Workers connected to both the ELCA and Mennonite churches in Davidsville, Pa., raise the walls for a family home in Paige, Texas. Fires in fall 2011 destroyed the home of Sheena Patterson, who said, “At one point I was told I was on my own—that this was too big for local help. … It doesn’t matter where help comes from. God can do anything even if it means going to Pennsylvania for help. We will see them later without it being about the house.”
A A
A ministry metaphor In this community, building walls had a way of breaking them down By Julie B. Sevig
Mennonite church in Pennsyl- vania was nudged into a project by studying Nehemiah, who brought his community together to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem. Ben Miller, a pastor of Kaufman Mennonite Church, Davidsville, did much the same—and he invited local Lutherans to join him. Miller wanted to do a project off the church property and, fittingly, discovered a wall-building effort through Mennonite Disaster Service. Wanting to involve other community churches, he called Greg Van Dyke, a pastor of St. David Evangelical Lutheran Church. “We embraced it immediately,” Van Dyke said. They named their project the Davidsville Nehemiah Proj- ect, leaving off any reference to denominations.
The result was indeed walls— walls that would become a home for a 10-member family near Bastrop,
38 The Lutheran •
www.thelutheran.org
Texas, that lost their house to wild- fires more than a year ago. The walls were constructed on an
empty lot in the center of Davids- ville two Saturdays in August, creating quite a community buzz. “Our community is close anyway,” Van Dyke said, “but the piece that hooked everybody, the goal, was to lift up Christ. Not the Lutheran or Mennonite churches, but to lift up Christ and give an opportunity to people to be part of something big- ger than themselves.” Van Dyke called the project
“insight into what kingdom will ulti- mately be.”
Davidsville, population 1,130, has been torn apart by a mining issue—a family that owns a good deal of land wanted to strip-mine it. But during the wall project, “people on both sides of the issue were hammering nails together,” Van Dyke said. The township commissioner who voted
against the mining worked next to the man who would have profited from it. Neighborhood yards that held mining-related signs also held “Nehe- miah Builds Community” signs. “We built community, and isn’t
that what God created us for? We’re created for community, we’re built for it, or to rebuild community where we’ve done harm. … What people really want is to make a difference in the world,” Van Dyke said. “The question is how.” The answer to that question was to build a home for strangers six states away. The walls were deliv- ered to Texas in September, accom- panied by a crew from both congre- gations to erect them. Since then several teams have returned to Texas to continue the project, including three Mennonite women who drove to the house dedi- cation/blessing bearing quilts made with the Lutheran women. In late January, another team returned to finish the trim, paint and reconnect with the family. “This couldn’t have happened without the work of the Holy Spirit,” said Van Dyke, describing the visit to deliver the walls. The grandma and matriarch of the household made them Cajun gumbo from her native New Orleans. “Imagine 27 people seated at a conglomeration of tables—but ultimately one table and one body—in a FEMA trailer,”
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52