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To Build or Not To Build

Aug 4, 2005 Print This Post

//MOOD: Tired and Quasi-Motivated to Ride My Bike
//NOISE: None…absolutely none

As an interesting follow-up to my last post, here’s an article on how one church decided to be compassionate. Thanks to Chuck for the link. Here’s an excerpt:

The church at that point had a small sanctuary and a growing congregation. It had to divide into two services, and most people didn’t like doing that, especially since the sanctuary wasn’t even big enough for the second service, which had to meet in a local school. But when church members and associates donated and pledged $287,000 in a special offering one Sunday, it didn’t go toward a new building.

Instead, the money went to purchase a 99-year-lease on 10,000 acres here in Senkobo, 15 miles north of Livingstone and the Zimbabwe border. The land came with a beautiful farm house, 2,700 fruit trees, cattle and other animals, four deep wells, three dams, a tobacco-curing barn that could be turned into apartments, and other farm buildings that could become orphanages and classrooms.

Then, the article listed all that is happening because of the purchase followed by this quote:

Last month, we heard calls to forgive debts owed by African dictators, but it’s more important to emphasize true compassion: The word literally means suffering with those in need.

Those who give of themselves rarely regret it. Livingstone gave his life for Africa and said, “Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay?”

Jerry Beall, Damascus Wesleyan’s pastor in the 1990s and now the head of the ministry it funded, noted as we scampered up a rise in Zambia that his church never built a new sanctuary. Then he looked around at land being farmed, watched some of the children playing and said, “See how much more we got.”