The fact that we built our prayer house during the rule of the communists needs some explanation. In a whole series of unusual circumstances we see a clear purpose of God, and in fact a kind of „divine irony.“ How else can one understand the fact that the communists, who suppressed Christianity in every way they could, somehow let the building of our prayer house slip „through their fingers“?
At the end of 1966 we were given notice to leave our rented premises on E. Floriánové Street. That was exactly when the political thaw before the so-called „Prague Spring of 1968“ was beginning, and so a possibility until then unthinkable appeared: to build a new church — a prayer house. At that time we were a fairly independent mission station of the Liberec congregation. (A „station“ is a group of believers meeting in a different place than the main congregation, but falling under its administration.) So, under the leadership of the local lay (unpaid, assistant) pastor brother Josef Kaufman, who later also directed the construction, negotiations began with the congregation, with our national leadership, and later with the authorities. Brother Mathauser, an architect from the Prague Baptist congregation, offered us the design documentation and construction supervision. We negotiated with the authorities and searched for a suitable building plot. The process dragged on, however, and the authorities were in no hurry; the communists had plenty of troubles of their own between 1967 and 1969. Only in the autumn of 1969 did we buy the plot we have today and receive planning permission. The final permit did not come until April 1970.
But it was precisely the delays and the late permit that made it possible for us to build our prayer house at all. After 1968, the new Husák leadership carried out a purge within the Communist Party and in the authorities as well, so our permit was in the end issued by newly vetted comrades. Had the „sixty-eighters“ granted the permit, it would have been uncompromisingly revoked. Later on, our building probably bothered the comrades a good deal, but they apparently found no pretext to act against it. Only in the summer before completion, when part of the Yellow School building in Jablonec collapsed, was there an attempt to „temporarily borrow“ the prayer house as a makeshift school. At the time, however, „temporary“ and „for all eternity“ sounded almost the same to us. We answered: „If you want, go ahead and nationalize the prayer house, but we will not sign any temporary loan agreement.“ And, probably because of the reaction of Christians in the West, the communists backed down from their intention. For many reasons we believe that the building of the prayer house was part of God’s plan, and in its precise timing we see God’s own direction.
The prayer house took seven years to build (from spring 1970 to December 1976). It was built almost entirely through volunteer labor. (The only work not done by volunteers was roofing, electrical wiring, ventilation, the outer façade, parquet flooring, and some tiling and paving.) Work on the site (except on Wednesdays, when there was Bible study) always took place in the afternoons after work, that is, from half past two to half past eight. On Saturdays (when brothers from Liberec and Brniště helped as they were able) and during vacations (there were quite a few brothers who spent their entire vacation on the building site, and not a few brothers from other congregations also gave up their vacation to work with us), work usually went from six in the morning until eight in the evening. It was fortunate that, as Christians, we do not work on Sundays.
In the first year we dug and poured the foundations, built up the ground floor walls, and laid the ceiling above the ground floor. In the second year the basic structure was completed, including covering the boarded roof with tar paper. The next five long years were spent on all the remaining finishing work. According to the construction logs, 64,000 volunteer work-hours went into the building (more than 51,000 of them by people from Jablonec), and we spent a total of 960,000 Kčs. In Jablonec we raised 350,000 crowns from our own gifts and tithes; roughly another third came from the building fund of our national body and from other BJB congregations. The remaining third was made up of gifts from our brothers abroad. Less than a million crowns for the whole building is an unbelievably low sum. Today (in 2011) that might buy you a small one-room flat in a prefabricated housing block — though prices then and now are hard to compare. A brick cost 70 hellers at the time, and a fifty-kilogram bag of cement only 30 Kčs. The average wage in those days was barely 1,500 Kčs.
In connection with the low building costs we must mention brother J. Kaufman again. In fact, almost everything made of wood was produced in his modest carpentry workshop — the windows, doors, roof trusses, staircases, and even the wooden ceilings and paneling. All of this at the time probably reduced our costs by more than half. The building project was a collective effort of many dozens of people from Jablonec and elsewhere. There were people willing to sacrifice a great deal, and not always just money. We remember an elderly retired sister who, almost every Saturday, cooked lunch for the volunteers who came from elsewhere — and to have the means to do so, she took in housework. But the greatest human credit for the building of this prayer house belongs to the now-deceased brother Kaufman.
The Lord God took care of us and of our building project. In an era when things could not simply be bought but had to be tracked down, we never once had to halt work for lack of material. He also provided when, within a week, we had to pay 68,000 Kčs for 50 cm of steel girders above the hall, and we did not have even half that amount in our account — yet every invoice was always paid on time. Or take the matter of the stones and the carpets. In 1970 we bought several tons of quarried granite blocks, and when in 1976 we finished the last stone retaining walls and steps, not a single stone was missing, and not one was left over. It was the same with the original carpet runners — the shop had only a few final metres left. Would they be enough? After they were laid out and cut, less than half a metre was left over. That is why we believe that the one who deserves the greatest credit — and therefore the greatest thanks — for the building of our prayer house is the Lord God.
KH
