Month of Prayer and Giving Day 29 – The church is a building
According to the Apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 3) as well as the Apostle Peter (1 Peter 2) the church is a building. Not just any building, mind you, God’s building. A spiritual house being built by God for God. A church, however, is not the building in which it meets. That’s a different matter altogether.
A number of the church plants and churches with whom we are involved have issues with the buildings in which they meet. Chatteris Community Church, for instance, doesn’t have their own building. They meet weekly in the King Edward Centre. Not having your own building while arguably having some advantages also has some real drawbacks. That’s one of the reasons more than 90 percent of those reading these words will worship in a church that has its own building.
The friends in Logie Green and Leagrave both have a building in which to meet. But they don’t own it. The friends in Logie Green will have the opportunity to buy their building this year whereas that opportunity should come to the friends at Leagrave early next year. In both cases, there will be a need for financial support from other churches to enable these purchases to be made.
The church at Halling on the other hand is seeking to buy the former fire station in the village to replace their tin tabernacle. Though they hope to realise enough gain from the sale of their present site to underwrite the purchase of the fire station, additional funds will be needed to make necessary modifications and improvements to the building.
Though building works have been completed recently at Walthamstow and are ongoing at Chingford, most of the churches have deferred maintenance issues which really need sorting out. Finding the funds necessary to do building work is often a challenge especially when numbers are still small and finances quite stretched.
This doesn’t even take into account churches like the one at North Watford that are thinking through the need to provide housing for pastors and other key workers. As you can see the needs are great.
Will you pray that the Lord will graciously provide the wisdom his people need in thinking through these issues? Will you ask Him to give finance where it is needed and other solutions where this would be more appropriate?
Will you pray that the churches will be good stewards of their fiscal as well as physical resources? Will you consider making a generous donation to help a particular church with a building-related need?
If so, please be in touch.
Barry King