A Wartime Footing

I have packed a few shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child this weekend, mostly toothbrushes and trinkets and things to draw pictures with.As I did so, I was reminded of the post-fire call I went on for the Red Cross recently. In a neighboring county, a family with several young children had lost everything in an early morning fire. There was no insurance and their ownership was a tenuous contract of sale that the fire effectively terminated.

Worse than these facts was the lack of any stable community in their lives, with the extended family relationships narrated sounding like the worst kind of soap opera plotline mixed in with grinding poverty. Though their small town has as many churches as any here in the upper Midwest, there was not a bit of connection between this family and any of these congregations.

So here I was, trying to do a little Christmas outreach for those around the globe and these kids literally under my feet are feeling nothing from the gospel in their own community.

This morning’s Today devotional entry brought a new reminder of the importance of our congregational stewardship.

After noting that one major “alliance of Christian churches” sends out only one missionary for every 5,000 church members--ten congregations of 500 each for a single missionary!--the devotional author then noted

“a missionary teacher, Ralph Winter, urges that Christians today should live on a wartime footing. In wartime, a nation devotes nearly all its resources to winning battle after battle so that it might emerge from the war victorious and free. In some ways it’s a helpful image for the church. The Christian church too is at war—spiritual war. We seek to win the hearts of many who do not know Christ, and to liberate them from the tyranny of Satan. But how many of our resources go to this important cause? Is our support more than an occasional donation from our surplus, or an occasional prayer for ‘missionaries in foreign and domestic fields’?”

A "wartime footing?" Is that how any of us live in today's "Christian America?" Do I, whether in my personal life or in my other involvements, like the building committee for our local congregation for example?

Our building committee has been working to squeeze all the congregational and leadership wants and “needs” for a new building into a pretty limited budget. We have been focusing on the way the building will represent our faith in the community, seeking to be wise stewards but not cutting back so far that the result could seem slipshod and careless in our love for God. We have studied some beautiful buildings that seem to exude the sense of glory and majesty that we would like to feel entering the sanctuary as we come together to worship.

Still.

Seeing one five-year-old boy saved out of a fire with only the clothes on his back was a concrete reminder. A reminder of the huge numbers in our own community who have never heard anything at all about Jesus Loves Me, let alone the “immanence and transcendence” of God that we would like our sanctuary to represent. While we seek to follow biblical guidelines in our worship space, have we considered enough how our congregation will be able to carry out the Matthew 28 commission to reach out to all the world?

So how do we achieve the balance? Could our building become something we will take pride in for all its theological rightness but one that will keep people desperately in need of the Gospel outside, feeling they are not good enough to enter. Will our Crow Creek friends come to visit and wonder how we are able to fund a building of this size yet we aren’t ready to support a full-time missionary in their town? Or will we end up with something so "low-budget" that we give off the appearance of caring nothing for the greatness of the God we worship and adore?

I cannot cast stones here. What did I do upon returning to Rochester after the fire call? I stopped and signed the contract to have a new stove and microwave installed.

In a way, this purchase should help me as I prayerfully seek to work with the building committee in our decisions for our new church structure. The large burner I used the most stopped working over a year ago, and the other large burner has been heating unevenly for months. The clock does not work and the glass on the oven door developed a surprise crack earlier this year. When the oven light went out, I didn’t even bother to think of replacing it. All in all, this could easily represent our too-small building with its ongoing water and other problems.

In trying to decide what I should replace the stove with, I have spent too many hours online, reading recommendations, checking out features, and trying to get an idea of the price I should expect to pay. I considered what I really needed—space for the really big pans I still use for cooking for friends, easily cleaned burner area but one that would not be scratched by my now beloved cast iron skillets—and easily cut off options that would not be necessary. No need for the extra cost of stainless steel, no yearning after a convection oven. I have, however, chosen to convert to gas, an expense that will add as much as 50% to the total cost. My goal overall is to have a stove that would reliably provide meals for family and guests for years to come.

After all the research and having some idea of what is left in my house repairs budget for the year, I went shopping. I discovered quickly that my quest for gas instead of electricity for the power source would add substantially to the total cost. This too was similar to our building project. Whatever total we are able to raise will need to include perhaps a third or more for “site preparation”—including parking lots—and furnishings. So what I have paid for my stove is a little higher than I had hoped, but the Black Friday sale price brought the total package back to a better figure. It has not infringed upon the little pool of money I had set aside for end of year giving to a variety of organizations, like Samaritan’s Purse of the Operation Christmas Child.

The building project will not be quite so easy to neatly tie up in this way. How can we know if the dollar figures we present to the congregation will result in their accepting the amounts only to have some or many achieve their pledged offerings only by cutting corners in other ministry giving? If we build a building that is majestic and glorious—even if it is simple grandeur—will we ever know if its imposing “righteousness” will keep people like that burned out family with their sweatshirts and sneakers outside instead of coming in the door?

This is not something where I can point fingers at anyone else. I personally need to pray more and more earnestly, every day, for the wisdom to make right decisions. And if ever there was a time for our congregation to be praying for a little group of people, it is now. I must commit to never missing an opportunity to ask for prayerful support of our every decision. Matthew 28:16-20 must remain as much a part of our building committee work as anything else we consider.