In this part of the country, there are plenty of jokes about road construction. Partly it is a consequence of the compressed working season. Partly it is fatalism we will be stuck in long lines of closures, detours, single lane detours, and thousands of festive orange signs, barrels, and traffic cones. Road work is both a fact of life and fertile source of sermon illustrations to commuting ministers parked in construction zones.
There are a couple of very different approaches to fixing a rough patch of road. There is dumping a few shovels of asphalt patch in a pothole, tamping it down, and letting us drive over it to the cheerful rattle of gravel in our fenderwells. But sometimes it’s a lot more than a few holes, and a stretch of rough and ragged road needs to be repaired. There is paving over damaged pavement with a couple of inches of asphalt which covers the problems and smooths things out…. for a while. But the unevenness and damage and water seepage appears again after a few years. And, although we kinda hate it, sometimes it required more drastic work like grinding the roadway down half a foot or more and repaving it with a new base and a new finish layer. After all the damage suffered by Kline Road, that’s what they’ve done, gnawed it down to resurface.
And, when things are really, really major, you get massive rebuilding. While I worked for the Presbyterian Church in Watkins Glen, New York State undertook a half-year project to redo Franklin Street. Over the years, the 19th century infrastructure began to collapse due to heavy modern truck traffic, requiring they excavate down below the drainpipes and sewer lines, the water and gas lines above them, and the electrical and phone lines near the surface. In places, where the grade had changed markedly, they were stripping back six to eight feet deep. They then redid the utilities, laid down layers of coarse to regular crushed stone, gravel, and then an eight-inch base layer of asphalt and a double-thick surface layer withstand the truck traffic. It was a village-long project going all the way down like the Commons or parts of Hanshaw Road or the old section of Elmira Road.
Twenty years later the rebuilt Franklin Street is still rock solid even as Watkins’ traffic has risen even more.
You see my point? First Congregational of Ithaca has been doing some major spirit work in the last months, and yes, it seems like it’s taking forever and why can’t we just pave over things and get on with it? But doing too little is far worse than doing it right. Although some churches during transitional times have to dig down to fix the utilities, FCCI hasn’t needed to. The fundamentals are strong and in good shape (honestly!). But it has needed to do more than quickly pave over the bumps and spongy parts. We’ve had to grind off some of the patches and problems and fix some gullies and drainage and curbing and get back to solid footing before we repave and get on with our communal travel. Sorta like Hanshaw Road, huh? (If there was a part two to this blog I would riff on redoing the intersections on the main road and fixing the driveways by which families join traffic as being like how churches provide on-ramps for new participants to join the church family…)
It is resource-intensive and time-consuming to do the deep work aright. And, like road work that seems to last forever, properly doing the “infrastructure” part of the pastoral search takes time and effort. And, like road work, we know that doing it right is worth it (although, honestly, we do like to complain about it while we are waiting for the machinery to rumble along or while jouncing along the torn up surface; just keep your muttering under your breath and be truly supportive of the Search Committee as they scrape away to the solid stuff and do the job properly, ok?).
Notice that this image is about a road, not a parking lot. We don’t do all of this to park and stay still. Either roadways or congregations. Roadwork and search work presuppose going someplace, not staying put. We do it to get people moving in and out of our community of faith and family. I believe doing the fundamentals correctly will be very, very interesting to people not currently part of FCCI. And I believe there are folks out there waiting to drive on new lanes to the grace of God lived out from this place. Folks are ready to move. So let’s be ready for lots of new traffic!
In Christ,
David
A quick reminder: our own Elizabeth Thonney will be leading worship this Sunday while I am off moderating the Presbyterian Synod of the Northeast. My great appreciation to her!
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