Why construct church buildings?
Since most of the churches in our area start out as house churches, you may be wondering why we have a ministry to help with church construction. There are two reasons for this. First, the home churches have a tendency to quickly outgrow the tiny local houses. Many of the houses in the remote villages of Lempira are smaller than the average bedroom in a home in the US. Secondly, many of these congregations are in areas where the population is living at a subsistence level, and can't possibly produce excess funds for a church construction project.
One major thing we do to help church construction project is to provide advice on construction methods. Some traditional building methods aren't very long-lasting, and a few fairly minor changes (such as adding cement and rebar to a stone foundation, instead of using only mud, and adding a band of cement on top of the mud brick walls) can result in a much sturdier, longer lasting building.
We have a set of very specific rules, for churches to receive funding for a church construction project:
1. The land upon which the church will be constructed must be owned by the church or denomination, not by any one individual.
2. The church congregation needs to be motivated to have a church building, and be willing to put in the necessary labor to make it happen. The early stages of construction involve lots of manual labor, gathering local materials (like sand, gravel and rocks from the river, wood from the forests, creating mud bricks, etc). We wait to help a church financially until these early stages are completed. In that way, we know that the congregation is really taking ownership of the project.
3. We only provide a portion of the financial cost of construction on any given project. We take into consideration the financial standing of the congregation, when we decide how much outside funding is needed.
4. We never hand out money - we purchase the materials for the church (usually materials for the roof structure and the roof itself).
As of July 2010, we've helped with over 50 church construction projects.
Follow this link to read updates about church construction projects on our blog.
The Azacualpa Church Building Project
Here are some pictures of one of our favorite church construction projects, the Los Amigos Church in Azacualpa. This congregation had a lot of motivation and personal desire to see their new church building completed. This church is also an excellent example of the kind of partnership we like to be involved in with the local churches. In the pictures, you will see the progression of construction from the time we became involved with them. They had already torn down their old building, and had begun construction of new walls. The congregation contributed all of the labor, including:
- collecting stones, sand and gravel from the river for the foundation and
cement work,
- tearing down the original structure and salvaging all usable
materials,
- making adobe bricks from local mud,
- installing the adobe bricks using adobe mud,
- installing the cement beams (around windows and doors) and installing
the cement wall cap,
- picking up the lumber from the forest (using oxen for transport),
- cutting and installing roof rafters, and
- installing ceramic roof tiles.
We were able to help this congregation with construction advice, and financial support. The entire project cost approximately $750. Of this amount, our contribution was $500, given in materials (cement, rebar, and lumber.) This enabled the church to continue their construction without delays caused by lack of funds.
Progress at the time
we first became involved. Laying the 50 pound adobe blocks.
Completed church walls, with cement cap.
Bringing the lumber from the forest.
Jose, the one man
sawmill, creates 1 x 4's. Completed roof rafters, more lumber
arrives.
Throwing ceramic
tiles. Almost under roof, just in time for rainy season.
How else would you get them up there?
