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Lessons From a Flood

Our church building was flooded on April 15, 2019. Our basements flooded and we had about six inches of water on the main floor.  The days since that event have been a rollercoaster of questions, challenges, rays of hope and more challenges. We have learned a lot over these past days and I am sharing some of those insights below.

1) First and foremost, the church is a body of people, not a building.  I have preached this for years, but it was pretty much just theology, now it is reality to us.  Who knows when we will be back in our building, but that does not stop us from being a church.  We need to be God's blessing to others no matter where we meet for services. "Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it" 1 Corinthians 12:27.

 2) Energy needs direction. We have lots of offers of help but we are not experienced in re-mediating a building after a flood.  We are trying to figure out the best next steps but every potential step forward requires other steps to be completed first. All of the energy that is being offered needs to be focused on specific projects to be effective and meaningful.  We need God's wisdom and guidance "If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him" James 1:4.

3) Water is amazingly powerful. If you just look at water in a lake or a stream it can look so peaceful and placid, but that is when it is within its boundaries and serves us. When water comes outside of its boundaries it is inconvenient, damaging, weighty, consuming and destructive (yes, there is a sermon illustration in there :-)

4) Looking back I can see that God has been preparing us for this time.  He has not been preparing us to be able to handle a flooded building, he has been preparing us to be a unified body of believers through a time of trial.  Stress tends to erode relationships because small frustrations suddenly seem larger.  God has been leading us to become more mature and loving so that this kind of event does not break us, by God's grace it will make us more like him.

God's desire is "to equip the saints for works of ministry, to build up the body of Christ, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God, as we mature to the full measure of the stature of Christ" Ephesians 4:12-13
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