Our Vision

Harald, our neighbour, is refurbishing his house and old stables. They are about 250 years old and date from when Kemnat was a tiny farming village. So far Harald has completely refurbished one apartment, repainted the weather wall on the house and built a new heating system, bathroom and workshop. He has put wooden cladding on the weather wall of the stable, and reinforced an unsafe back wall with three tonnes of concrete. He lifted all three tons in a 20-litre bucket. Harald’s neighbours said that the house should be demolished. No one else wanted the house; everyone expected it to be pulled down and replaced. But he refurbished it anyway. Harald had a vision for his house.

He is a product manager, not a builder. He doesn’t claim special skills, in fact he told me how one outbuilding almost fell down because of a mistake he made. But now after six years of work his family lives in the apartment, and his children have a big garden around in the stable and the old farmyard. Next week he’ll replace the entire house roof.

I think our vision is at the ‘20-litre bucket’ stage. We are doing what we believe is right. There are occasional gaps when we wonder what is going on, and sometimes it is very hard work. Sometimes people wonder what we are doing because we are around the back lifting concrete, but we are moving toward the vision that we have, for the community of believers, and community, and for the arts/environment centre where God is glorified. Sometimes the vision isn’t clear even to us. That’s one thing difference we have with the work Harald is doing. He has his own vision, with his goals he can see and it will end sometime. We are following someone else’s, and we can’t see the results yet, but they will last into eternity.