receive the congregation.

In the midst of all of this work it occurs to me that the pastoral function here, besides providing some cursory oversight to the construction process, is to build up the the community of people that will occupy the physical space. They, not the structure they left behind nor the structure they are moving into, are the Church.

As we transition from being a wandering people to being a settled one once again, as we wipe up the dust and tend to the wounds caused by renovation and relocation, we must not lose sight of the fact that our identity extends beyond the concrete walls surrounding us and that the mission in which we participate demands that we step out from the sanctuary we are creating.