Over the centuries, with empires as its tax base, the Christian Church was able to build monstrous and gaudy structures; adorned with the finest art work and toil craft to be found in the known world. Houses of God were drafty halls of gold, marble-faced, echoing tombs, sun and candle-lit mausoleums; commemorating the Body of a sickly faith. In communities where starvation and slavery were commonplace, it is unfathomable that a Jesus God would have wanted the wealth of the world to be put to such uses.
Fast forward to today. In Albania there are little pocket churches in many of the communities in and around major cities. An acquaintance of mine named Pastor Brewer oversees two of these churches. We visited one today on the road from Tirana to Mount Dajti. The church is a simple 4 x 5 meter, rectangle constructed of cinder-blocks which have been finished and painted on the inside and allowed to sit, raw to the elements, on the outside. There is mold in the dropped, press-board ceiling from water intrusion. A single door and two windows provide light from without while two light bulbs hang from the ceiling, suspended by the electrical wires which bring the bulbs their power.
As we walked around the site, and Norm asked me what I thought needed to be done to improve the building, I noticed the affluence throughout the rest of the neighborhood. The lowest structure of them all is this church. It is so obviously a house of God, for who would travel to such a place by choice, except to commune with something divine and inspiring? Who would dress in finery, only to have it soiled on the journey, that they might sit in a cramped, drafty, unfinished space for two hours on their day off, if it did not bring them life?
albaniacalling 