The Lord has shown great kindness to us as a congregation, and has given us a wonderful piece of property on the south side of our town. If the Lord wills and enables us, it is our intent to build a beautiful sanctuary there.
Since we are doing this in the aftermath of several years of false accusations and lies raised against us by a small but industrious band of false accusers, there will be a temptation to talk about this sanctuary with a “take that” kind of attitude. However strong that temptation might be, the elders are asking you to not give way to it.
There are various spiritual reasons for this, one of them being that doing touchdown dances in front of your adversary is rarely good for your soul. Pride goeth before the tumble.
But there are also several practical reasons for this. The first is that those who have made the controversies erupt in the past are largely a spent force. We needed to take them seriously for a time, when we were in the thick of it, but the need for that has largely diminished. There are still a few things here and there, but we are not in the same position we were in a few years ago—with many thanks to God for it.
The second practical reason is that the jiggy taunt response is completely inappropriate for those whom we are now addressing—the community of Moscow at large. These are folks who do not have any vested interest in fighting with us, but all they know are bits and pieces from the last few years. They don’t have any grounded reason for being worried over what we might do, but they might still feel that way. Just slightly nervous—how you might feel, for example, if the Mormons were going to build there, or the followers of TuCar Gaharaji.
We want our presence in Moscow—personally, educationally, culturally, and architecturally—to be a blessing to the entire town. The flaps are largely over—and so our demeanor in this entire endeavor should be that of gratitude to God and sensitive reassurance to our well-meaning neighbors.