Image from AP
If this pic wasn’t on AP, my first thought would have been PhotoShop! But, it’s legit. You can find videos of 300 Amish men moving this huge barn at least 100 yards up a slight hill. Estimates are 17,000 lbs, but that’s a very do-able 60 pounds per man. Ah, the value of working together to do what we can’t on our own. Yes, we do some things best solo or a few others, maybe a small group, but our power gets multiplied when together.
I often use Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 in weddings, but the principle fits all, “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no-one to help him up! Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” The third strand: God’s involvement. God didn’t design us to be lone wolves.
I tend to be a loner. When younger, I pondered moving into the wilds of the Idaho panhandle, following the lead of Sylvan “Buckskin Bill,” the last of the mountain men. But the concept of believers being connected into a body wouldn’t allow that selfishness, “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink” (I Corinthians 12:12-13).
Notice the grammar: the singular body of Christ, just one. But we, the body parts, are plural. A lot of us, designed to be connected to one another as one group. ALL one anothers. But why? Ephesians 4:11-13 reveals the secret of moving barns, “It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fulness of Christ.”
We all bring talents and abilities and gifts to the one body to build the kingdom corporately, and to become mature individually. We can do neither—without a functional connection to the body of Christ. No more Buckskin Bill for me. Nor you. No more Lone Ranger Christians who don’t connect solidly with a congregation of others. When we ignore that gathering, the working together, we hurt both the body of Jesus and our own spiritual vitality.
Kick Starting the Application
How connected are you to a greater fellowship of followers? Do you work together with them for kingdom purposes? Or, are you moving barns for Jesus with others? That can be done, when we work together.