Bridges of Inspiration

In blog posts past I've shown various New York City bridges, most notably, the Queensborough bridge. In this post, I thought I'd take the bridge theme to a different level.

This is the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Sydney, NSW, Australia, one of the most recognizable bridges in the world. Officially opened on March 19, 1932 it was the crowning achievement of Chief Engineer John Bradfield who had been heading up the project to bridge the harbour since 1912.

What is lesser known is the source of inspiration for this major work. During his travels, Bradfield spent some time in New York City and apparently a light went on when he saw the Hell Gate Bridge, a single-arch railroad bridge connecting Queens with Manhattan, the Bronx and points north.

The Hell Gate Bridge, opened in 1916 and is considerably more narrower and shorter than the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but given the time he had to work on the project (lengthened as the plans halted for World War I), Bradfield was able to improve on the design.

The point of this is that a railroad bridge in Queens became the inspiration for something greater in another place. As I've said in this blog before, Gospel work here tends to have international repercussions. My hope is that this simple guy from Queens can be used for bigger things as God directs. That's all I'm saying.

Dr. Livingstone, I presume.

Before she married my grandfather, Dorothy Raplee's maiden name was Livingstone. As long as I can remember, Raplee family legend had it that our Scottish roots were somehow connected to the legendary missionary to Africa, Dr. David Livingstone. If course, I couldn't begin to draw the family tree linking me to the good doctor, though my grandmother had a cousin named David. Truth be told, however, although he obtained a PhD. (making him, in fact, Dr. Livingstone), he's still alive and living in Pittsburgh.

My mother's father, Warren Buchholtz, was an ordained evangelist at the Bowery Mission, a "skid row" ministry established at the time of the Fulton Street Revival of the late 19th Century, now one of the country's oldest continually operating Christian ministries in the United States.

Then, of course, there's me. I've been working second string at a church plant in central Queens for more than two years now and still wondering which side of my ministry pedigree will emerge in my work.

To that end, I'm heading down to Atlanta this weekend to attend a denominational missions conference. I've always said, and it's true, people from all over the world come to Queens, making this a most unique place for Gospel ministry. It will be interesting to see what cross-cultural ministry looks like when people go to other countries to preach rather than have the other countries come to them the way they do here.

I expect it to be a most enlightening weekend. Watch for my next blog entry to see if I learn anything useful at this conference.