CMA MANAGEMENT MONTHLY NUMBER 63
AUGUST 2002
TRENDS AND NEWS
FOR MEMBERS OF CHRISTIAN MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION
KEY ARTICLES/LINKS/UPDATES--IN THIS ISSUE:
> Built to Last for 500 Years!
> The 10-P Model™
> Quiz on 50 Events That Shape Our Ministry
> Tryggare Kan Ingen Vara
> The Carver Model of Board Governance
> NavPress’ Lifetime Guarantee (What do you guarantee?)
> Write an Article for CMA’s Magazine
>>>>>FIRST THOUGHTS
“Wisdom has to do with becoming skillful in honoring our parents and raising our children, handling our money and conducting our sexual lives, going to work and exercising leadership, using words well and treating friends kindly, eating and drinking healthily, cultivating emotions within ourselves and attitudes toward others that make for peace. Threaded through all of these items is the insistence that the way we think of and respond to God is the most practical thing we do. In matters of everyday practicality, nothing, absolutely nothing, takes precedence over God.” (Eugene H. Peterson in his introduction to Proverbs, “The Message Bible,” published by NavPress)
>>>>> BUILT TO LAST FOR SURE! L.A. BUILDS A NEW CATHEDRAL TO LAST 500 YEARS!
Eddie Lohr, 53, a partner in Carevale & Lohr, had a religious experience at work. His company, according to the Los Angeles Times, installed the stone flooring, the altars, the baptismals, the fountains in the plaza, the courtyards and mausoleums in the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, the $189.5 million mother church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the nation’s largest. It was dedicated to God on Sept. 2, in a four-hour service, by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony.
Lohr, supervised up to 45 workers for almost two years (but the entire project took six years and 2,000 workers). A Lutheran, he has worked on about 20 Catholic churches over the last two decades. According to Hilary E. MacGregor, staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, the cathedral was a humbling project for Lohr.
She wrote, “At times he became overwhelmed by the magnitude of the job and the timetable. He would ask God to help him get from one day to the next. He discovered in himself a new kind of perfectionism. Sometimes, after a long day, he’d be on his knees until 9 p.m., ripping out stones that weren’t perfectly laid.”
“Because when you are working on a cathedral, doing work for the church, for God,” said Lohr, “it has to be right.”
The 12-story cathedral, conference center, and cardinal’s residence, which overlooks the Hollywood Freeway in Los Angeles, greets visitors with 25-ton great bronze doors and $6 million worth of art and tapestries. The architect was Jose Rafael Moneo, who flew to L.A. once a month from Spain for six years. The plan, depending on God’s timetable, is for the building to last 500 years. (The last cathedral was damaged in an earthquake.) Cash and pledges have covered the entire cost, according to the archdiocese. More than 5,000 donor names are included in the donor appreciation wall and paving bricks.
I Chronicles 28 and 29 describes an earlier building project. David, upon handing the temple blueprints to Solomon, admonishes his son, “Be strong and courageous and get to work. Don’t be frightened by the size of the task, for the Lord my God is with you; he will not forsake you.” At the assembly of all the people, David added, “My son Solomon, who God has chosen to be the next king of Israel, is still young and inexperienced, and the work ahead of him is enormous; for the temple he will build is not just another building—it is for the Lord God himself!” (The Living Bible)
For more info: www.latimes.com/cathedral or http://www.olacathedral.org.
