how many pastors does it take

After sitting in the lobby of the car place (not it's real name) while someone with skills and good old fashioned know-how exchanged bad oil for good, it was time to lace up the boots.

I was headed to the Clergy Build Day with Habitat For Humanity.

If you're not familiar with HFH, you should be (more info about that later).

I drive to the site, thinking about how good I should be able to be at this since, as a former youth pastor, I have helped at least 4 times in my life with construction projects. Granted half of those were in another country where if it stands when you are done, cool.
In spite of my lack of experience with construction, I think I impressed them with my cool Danner boots.
They looked good with my shorts.

So, out of all the clergy invited, five of us showed up.
And in true church-type form, we had pizza.

Once the niceties were through and the we were fueled up with Round Table, we hit it. (pun intended)

I suppose there are a number of stories that could be elaborated upon (someone kept sharing their silent-but-deadly's, no one had any tools and when they told us what to get and where to get it, we had to ask what they were talking about, etc...) but I will only share one - and that one is simply a question...

How may pastors does it take to frame a small wall?

My answer, and it comes from at least one day's experience, is 5 pastors and 90 minutes.
Framing is more difficult than it appears, and keeping those nails going in the wood correctly is a hand-eye thing not learned turning the pages of a Bible. After hammering wood together, we were told that was wrong - oops - so we hammered it apart, ruining some of the wood along the way - then we finally finished it.
When all was done, it was really done by the HFH folk either doing it as we stood there holding the wood, or them standing over us as we almost break other stuff.
Basically, we followed them around carrying hammers and a weird rectangle pencil. They gave us a bumper sticker and a key chain.
As I headed for Starbucks it struck me how cool today really was - and I began to think about how more pastors should be out of the office, swinging a hammer, digging a ditch, eating donated Round Table, working up a good sweaty stink, and.....

I probably could have thought of more things to write but I had to order my beverage and get back to the office = there was 'real' ministry that needed to get done.


Interested in HFH? read on:
Habitat for Humanity International is a nonprofit, ecumenical Christian housing ministry. HFHI seeks to eliminate poverty housing and homelessness from the world, and to make decent shelter a matter of conscience and action.

Habitat invites people of all backgrounds, races and religions to build houses together in partnership with families in need.
Habitat has built more than 250,000 houses around the world, providing more than 1 million people in more than 3,000 communities with safe, decent, affordable shelter.

www.habitat.org

Right on.

It is awesome