Building the church or the church building?

When I planned to preach through Haggai some months ago, I never imagined it would be so immediately relevant to us at St Peter's. Clearly there was a heart for evangelism amongst many members, so I wanted to encourage them and spur others on to become more courageous in speaking about Jesus, more generous in giving to gospel work, and more prayerful in support of gospel work.
As we started the series, I had a phone call from CrossTeach Trust offering us a share in a Cornhill mission team in Feb 2011. Fantastic! The PCC was enthusiastic, and it will be great to plan for some evangelistic events.

But little did I imagine that, as we heard about the difficulties of building the temple in Jerusalem, so many obstacles and difficulties would appear before us as we try to grow St Peter's and support our mission partners.
First, the hall floor started to break up. Lots of hassle and an estimate of £8k. Distraction number one.
Then we heard that one of our Mission Partner's children had fallen ill during her first term at boarding school. Surely it was traumatic enough for the family to be split up for the first time without this? They wanted to concentrate on building up church leaders in the sensitive region where they work, not have to fly back and forth to the UK and have all the worries of a sick daughter.
Then the main meeting room floor starts to warp. The cause is uncertain - damp of some kind (condensation on the underside of the boards or just high humidity of an old building).
Next, just as the cold weather begins to set in, the boiler decides to do its usual October tricks and not fire up. (Seems to be sorted now, thanks to Richard, Keith & John!).
But we also know that there are cracks in the north porch, rotting timbers on the roof, crumbling stones, ceilings to be replaced, decoration to do, a kitchen to upgrade... the list is endless.

And all of this just as we're hoping to get going on evangelism and home groups - real gospel work. The last thing we need is to be distracted by major building plans and have our giving siphoned off into what is urgent but not important (in the eternal scheme of things).

Perhaps God has let the devil have a longer leash and he's having a go at us.
Perhaps God is testing our resolve, generosity, priorities, patience, prayer and unity.

All in all, I pray that all of the problems will result, somehow (and I don't see how at the moment) in church growth - both depth and numbers.