Next week our shared St. John’s-St. Luke’s parking garage is scheduled to open. It is an exciting time. It means that our three-year construction project is completed, and, for me as a staff member, that is a little bittersweet. Yes, the bus was inconvenient, but there were some pluses to riding the shuttle. For starters, I have been a member of St. Luke’s my entire life, but until the shuttle dropped me off, I had never entered the Sanctuary through our beautiful front entry. There is a kind of camaraderie that develops when we are put together with others in the same situation. We form a bond, even if for a brief time. And during that time we talked about our church and the sermon and we got to know each other. It was genuine fellowship and it was good.

Kerry, pictured above, often drove the shuttle bus I took from the Briar Club garage. He told me what a blessing it had been for him to get to know St. Luke’s and how kind all the members had been. Although he was never actually in one of our worship services, he began watching the videos. He also said that he would ask his passengers what they learned that morning, and he had some interesting conversations. Kerry told me he would miss his Sundays driving but the first thing he was going to do when the assignment was over was to actually attend a St. Luke’s worship service—to sit inside and be a part of it rather than just hear about it secondhand. I hope Kerry is with us soon, and I can’t wait to welcome him inside our church.

As we began the capital campaign in 2013, Dr. Pace told us the experience would bring us together in ways we could never imagine, and he was right. The construction period has been my favorite time at St. Luke’s. It was exciting and it was messy and it was inconvenient, but most of all it challenged us to be our very best and to keep the important things first. We had to continually remind ourselves that what we were building was not about us, but about building the Kingdom of God, and construction may be over, but there’s still plenty of work to do. And that is the real icing on the cake.