ASSOCIATE PASTOR
By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. – 1 Cor. 3: 10-11
Exciting work is underway in our Fellowship Hall. A section of the floor had heaved a little over time, leaving the floor cracked and uneven. Two solutions were proposed: we could cover the floor with a little more concrete to level it, or we could tear up the affected area (at much greater expense), and reinforce it to accommodate further shifting.
Doing the math, at first I favored the inexpensive solution. Perhaps the heaving is complete and we wouldn’t need another repair in 20 years. Even if we did, it’s not a bad thing to replace a Fellowship Hall floor every 20 years. We’ve all seen Fellowship Halls that haven’t been updated for 50 years. And with the cost difference, we could have resurfaced our floor repeatedly before spending the same amount of money.
I’m grateful for the voices that held out for doing the job the right way. Part of the meaning is the commitment we have to offering excellence in service to God. From spending a little extra on Communion bread to spending a lot on steel and concrete, we don’t want to “cheap out” in our service to God.
Partly, there’s a symbolic reminder for us that the foundation is the important thing. We aren’t particularly into showy or flashy things, but we value the solid, the true, the fundamental, the important. It’s no coincidence that Paul used the image of a foundation to describe the basics of the Christian faith. Our spiritual commitments may be lived out in a number of ways. We may involve ourselves in different ministries or even disagree on some ways of living out our faith.
But at the core, we start with Jesus, with God’s love for the world, God’s power for our lives, God’s eternal desire and work to redeem and deliver and save. The work in Fellowship Hall is a reminder that we won’t skimp or skimcoat those understandings, that their truth runs deep and undergirds everything else we do. I’m glad that wise folks held out for doing it right, and I’m glad that the foundation is where our work began. May we always start with the sure foundation.
Jim Bell