Many, many years ago, at a different time and place, Denise and I were married at the Otter Creek Church of Christ in Nashville. The church has grown (a lot) and built a new building (humongous). And they have a bright, gifted pulpit minister named Josh Graves. (Why are so many of the up and coming pulpit guys named “Josh”?)
And I’ve heard him preach — and the guy can bring it. And he can also write.
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This is a recent image of the Sagrada Familia. Once it is completed, it will be the largest basilica in the world. It was conceptualized and designed 130 years ago by an architect known humbly as God’s architect, Antoni Gaudi’s. Thought to have been 100 years ahead of his time, Gaudi gave the last 40 years of life obsessing over what he considered his one true gift back to God. he thought of the church as a gift back to God as penance for the sins of humanity. So he sought to create a truly majestic holy space in which people would connect with God and each other. In its features, he hoped to tell the whole story of the Catholic church specifically, and the church universal. It was intended to be a retelling of the entire Story of God at work in creation and history.
Gaudi knew his vision was too large for any one person so he painstakingly crafted countless models of different sections of the church in order that future architects, engineers, and designers would have the blue-print for his dreams.
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When asked “why—why give your whole life to this project?” the patriarch of the key architect family who’s kept Antoni’s Gaudi’s dream alive, he humbly responded simply, “Sagrada Familia is our way of giving something to the world.”
The reason I’m in ministry . . . I want to work hard at something that’s bigger than myself and something that might point people towards God long after I’m 6 feet under and forgotten. I want my work to be my gift to the world on behalf of God. Amen. Oh, and you don’t have to be a preacher to do that kind of work.
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I was actually thinking of writing a post along very similar lines — but I decided I’d rather repost Josh’s.
What Christians are called to build is the living church rather than buildings that will surely not survive the fire that consumes even if they survive for hundreds of years prior to that time.