Concrete Steps
January 1, 2003
Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith, Eric O. Jacobsen (Brazos, 2003), 192 pp. A few summers ago, I spent a long hot day hauling wheelbarrows full of wet cement up a long incline in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. I was there with a group of Silicon Valley professionals and families. Our five-year-old church, The River Church Community, had been developing a sister relationship with Iglesia en Transformación, a 25-year-old urban church made up of Honduran professionals and their families. We've been taking groups of adults (and some of their children) to Honduras for nearly four years now. Iglesia en Transformación was in the long process of building its first permanent facility on a piece of property they had purchased 15 years before. As a "church-in-a-box" ourselves, we identified with our sister church's desire to have a place to call home, and we were inspired by their vision to build, not a church that would sometimes be used as a community resource center, but a community center that on Sundays would be used as a church. We were challenged by their willingness to place themselves right between Central American Technical University and Los Pinos, a community of roughly 100,000 residents, mostly squatters, facing abject poverty and its attendant complications. When we arrived, however, we found the building behind schedule. Earthmoving-on a massive scale-was still underway. As we gathered around wondering what our role could possibly be, one of our Honduran brothers explained to us that we would be building a sidewalk. Though most of us were too sophisticated to show it, we were dubious. A sidewalk? Was this the best use of the expertise we office-dwelling, weak-backed, Silicon Valley professionals had ...
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