Loose Rivets Sink Ships (and churches)

CNN is reporting a new study that says the Titanic sank due to weak rivets.

Turns out that there was a world-wide rivet shortage in 1910-1912 and so instead of using number 4 steel rivets as they should have, the builders of the Titanic settled for number 3 iron rivets.  When the unsinkable ocean liner hit the iceberg that gashed a hole in her side causing water to flood the hull compartments, the seams with the weak rivets were ripped apart allowing more water to flow in and sink the ship. 

I don't know how you make a rivet, whether you stamp or forge it, but I know they were and are made by the millions and still hold ships and airplanes and all sorts of things together.  A rivet is not a very glamorous thing and hardly compares in interest with a brass bell, a masthead or the captain's table of a ship.  But it wasn't for lack of a brass bell, a masthead or the captain's table that the Titanic went down.  It was when one then another and then a hundred and a thousand rivets couldn't take the pressure any longer and gave up trying to hold together the massive steel plates of the ship's hull that the Titanic sank. 

It's like that in the church. Pastors and elders need to pray for God's wisdom and great skill in guiding the church into those places where Christ will send it.  But the best pastor and the finest elders can't keep us from brushing up against an iceberg now and again.  In fact, it's into the treacherous ice fields where lifeboats are adrift that Christ sends his church.

Sometimes it seems as if volunteering for nursery duty, cooking a Thursday evening meal, or visiting a shut-in hardly compare in interest with taking a mission trip to some exotic place, singing a solo in the cantata or giving a youth group talk where three young people confess faith in Christ.  Nursery duty, kitchen work and shut-in visitation are among the hundreds, maybe thousands, of rivets that hold the life and ministry of a church together.  And when one and then another of those rivet ministries are given up because of the pressure of busy schedules and competing interests, the false gods, the church begins to sink and there are no more mission trips, cantatas or youth groups.

One of the joys of being at LPC is that it is a church where mission and ministry is taken very seriously by many, many members.  The nursery is tended, the Thursday meal is prepared and the shut-ins are visited.  The ship is afloat is being used to rescue men and women, children and youth, who are in icy waters clinging to the wreckage wrought by cultural decay, economic hardship and family dysfunction.

Like the mighty Titanic, however, Langhorne Presbyterian Church is only as strong as her rivets.  To all of you who know the immense pressures of living in times such as ours, but bear up and are faithful to our rivet ministries, great thanks.  To paraphrase the Apostle Paul in Romans 16:25-27,  may he strengthen you according the gospel!

And to all the rest of us – have you ever dreamed of being a rivet, a solid steel rivet?  It's a very high calling!