by Rev. Eric Folkerth

Years ago during one of our Connections Band shows, one of our core leaders, Rev. Paul Escamilla, said a confounding thing from the stage.

Right in the middle of the show, in between two songs, Paul said, “Well, you know what they say….‘Infrastructure is Grace.’”

I looked down the row of microphones at him, slightly dumbfounded.

“Infrastructure is Grace?!”

“Who has EVER ONCE said that?!”

I’ve slept since then, but I’m pretty sure I literally said all of those words out loud in that moment on my microphone.

Paul looked at me. I looked at Paul. And suddenly it was like the awkward banter between the “Smothers Brothers” on stage in between two of their songs.

I just had no earthly idea what Paul was talking about, and about why he would choose those words —“Infrastructure is Grace”— in between a Billy Joel and Fleetwood Mac song. It seemed like a bizarre non-sequitur.

We quickly moved on with the rest of the show, but I kept puzzling on just what Paul could have meant.

Much later he explained himself…

You see, we had just been thanking the church for hosting us. We’d been thanking the volunteers for setting up chairs and plating up desserts. Each show we did, raising money for various mission causes around the world, involved using the preexisting “Infrastructure” of every local United Methodist Church where we played.

Without the buildings, the HVAC systems, the volunteers, the chairs and stage, our “connection system” of churches and mission work…none of it would have been possible.

This was what Paul meant when he said “Infrastructure is Grace.”

He never DID explain who “they” were, though. And I still don’t know any “they” who has ever said this.

But now, many years later, I do now know that my friend, Paul Escamillia, was 100% correct.

Infrastructure IS grace.

The infrastructure of our church is what makes everything else here possible.

I am thinking about all this today because there are new WiFi extenders being installed all over our building. We’re getting a major upgrade to our cabling and extenders so that we can use WiFi for things like check-in for our Day School parents, better classroom streaming both on the ground floor and upstairs in our youth room.

It’s something that we’ve needed for a while, and it’s happening right now.

And so, I’m grateful to our Leadership Board and all our lay folks and staff who keep working behind the scenes to update our infrastructure.

Infrastructure is never the most exciting thing a church will do. The stuff we’ve done here the past few years…a new roof on our building, a new parking lot, new playgrounds…it’s easy to get lost in the weeds of such mundane things and fail to see the real truth.

In terms of our ministry here, Infrastructure IS grace.
It’s what what makes everything else here possible.

I hope you’re grateful for the grace of it, too.

Eric

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