Christians in Antakya, Turkey, worship in a building designed and constructed by TBM.
Community center draws people to worship
“If you build it, they will come.” The film, “Field of Dreams,” made the phrase memorable and referred to building a baseball field.
The phrase now can be used for a TBM project but in the past tense: “You built it, and they came.”
A TBM team built an activity/community center in Antakya, Turkey, last August. Since construction, the Christian group meeting there is “bursting at the seams, with in excess of 60 folks in attendance,” said Rupert Robbins, associate director of TBM Disaster Relief.
The building was needed after widespread destruction in Antakya caused by the January 2023 earthquake. Two TBM volunteer teams worked last year in the city of 400,000 people. The first TBM team built temporary homes in April 2023. The September 2023 team built the community center.
The center is a modular building, Robbins said. “It is built in two components with the intention of eventually being moved to a new location.”
Since construction, “the local response has been overwhelming, with standing-room-only crowds,” Robbins said. “The impact of that facility has led the local believers to purchase property in the nearby neighborhood where the structure will be relocated and plans for expansion have already begun.
“It is amazing to see how God works when His people are given a place to worship and minister,” he said. “It changes a whole community."