Groundbreaking

Last Saturday our "sermon" at church contrasted the "Tower of Babel" experience with Abram's call in the following chapter of Genesis. Why is this something to write about?

Actually it was a very appropriate choice this week as on Tuesday we held the "groundbreaking" ceremony for our church charity to have its own building.

The charity will own and run the building but church will be able to meet there.

 The money involved in the building project is a world apart from the struggle to keep poorer members of our congregation fed and clothed.

With such big sums of capital come obvious dilemmas so we're really pleased that the overseas partners in the building project are managing the funds themselves.

We don't have direct responsibility for building the building, just for using it once its there. We hope this agreement and lessons from the tower of Babel story will be enough to keep our feet on the ground.



On Tuesday morning we had a big tent covering the whole of the modest site to keep the sun off and the dust out.

Almost all the church were there, not so difficult as few of the congregation have formal sector jobs. So despite the formalities and important visitors making speeches, the dominant presence was church, informal people who wouldn't know how to be "posh" anyway and kept the atmosphere wonderfully relaxed.

In the centre of the tent a small square of grass had been left uncovered when the carpet was put down. On this small patch, using an old shovel and pick, the ground was officially broken.

The important visitors swung the pick and representatives of church dug the shovel. Who represented church? Not the leaders, not the strong, young men.

Instead we chose an old man with leprosy deformed hands, a young man in a wheelchair and a teenage girl. The latter pays tribute to a Nepali custom where an unmarried or virgin girl has to initiate the building of a house.



The last were first, and that's the way we hope it continues.

Martin and Katrina Butterworth.