Dear BPCWA worshipper, Have you ever moaned that work around the house never ends? There is the constant cycle of things to do around the house. Laundry needs to be washed, dried, ironed, folded. Floors that need to be swept, vacuumed, or mopped. Not to mention the many “little things” around the house that need cleaning or repairing. Besides these, there is the “more major” maintenance required. Gutters must be cleared. Pipes need to be flushed to clear blockages. Of course, there are the repairs that are needed too. New houses have repairs needed, but as we stay and use things around the house, more things break down – from plumbing to electricals to even more extensive repairs. Do you ever stop to think that this also happens in God’s house, the church? While we come into the church every week and things seem fine, we must realise that a lot goes on behind the scenes in the upkeep of the church. Taps and cisterns leak and drip. And even when repaired, they leak and drip again after a while, or another tap starts to do so. Needed repairs increase as the signs of age begin to show in our church buildings and grounds. On top of these, there are the unexpected breakdowns that urgently need the right and reliable tradie to come onsite, not to mention coordinating and persuading them to come in this environment of scarce resources. In this pastoral, I’d like to update worshippers on some of the things that we’ve been doing recently in terms of taking care of our church facilities.

Electric Gate. Some may be aware that we faced some problems with the electric gate leading into the rear carpark. Just as we arrived at church in preparation for the pre-worship prayer, we found that the gate could not be opened via the keypad or remote. It was important to resolve this speedily since our Canning Highway carpark alone would not be able to accommodate the cars of our worshippers. The deacons attended to this immediately outside while we continued in prayer during the pre-worship prayer. In answer to prayer, a workaround enabled the gate to be manually pushed open using a key. However, this meant that the deacons had to manually pull the gate, close, and lock it at the end of the day too after the last meeting in the church was over. Without the keypad, this meant the deacon also had to, together with others, pull the rubbish bins out before bin day since the cleaner would not be able to open the gate. The gate company’s technician who came in later during the week found that he could not troubleshoot the gate because there was no power reaching the gate. Then an electrician had to be called in instead. This electrician took some time to troubleshoot but still could not conclusively point out what was causing the power to trip.  The best guess was that it was due to the wet weather that had hit us before that. We committed this to God at our prayer meetings and God graciously answered as the gate started to work again after a few days without any intervention. Shortly after this, Perth was inundated with water from heavy rains and flash floods. Despite our fears that the rains would cause the problem to recur, the gate continued to work steadily.  However, the gate failed to open again on another Sunday. Again, deacons had to troubleshoot the problem while we prayed at the pre-worship prayer. This time, the problem was traced to the failed battery in the keypad, which was a totally unrelated problem to the first! Meanwhile, our deacons are keeping tabs on its function, and I saw a deacon checking on the keypad battery one night before a fellowship meeting while it was drizzling.  Will the gate fail again? Only time will tell, but we pray that it will at least last until the extension works as we hope not to have to spend money to repair it at this stage. 

Move of furniture. A few weeks ago, we decided to board up some windows, and also move cupboards to line the windows of Nehemiah house as a security feature since the deteriorating condition of the windows were easy entry points for intruders and squatters. This was done by the deacons together with some husbands and fathers after Husbands Fellowship one Sunday afternoon. Separately, as we heard in the church extension communication update, we are in the final phases before going out for tender. To prepare for the work that will begin, someone has been assigned to be responsible for relocating furniture from the church into Jeremiah house for storage or for disposing of unwanted ones. You may have seen some coloured stickers on items around the church. These helped to plan how to store the items into Jeremiah house. Thoughtful planning on the brother’s part and diligent follow-up enabled the work to be executed smoothly. Through careful and creative ideas, money was saved to avoid hiring a storage container to house the items. Behind the scenes one recent Saturday, we had the first “Relocation Day”. A group of men gathered to help. Some furniture in Jeremiah house had to be dismantled to create space and prepare the rooms to be used as storage areas to be ready for the eventual renovation. I have attached some photos of the emptied-out rooms in Jeremiah house as well as of the process of relocating items outside Jeremiah house. God willing, we will have more “Relocation Days” in the coming months.

This is but a tip of the iceberg glimpse of what goes on backstage. More is done which I am not even aware of – such as when I got down from my car one rainy night before fellowship to find someone sweeping and binning the fallen leaves in the dark outside Nehemiah house. Taking care of God’s house is a lot more than just the Busy Bee activities, for which we are thankful that many put in their labours to help. It takes much attention and constant diligence to attend to the many matters that turn up. In addition to the spiritual aspect of feeding God’s sheep, there is the physical aspect that many are involved in.

The purpose of this pastoral is not to praise or point out anyone for their labour. God knows who’s doing what and that is their eternal reward. Instead, it is for us to realise that there is much work in the church that is done backstage. We must be thankful for those that God has provided to BPCWA to do His work because this is much needed especially in our case where God has given us physical premises to take care of. As men probably realise when they are called upon to fix things around the house, maintenance takes much time, work, and effort. Sometimes, what you fix still doesn’t work properly and it requires attention again. It is dirty, hands-on work, sometimes standing in the rain and cold to fix a problem. We don’t realise how much we need our windows to seal out water until it leaks and the cold draft and rain seep in. For us in our house, we realise how painful repairs can be when tradies come in to fix something. I hope that with this pastoral, we begin to see how much goes on behind the scenes, though generally unpublicised.

While such and much more take up a lot of time, energy, and perseverance of everyone in the Session with the help of many willing brethren, there is a far more important point and lesson that I want to communicate which I will leave to next week’s pastoral.

Yours in our Lord’s service,
Pastor