I have a good friend who is the president of a liberal arts university in Iowa. As I have watched him do his job, one of the things I have been impressed by is the way he is always ready to “make remarks” at public gatherings of the university community. As the leader of the institution he is attuned to the importance of using even the most mundane events as an opportunity to talk about the mission of the university. He finds a foothold in the ordinary to step up into something sublime.
As the pastor of Emmanuel I see this report as one of my regular opportunities to “make remarks,” and the foothold I want to use to step up into the grandeur of our mission is a colony of mice beneath our sanctuary. Last winter as we endured the snow and ice that hung around a lot longer than it usually does, we were also greeted with the odor of dead rodents who sought refuge in our crawl space during the freezing temperatures. Something this earthy is hard to elevate to a higher spiritual plane. For as we consider this problem of mice seeking shelter and dying in our crawlspace, we, like the people around the tomb of Lazarus, are more aware of the presence of a stench than the presence of the Lord.
Yet there is in all of this a reminder of our mission and the implications of living into that mission. A big part of who we are and what we do takes place in a wonderful space where we worship God, in which we are encouraged and equipped with the resources we need to persevere on the Way, and from which we are sent into our various worlds where we reflect God’s love and light. In short, our building plays an important role in our mission and the mice are a reminder that the maintenance of our building is a big part of the equation of sustaining our ministry.
The sparrows may indeed find a home and the swallows a nest for themselves in the Lord’s house (Psalm 84:3), but someone also has to clean up after them if the temple is going to be maintained for its primary purpose.
One of the things we came to know here at Emmanuel in 2019 is the obvious truth that our “new” building won’t stay new. A big part of facing into 2020 will be living into the awareness of the costs associated with the upkeep of our facilities. The session is identifying and prioritizing a variety of maintenance projects that need attention. These projects will raise our annual expenses and we will be asking you to consider how you can be a part of helping us to meet these needs.
The good news in all of this is that we have a significant amount of money in reserve to meet many of these needs. We also have a congregation which has doubled in size since the completion of the building in 2009, and thus have twice as many people who can be a part of sharing this burden. But as we continue to pay down the remaining part of the mortgage (the principal balance now stands at about $270,000) we will also need to be adding these increasing maintenance costs to our annual budget.
We have a lot to be grateful for here at Emmanuel. Among those invitations to gratitude are our grounds and the buildings we have constructed on those grounds. The best way to thank God for these gifts is to be good stewards of these resources. Thank you for your commitment to participate in this expression of gratitude.
Dave Rohrer—January 23, 2020