On Sunday morning, I went looking for a church. It had moved location and the girl I met at the old site instructed me, “Get on the over-bridge and go up the steps a bit and then it will be just there.” I crossed the over-bridge, the one beyond the war cemetery, and climbed up the steps. There was no church in sight. I kept climbing up and looking for signs of a church, perhaps a cross or some such marker. At one point, I worried that I was headed in the wrong direction because the church-goers dressed in their Sunday best were walking past me in the opposite direction. A few paces later, I noticed two young girls and a boy standing at the entrance to a hall that looked as though it had been carved into the hillside. It looked remarkable and the story of how the church came to be built was just as remarkable.
The construction began with just one lakh and ninety-six thousand rupees in the church coffers. The only other resources they had were prayer and faith in God’s providence. The small church congregation witnessed many miracles as their leap of faith began. Their meager funds were soon depleted. The mistris needed money every second day. On one occasion, in the cash memo for sand, cement and bricks, the payment for sand was missing. The mystery was solved later in the day when the owner of the shop clarified that the sand was a gift from his shop. On another occasion, the team was heading to Dimapur to buy cheap cement when a phone call came. The caller said he wanted to give a few bags of cement to the church. So they cut short the trip to Dimapur, and returned home and discovered that the ‘few bags’ of cement were more than enough to complete the construction. Several people, hearing of the church building came forward to donate amounts of money differing in generosity. On any given day, people turned up to help them in the construction work. Total strangers stopped by and donated money. All these gifts of love sufficed to build the church, and the members found that they could finally have their church dedication on the 17th of June, a day before Fathers’ day. The Pastor testified, “God stopped the rain every time we needed to work. God turned up with money every time we needed to pay the mistris.”
It’s a wonderful story: the house that God literally built by sending the balu and cement exactly on time, and repeating that story for all their other needs. Their needs were so wonderfully met, and they had resolved never to apply the well-known strategy of new church buildings – extorting one month’s salary from the members. God provided. “He always reminded us of His faithfulness. He was always reminding us, ‘I am your father; I will look after you,’” affirmed the pastor. It was such an apt sermon for Fathers’ Day.
Sitting inside the church that looked more like a hangar than a church, and pondering upon all that the pastor had shared was soul enlightening. So this is the kind of church God builds when He gets going, I mused. It was quiet because it was high above the din of traffic. It would seat about 80 to 100 people, and church would be rather like a family gathering of an extended family. Everyone would get to know everyone else and get the opportunity to love on each other, as well as the intimacy to share each other’s burdens. Yet it did not lack the sacredness we associate with a church.
There is nothing wrong with big churches, and kudos to the beautifully constructed church at Zunheboto. It’s the town’s pride and beauty and its own testament of faith. Big or small, each church will have its own amazing story to tell.
The church that God built is a family story that will be repeated from generation to generation about a God who showed up with the balu and ita exactly when his children needed it. Every ear who hears this story will feel privileged to be a listener to such an intimate family history. I certainly did.
