Breaking Ground

I have never been so glad to see heavy machinery and mounds of dirt in my whole life! Our church has finally broken ground and after many years, we will have an actually church building.

We started attending Grace about seven years ago. It was a little nondenominational start-up church that didn't have a building but it had everything else we needed in a church. We've grown together and become a real church family but the years have not been easy.

We meet in our high school every Sunday morning and hold worship service in the auditorium. All the supplies are hauled in a trailer and people have to set up everything...from the speakers and sound system to the toys for the nursery. Most of the materials are packed and repacked in huge plastic totes each week. The children meet for Sunday school at tables in the school commons. Not an ideal environment for the kids or the poor teachers. Our adult Sunday school classes meet in the science classrooms. It's kind of funny to look around at beakers, bunsen burners and biology displays while we are having discussions about the bible. Our worship services get pretty colorful when there is a school play coming up. The pastor and worship band stand in front of the set's backdrop and maneuver around the cardboard walls of scenery to conduct the service. A morning after a high school dance is always an adventure. Streamers and other decorations litter the commons as we enter the building for church. The regular attenders have learned to look past the fact that we're in a school. We just focus on each other. But I always wonder what visitors think on mornings like that.

Even though we haven't had ideal conditions, our church has thrived and grown. We have a huge youth program, lots of bible studies, and many from Grace are active in mission activities in Latvia.

Now that we've broken ground and the construction has begun, I can't wait to have a building to hold all the "stuff" of our church. I'm so happy that the volunteers that unload the trailer and repack it every week will have extra hours in their week for other things. The Sunday school teachers and nursery workers will actually have walls around them to contain the noise and activities. We will no longer be Rubbermaid-toting-vagabonds, but our church will have a home.

There's an old song running through my head as I begin to type this: The church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is not a resting place, the church is a people...

I don't particularly like the song. It's tune isn't all that catchy. But it sticks in my head because I think the words are so true. I hope and pray that with the construction and building activity, I will not lose focus on what has really made us "a church" all this time.