Good morning, Church Family and Friends,
Most of you know that we hit a tremendous amount of rock during our church building construction project, costing us both time and money. However, Danielle Bower of our Construction Team decided to make something positive out of it. She went up to the church site, and collected several buckets full of rock, all different sizes and shapes, then took them home to pressure wash and clean them. The next Sunday, Danielle took the collection of rocks with her to worship at Gordon-Conwell, along with an assortment of felt-tip markers. Before and after worship, scores of church members wrote messages and Scripture verses on those rocks.
But Danielle has gone a step further: she kept those rocks from last winter and is preparing a large table featuring a section where those rocks, including their messages and Scripture verses, will be permanently displayed in our new church home as a reminder of what we encountered to build God’s church, but also how God used that to build us stronger together as a church family.
Danielle’s project also reminded me of a story Dr. Fred Craddock told of two different builders who were constructing churches. One was measuring each brick with a small ruler, keeping some and throwing others aside. He wanted only bricks that were exactly alike. He said, “That’s how I know it will stand — because they’re all alike.” Well, eventually the wind blew, and the flood came — and that church went down. I wonder why?
Dr. Craddock said he went down the street, and he saw a man on the corner with a pile of rocks. He said he had never seen such a gosh-awful bunch of rocks in his life. No two were alike: round ones, square ones, split ones, oblong ones, odd-shaped ones. Dr. Craddock said, “What are you going to do?” The man said, “Well, I’m going to build a church!”
Dr. Craddock said he went back twenty years later, and that church was still there, standing strong, though you never saw such a collection of rocks.
There are some folks who tell me that if you really want to have a strong church, get folks who are exactly alike: same education, same income, same theology, the kids all go to the same school, with the same outlook. But I’m not so sure. Just like the church made from different size rocks, held together with the right mortar, our diversity at Imagine Church, held together with the mortar of our confident trust in Jesus Christ, may be just what’s needed to build and maintain a strong church.
And as a reminder, when you arrive on Sunday mornings, run your hand across the display case featuring an assortment of rocks just inside the back entrance on the new Imagine Church campus.
We’re all partners in the gospel,
Bruce Jones, Pastor
Imagine Church
