Every Good and Perfect Gift
Is from Above

There is a building on Temple Street in Lithia Springs, Georgia, that has stood in one form or another since 1885. Its white steeple rises above the tree line, visible from across the railroad tracks: a landmark in a community that has grown and changed around it for a hundred and forty years. It is a place where people have gathered to worship, to grieve, to celebrate, to serve, and to trust that the God who called them together would continue to provide for whatever came next. For most of that century and a half, He has done exactly that; quietly, faithfully, and often through the hands of the very people sitting in the pews.

Lithia Springs Methodist Church is a congregation of about one hundred and twenty-five members. Many of them have been here for decades. Some were carried through these doors as infants and now watch their own grandchildren toddle down the center aisle during Sunday morning worship. Others arrived more recently: families who found their way here after the United Methodist Church's disaffiliation, searching for a place that still felt like home. One by one, they came. And one by one, the church opened its arms.

That is not a small thing. In a season when so many congregations fractured, shrank, or simply disappeared, Lithia Springs held together. More than held together; it grew. New voices joined the choir. New children filled the nursery. New hands showed up on Saturday mornings to blow leaves and change light bulbs and pack boxes for families in need. The church did not merely survive its transition into the Global Methodist Church. By the grace of God, it found new life in it.

And it is from that place of gratitude, not desperation, but genuine, hard-won thanksgiving, that this story begins.

The Need Beneath the Surface

The oldest sections of the Lithia Springs campus date to the early 1960s, built with the kind of mid-century craftsmanship that assumes things are meant to last. The current sanctuary was added in 1979, the third in the church's history, and a single HVAC system has served the entire building ever since. The bones of the structure are sound. The windows still hold. The cross still stands above the altar.

But beneath the floors and above the ceilings, behind the walls where no one thinks to look, the heating and air conditioning system that has served this building for more than sixty years is failing. It is not a dramatic failure, not yet. There has been no catastrophic breakdown, no Sunday morning without heat. But the parts are no longer manufactured. The repairs have become improvisations. The technicians who service it have begun to say, gently and then less gently, that the system cannot be sustained much longer.

The estimate to replace it is approximately one million dollars.

For a congregation with an annual operating budget of $415,000, a budget funded almost entirely by the tithes and offerings of its own members, many of whom are over seventy and living on fixed incomes, that number is staggering. It is the kind of number that, when spoken aloud in a committee meeting, causes the room to go quiet for a long time.

But this church has been quiet before, and then it has gotten to work.

The Morning the Church Spoke

On a Sunday in November, Pastor Thomas Long did something unusual. He stepped up to the pulpit, opened his Bible to Deuteronomy 8, and then he stopped preaching. Instead, he asked the congregation to speak.

"I'd like for us to remember," he said. "I'd like for us to remember how we have seen God move here in our midst. And I'd like for you to share that in your words."

One by one, they did.

What happened that morning was not a fundraiser. It was not a stewardship drive. It was not a pitch. It was a congregation bearing witness: to each other, and to the God who had carried them this far.

And then Pastor Thomas said the quiet part. Not with alarm. Not with panic. With the same steady faith he had been modeling all year.

"Some of you have even got wind that the task of maintaining this building sometimes seems so overwhelming," he said. "But it's been overwhelming since day one, and God has continued to see this church prosper and continue to move forward because He has a task for us to do in this community."

He spoke of the HVAC. He spoke of the plans already being made. And then he said something that reframed the entire challenge:

"These challenges that we call challenges, that we think seem like they may be overwhelming: I would like to paint a different picture for you. God has a plan for us. And God is putting these in our path so that it gives Him an opportunity to show out."

The Walls of Nehemiah

There is a story in the Old Testament that this church has not been able to stop thinking about.

Nehemiah was a man who received word that the walls of Jerusalem, the very infrastructure that protected God's people and enabled their worship, had fallen into ruin. The gates were burned. The stones were scattered. And the people who remained were living in what Nehemiah called "great trouble and disgrace."

Nehemiah did not form a subcommittee. He did not send out a request for proposals. He wept. He prayed. He fasted. And then he went.

When he arrived in Jerusalem, he surveyed the damage by night, quietly, before he said a word to anyone. And when he finally gathered the people together, he did not sugarcoat the problem. He named it.

And then Nehemiah did something remarkable. He told them what God had already done. He described the favor he had received, the doors that had already opened, the provision that was already in motion before a single stone had been lifted.

The people's response is recorded in a single sentence: "Let us start rebuilding."

They did not wait until the money was in the account. They did not wait until the plan was fully formed. They did not wait until every question had been answered. They started. Because the need was real, the call was clear, and the God who had brought them this far was not finished.

Lithia Springs Methodist Church is not rebuilding a wall. But it is preserving the infrastructure that makes its ministry possible: the building where children are tutored three nights a week, where grandparents raising grandchildren receive support, where backpacks are filled with food for hungry families, where neighbors hear the Gospel in both English and Spanish, and where, every December, a small Georgia town drives through a living nativity and encounters the story of a God who came near.

The parallel is not perfect. It never is. But the principle is the same: name the need, trust the Provider, and start building.

A Coin and a Letter

The church has begun to reach out, not with a fundraising appeal, but with a prayer request.

A letter has been drafted to every Global Methodist Church congregation the leadership can identify. The letter does not ask for money. It asks for prayer. It tells the truth about where Lithia Springs stands, what it needs, and what it believes God is doing. And it includes a small token of fellowship: a challenge coin.

The challenge coin: one side bears the façade of the sanctuary and the year the church was established. The other carries the cross and circles of the Global Methodist Church and the words of James 1:17.

The coin is two inches across, soft enamel in blue and gold. On one side, the diamond-paned window of the Lithia Springs sanctuary and the words Established 1885. On the other, the cross and interlocking circles of the Global Methodist Church and the verse that has become the heartbeat of this effort:

The letter says, plainly: We are not writing to ask your church for money. We are asking for prayer. It asks that pastors and congregations would remember Lithia Springs even once; in a staff meeting, in a Wednesday evening service, in a moment of quiet intercession. It trusts that God hears those prayers, and that He is already at work arranging the answer.

If someone reads that letter and feels led to help beyond prayer, the church office will share details at their request. Any support designated for the HVAC project will be restricted to that purpose alone, in full compliance with the financial governance of the Global Methodist Church. But the letter does not ask for it. The letter asks for the thing the church believes matters most.

This church has seen God provide before. It has seen $60,000 raised when $47,000 seemed impossible. It has seen families arrive just when the pews were thinning. It has seen men show up on Saturday mornings to do work that no one asked them to do. It has seen women raise more money for ministry than any year before. It has seen a pastor stand in the pulpit and say, with perfect calm, that the God who led the Israelites through the desert is the same God who is leading this church into its future.

That is the testimony of this congregation. Not that the road is easy. Not that the money is in the bank. But that every good and perfect gift is from above, and the God who does not change like shifting shadows has not changed His mind about Lithia Springs Methodist Church.

The need is real. The God is faithful. And the work begins here, with honesty, with prayer, and with the same trust that has sustained this church since 1885.

If you would remember Lithia Springs Methodist Church in prayer this week, we would be grateful.