Jacob`s Ladder: Building A Sidewalk

Phil Martin
May 3, 2009

In 1913 something important happened in Breslau. 1913 was the year Canada completed the National Transcontinental Railway from Moncton to Winnipeg. A November storm sunk 34 ships in the Great Lakes. Elsewhere in the world, clouds of a different sort were gathering. Just as fighting in the Balkans came to an end ~ when Greece, Serbia, Romania and Turkey defeated Bulgaria ~ the world edged closer to that terrible conflagration known as World War I.

So what happened in Breslau that was so important in the year 1913? A sidewalk was built.

When the road leading to the church from the village became more heavily travelled, the need for a sidewalk was apparent. The project was placed before the congregation and the community. This resulted in contributions from the entire community of the required $600.

The sidewalk was built in 1913 by Henry Lippert, Andrew Binder, Chester Buschert and other donated help.

$600 may not sound like a lot of money to you. But in 1913 this was about half of what a person might earn in a year. In 1913 a loaf of bread cost 6 cents, a gallon of gas was 12 cents, a gallon of milk could be purchased for 36 cents. The closest comparison to the $600 cost of the sidewalk would be a new car, which could be had for about $490.

The building of this sidewalk was an important event in the life of our congregation. It connected us to the community in a dramatic way. Not only did it carry people to and from the church, but it gave a powerful symbolic message that flowed in two directions, kind of like Jacob’s dream ladder: We are reaching out to our neighbourhood; our neighbours are welcome to worship with us.

This past week at conference, the focus was on the life cycle of churches. The presenter shared 4 big questions that are crucial for the renewal of any congregation. One of these questions reverberates profoundly for us today, in the year 2009:
“Who is our neighbour?”

In 1913 our church thought carefully about this question and they built a sidewalk. As the Riverland development takes on new shape we need to answer the question in new ways. “Who is our neighbour?” Perhaps it is not a sidewalk that we need to build. But what will be our Jacob’s ladder that says, “We care about you; come and be part of us.”