Forming the Vision

(this was not so much an event as a process)

The progression of events that led up to and fulfilled the vision of the Ashmont Community Resources centre is a testimony to a big God who wants to do big things with His willing people….

Growth program

Prior to embarking on the growth program to expand our ministry in Ashmont- through building the Ashmont Community Resources centre and expanding our worship area to house an anticipated increased congregation, the going was so hard that the rector was led to exclaim to the Parish Council that it was so hard to get anything moving! One Parish Councillor remarked, “Yes, its hard to fly like an eagle when surrounded by turkeys”

Fob watch

Then a Parish Councillor chose to purchase a fob-watch with an eagle on it. This was given to the rector to encourage him to realize, every time he looked at the time, that he was being carried on the wings of an eagle (Is 40:31)/ that God was carrying him, and the Parish, and this has proven to be true.

Community Centre

The parish had thought of seeking the adjacent Government House, at low rental, to open it up to the community as a Community Centre, that could offer counselling as well as a drop-in centre. We were told that it was being sold at auction. We were disappointed because we couldn’t see any way to buy it. We were already in heavy debt and could hardly pay for our priest’s stipend.

Counselling room

The Parish then explored the idea of enclosing a small area to the back of the existing worship space to offer a counselling room. In a congregational meeting the parishioners vetoed this idea because they needed this space to house future worshipers. The priest lamented that our vision was very small if we could only ever hope to increase our worshipping numbers by the ten people this space housed.

Reading of a book by Yonggi Cho

The priest was led to read a book by Yonggi Cho- “The Fourth Dimension”. In this book Yonggi Cho explains how he was convicted by the Lord to be prepared to think not in human terms but to recognize God is a big God wanting to do Big things with His people. The priest was convicted their parish of the Community of the Redeemer had to think a bigger vision which matched the Lord’s calling. To use Yonggi Cho’s words,  “You have to renew your mind. Think constantly in terms of God’s success, in terms of God’s victory, in terms of God’s abundance.” We started on this path.

  One of the steps in Yonggi Cho being led to build the $5.5 million cathedral complex in Korea- to house 10,000 people, was his willingness to sell his own home to pave the way for other donors to do likewise. The priest felt convicted to sell the rectory. His family miraculously joined him in this vision, realizing they lived in a grander house than the neighbourhood. Bishop in Council would not let them sell the rectory but like so often is the case with God, we have to be willing and then He provides.

 Buy the house next door!

The parish Council decided we would try to buy the house next door. We would move it and extend our worship area and build the family counselling centre. We would do this as a response to God’s call to minister in Ashmont and we would do it in God’s strength (1 Thes 4: 25).

 But we had no money so we invited the congregation to offer non-interest loans to see whether they were willing to stand by the vision. This was a tall order indeed as there are only a few professional families in this parish!

Purchasing of the land if we could raise $48,000!

Bishop in Council agreed to allow us to purchase the site and land if we could raise the proposed $48,000 purchase price. We did miraculously raise the $48,000 in two weeks via non-interest parishioner-loans for an 18 month period. We were on the way, except that the house ended up having a reserve price of $50,000. What were we to do?

Papers at the front-door

When the purchasing representative saw papers at the front-door of the new house advertising the fob-watch with the eagle on it, he was convicted that it was right to buy house. In the coming week, the extra $2000 was raised in further donations and loans.

 $25,000 in loans

A further $25,000 in loans was approved to move and refurbish the house. This was not enough to pay professionals to do the extensive remodelling needed. The same parishioner who gave the fob-watch- David, a very handy local handyman, offered to do most of the labour of refurbishment for free. This was an amazing gift given the very labour intensive nature of removing both internal and some external load-bearing walls of the old Government house. He set to work, alongside the Parish priest who was an architect before entering the ministry.

God redeeming His creation!

There began a living enactment of God providing for and through His people…but not without our integral involvement…we began a journey to understand God’s unique way of redeeming His people…He makes them new but they still wear the blemishes of their past…God was to provide many a gift of materials (and sometimes labour) which were like the loaves and fishes…they had to be offered, they had to be seen as God-given, sometimes disguised but when offered-up (sanctified) could be transformed to meet their particular need, but the transformation was not without the blemishes.  

When the bishop came to look at the new building and site purchase he said, “Ah, you’re redeeming another little patch of Ashmont!”  This was to be prophetically symbolic of all the work to follow.

Deep clay soils

 We paid a Christian engineer to do the structural design for the building. Because of the deep clay soils of Ashmont- like a quagmire in winter and parched-land in summer, he designed very deep and substantial footings. When the local neighbourhood saw us digging them one retort was, “Are you digging a swimming pool?” The ones who spent the time to listen heard about how we need a sure foundation to build a church and that foundation was Jesus Christ… The neighbourhood is sometimes like a quagmire. We felt as if we were building God’s ark and the neighbourhood was responding likewise.

 How to get all the materials?

Have you ever wondered how Noah got all the materials- We can tell you! Some were paid for at ‘church discount rates’ (whatever that meant to individual traders), some were bartered at second-hand prices, and some were just ‘surprise packages’. Perhaps some illustrations of the latter two.

Learn a new trade!

David has a joke that the Lord would give him work experience to learn a new trade, so that he could then apply it in the new church building. He worked with a glazier who told him about the skylight.

The sky-light was from an arcade in Wagga that had had a fire. The sky light was smoke damaged so the insurance company wrote it off and the builder who had scavenging rights sold it to us for a minimum price. (God let us tender a little more than the next highest bidder) The skylight formed the 12m x 1.5m joining-element between the new and the old building. It symbolically floods the new worship area with the light of Christ! A parishioner had had a vision about this light flooding the internal space long before we found this. The skylight had to be dismantled, cleaned, cut to fit its new opening size and re-assembled. This was a tribute to David’s new-found glazing skills and his Godly vision - that you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when God does the giving! He provides the calling and with the calling provides the strength- 1 Thes 4:24 (paraphrased).

 The $200 package at auction

David was checking out all sources for materials. He was led to attend an auction where he picked up a package for $200. The package contained 2 sliding glass doors, bought to replace existing doors (not without modification of course) that might be broken again in the future (the front sliding doors to the building have been vandalised since- costing $400 a panel to replace new). It also provided two casement- window walls that fitted exactly in existing internal openings. This provided a crying room for the existing ‘child-intensive’ worship-space; the room has always been dreamed about but never thought possible (which will also double as an office-space). Two additional spring loaded solid doors have also been included in the new design.

Glazing skills

Glazing skills were further used to modify two huge sliding-glass doors from the Albury police-station to form the new sanctuary wall. And of course they had two panels missing, which used to have the police-emblem on them, so that the rector was led to use his artistic skills to scratch new designs on perspex, to symbolize the parish vision- you guessed it- an eagle on one panel (Is 40:31) and a person being set-free by the cross of Christ, on another (see Parish vision). Two sets of glass doors were also purchased from a glazier’s second-hand stock (for $20 ea).

Colour scheme

The doors were painted blue (which gives a touch of excitement to the walls) because one of the glass door sets was metallic-blue anodized. We say the paint-colours generally were chosen by God. God brought a lovely new family to join us. When they heard we were moving a church they knew this was the church for them! He was a painter with various amounts of paint left-over from previous jobs. He showed us the paint colours. We chose the colour that he had the most of- a deep blue green, and it has formed an amazingly peaceful interior, fitting for the house of God’s people.

The carpet

Choosing the carpet colour was a fiasco we’re still not sure rested in the good Lord’s hands but He certainly used it to His good purposes. We purchased some carpet second-hand. We rejoiced in what seemed to be a good buy. When we were poised to lay-it with the carpet layers on site, it proved to be quite blemished and insufficient to cover the space. The carpet-layers put us onto a source of cheap carpet so we purchased a new lot which demanded a border to get enough to cover the area. We laid the border and then found the new carpet was also damaged at the centre of the roll. A new colour- a very light blue-green, was then purchased which matches the style of the border and has proved to be very resilient to staining from the clayey soils. Was this a fiasco or just ‘the joy coming in the morning’ (Ps 30:5)? This could be seen as a path to learn not to be too blind in our faith, that we have to test the provisions of the Lord to truly see whether they are from Him. Either way, He brought good out of this, not without some pain though.

The external finishes

The building was much damaged on the external walls. We decided to seek bricks to match the existing brickwork. There were only enough to do the end walls (these had been miraculously stock-piled for about 20 years). The bricklayer showed us a new product- aerated concrete panels that could be erected by us. Whilst he was showing us these panels erected on another site, an eagle flew up from the paddock adjacent, so we felt convicted it was right to use these panels.

Some of the signs identified in this article may seem like superstition in some people’s eyes but we’ve come to expect the Lord to lead us in mysterious ways, and we are also learning how to be more discerning in when to have the gift of faith, to believe the leadings are from Him.