By: Tony
That’s the fear we all seem to have, and not without its reasons. Over a million dollars to build, taking more years than we thought to finish, all happening while we struggle to keep our church going.
Our uncertainty is now compounded with our decision to borrow money from our church membership and through outside loans which comes at a price. On the one hand, we get to see this project finished much sooner than we hoped, but on the other we’re driving up the costs even more and, with it, our doubts to pay it all back. We could wait until it was all in the bank, wait those extra years until we were sure and – if I’m being truthful with myself – I wonder if that isn’t the right thing to do here. It’s one thing to go out there and take out a mortgage when you’re the only one on the line, but when the stakes could mean no longer supporting our missionaries who count on us, the jobs for our staff, or losing our whole church… are we doing the right thing?
Norm shared a message this past Sunday about the Israelites crying out to God in the desert, believing God had abandoned them to simply die in a place that would swallow their bones. They were so defeated that they would trade their freedom, despite all the signs they were shown, for the false comfort of a bowl of meat. Perhaps if they had a better imagination, one that “takes an initiative of faith for the Kingdom,” they may have turned away from their fear and back to the hands of God. Not a faith that’s done in blindness or ignorance, but also isn’t one that’s ironclad in knowing our outcome. Anyone on the street will tell you that we can’t know our future and, guaranteed, something as big as the Nehemiah Project cannot be known with absolute certainty, but what more can we ask of ourselves than to go in it with eyes wide open and our God with us?
That quote about taking an initiative of faith is actually from one of the values our church is shaping, what our church is living. And we are living it because the truth is East Toronto Chinese Baptist Church shouldn’t be here right now! Conventional wisdom tells us that any building that’s operated through inconsistent, voluntary donations on a week to week basis is doomed to failure and that it’s just a matter of time before it all ends. More than forty years have passed and we are far from doom or failure, all you have to do to see the proof is to look around. Now I have to ask, is this all by accident or by faith? Faith in each other? Faith that God wants us here? Faith that God isn’t done with us yet?
If I were to predict how our church goes down, it’s not from a seemingly insurmountable problem before us that threatens our building. It’ll be our apathy and inherent comfort of keeping things the same to the point where everything is predictable. It’s what the Israelites thought they wanted in the desert, to have something so familiar to them that they would be dead before they knew it. But God wasn’t done with them yet and he’s not done with us either. We just need some faith.