We’ve been lucky to be a part of the building of several churches this year. It seems to be a pattern we are seeing, this huge, passionate desire to build God’s Kingdom, and they’re going to need more room for that…
Build it so they will come…
I am pretty convinced that if it was this hard, and labor-intensive to build a church in America, there would be a serious lack of “mega-churches”.
This is the Sankhalaburi Baptist Church. The members just finished building the new church building pictured here. I mean they actually built it. Days of labor, scaffolding built of bamboo, months of saving money and spending precious hours and not a single piece of electronic equipment.
They built it with their own hands.
It is theirs. This body, this family has created a home for itself.
Today we got a taste of the process, a little glimpse of how much work a project like this requires when we got to help finish the church’s cement porch.
Step 1:
Make a large pile of dirt and sand. Then pour water and rocks into it. It kind of looks like you are making a giant batch of pasta dough. Mix it around with hoes and shovels until it reaches a lumpy, soupy consistency. Add more rocks, sand, dirt and water as needed. Then shovel the cement mixture into the awaiting plastic buckets.
Step 2:
Then take your bucket and carry it over to the guy waiting to pour the cement and smooth it out.
Step 3:
Pour your cement in the area the guy points you to.
Step 4:
Retrieve your bucket. (Don’t forget your bucket!)
Step 5:
Repeat…
I love seeing the Body rise up like this. It is so encouraging to meet people who live for the church, who live for the Kingdom. When church life and the rest of your life are so intertwined you can’t see between the two, or tell them apart. It is so beautiful to be a part of that, even for only a couple of hours.
May we all learn to live intertwined always…
This was our audience….they look great in our sunglasses…
We will return to this church tomorrow for Sunday service, and then leave for Thanksgiving in Bangkok! We leave for the third continent in the race on Wednesday, landing in South Africa on Thanksgiving Day.
