My squad and I had the unique opportunity to help a remote village in the jungle of India build a church. We set out early in the morning to reach the village and began working in the scorching heat of Indian fall.
We were sweating buckets before we even arrived, but we were enthused about the opportunity. We got to come together as a church (U church) and partner with another church and be THE CHURCH. We were uniquely blessed to show them more of Jesus as they showed us more of Jesus. We were so excited to do this work, but none of us realized that building churches is hard.
United as one under Christ, we lined up and began tossing bricks up to the top of the mountain (where the church was located). We were pulling from a pile that had thousands of bricks in it.
We tossed the bricks from person to person. We were dripping with sweat and covered in red dust from the bricks. Our hands were torn to pieces before midday. Open wounds were a thing, and we were literally rubbing dirt on them while waiting for another brick. We rotated positions when one side of our body got sore. Our bodies worked hard in the heat of the day. We sweat more water than we could consume, and our bodies burned more calories than we had gotten since entering India. We were pushing ourselves to the brink to build a church.
But building churches is hard work, isn’t it? Each brick is like a person we are carrying up a faith mountain. We disciple them and teach them and help them grow to spiritual maturity. It takes hard work and effort and love to build the body of Christ. It takes more energy than we have, and it takes more people than we would think.
Building the Church hurts. It takes commitment and perseverance. It means taking a good look at yourself and removing the speck in your eye so you can see more clearly. It means letting people build you up and encourage you. Building The Church is hard and it takes perseverance. Fortunately, Christ is both the architect and finisher of our faith, and we don’t have to build His Body alone.
