Mountain Moving Faith

This illustration was updated on April 6, 2008 - see below!

I found this illustration at Dwayne Savaya's website, Gods Work Ministry. It is a vivid depiction of Jesus' words in Matthew 17:20. I have heard variations before and some of the details hint "urban legend" - like Acme Construction, which is as generic as you can get. Can anyone in the Great Smokey region give more details about location, year, etc?

    A small congregation in the foothills of the Great Smokies built a new sanctuary on a piece of land willed to them by a church member. Ten days before the new church was to open, the local building inspector informed the pastor that the parking lot was inadequate for the size of the building. Until the church doubled the size of the parking lot, they would not be able to use the new sanctuary. Unfortunately, the church with its undersized lot had used every inch of their land except for the mountain against which it had been built. In order to build more parking spaces, they would have to move the mountain out of the back yard.

    Undaunted, the pastor announced the next Sunday morning that he would meet that evening with all members who had "mountain moving faith." They would hold a prayer session asking God to remove the mountain from the back yard and to somehow provide enough money to have it paved and painted before the scheduled opening dedication service the following week.

    At the appointed time, 24 of the congregation's 300 members assembled for prayer. They prayed for nearly three hours. At ten o'clock the pastor said the final "Amen". "We'll open next Sunday as scheduled," he assured everyone. "God has never let us down before, and I believe He will be faithful this time too."

    The next morning as he was working in his study there came a loud knock at his door. When he called "come in", a rough looking construction foreman appeared, removing his hard hat as he entered. "Excuse me, Reverend. I'm from Acme Construction Company over in the next county. We're building a huge shopping mall. We need some fill dirt. Would you be willing to sell us a chunk of that mountain behind the church? We'll pay you for the dirt we remove and pave all the exposed area free of charge, if we can have it right away. We can't do anything else until we get the dirt in and allow it to settle properly."

    The little church was dedicated the next Sunday as originally planned and there were far more members with "mountain moving faith" on opening Sunday than there had been the previous week!

    Would you have shown up for that prayer meeting? Some people say faith comes from miracles. But others know: MIRACLES COME FROM FAITH!

     Source - http://www.godswork.org/encouragement14.htm

Update! - On November 11, 2004, I received this email:

Dear Pastor Dave,

I am a pastor from Annville, PA, near Lebanon. The illustration about the mountain moved for parking after a prayer meeting is given, with variations, in the book by Leslie B. Flynn: "19 Gifts of the Spirit" page 140. Though no documentation is given, some details are:

1. Date: took place in 1973
2. Location: a church on Route 46 in Netcong, New Jersey
3. Pastor's name: Ray Crawford
4. It was the telephone company that needed fill for a marshy area
5. Unfortunately, the name of the church is not given.

This town is probably not too far from you.

Please let me know what you discover about this illustration. I use sermon illustrations very infrequently because most are not documented - good to see someone else concerned about these "urban legends." I do hope this one is true!

Pastor Bill
Cleona, Pennsylvania

Not too far from me - how about one mile!  The church is "Grace [Baptist] - The Church On the Mount."  The church was built in 1973 on top of Kingtown Mountain and is on the same road my church is on.  We are even in the same township.  I received a booklet from the church titled, “1943-1973: From Maple Avenue to the Mount.” On page 29 is a chapter called “Faith to Move Our Mountain.” It reads in part:

The finishing of the area around the church was completely up to the local people. There began to be some serious thinking about the parking lot. Not that there had not been some thinking already done, but we had been told by the Roxbury Planning Board that they would not grant permanent occupancy until there was sufficient parking in the rear. It did not have to be black-topped, gravel would do. ...

It became evident that even with all the fill needed in front of the church, we had a problem of far too much dirt. In fact it was a mountain where a second and third parking lot should be. The cost of removing this mountain would be prohibitive for the church. But wait, had not the Lord promised that a mountain would be moved by faith? The next Sunday morning Pastor Crawford reminded the congregation of Christ’s promise, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard see, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you” (Matt. 17:20). Then he added, “If you believe that, come on Wednesday night to pray with me that God will move this mountain in back of our church.”

The next morning the phone rang. It was the telephone company. They were planning to erect a new building just east of us and they needed fill for a large swampy area. Could we sell them some dirt? Well of course! And Pastor Crawford was sure our dirt would have the right proportions of clay, sand and rock for the fill they needed. In about a month the phone company had hauled away 40,000 square yards of our dirt, for which they paid the church $25,400, and also leveled the ground for the required three parking lots and prepared them for paving. The Lord makes good on His promises and He knows where to find the answer we need. [italics throughout is theirs]

Two photos accompany the chapter. One shows a two-story white house with a pile of dirt on two sides. The dirt seems to go up to the top of the first story. The second picture shows the house sitting about ten feet above a parking area. “Mountain” is certainly a stretch but 40,000 square yards is a fair amount of dirt. Pastor Crawford died several years ago; in the fifteen years I have been in the area, the Church on the Mount has grown from 200 to more than a thousand in attendance.

In Jesus,
Pastor David Holwick

Another update! - On April 4, 2008, I received this email:

Pastor Holwick, I was scanning different stories and ran across your stories that are hard to believe. The one about the church is similar to a story of the Temple Baptist church in Mt. Airy, North Carolina. That may be where the Smoky Mtn. reference came from. I know one of their deacons and a man in the church prayed daily for the rock mountain behind their church to be moved, etc. A local Wal-Mart came and bought their mountain, a few years ago. Pastor Rodney Kelley, Jacksosnville, Florida

 


"Pastor Holwick's Sermons and Illustrations"
Copyright © Rev. W. David Holwick, 2008
First Baptist Church; Ledgewood, New Jersey
This document last modified April 4, 2008 personal loan illinois compare personal loans lisburn personal loans personal loan agreement apply for personal loan