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Das Schneekirche Was Made Entirely Out Of Snow
As anyone who's caught a snowball to the ear can attest, the white stuff can be as tough as any stone. And that's what the people of one small town leaned on when they needed to build a church in the middle of winter with no money or building materials, but a lot of snow.
Wikimedia Commons"For messaging, let's try to focus more on 'God provided the materials for His church,' and less on 'potential ice tomb.'"
During the winter of 1911, the obviously German town of Mitterfirmiansreut was in dire religious straits. Because of the snow, people couldn't travel to the nearby town to worship at the only church in the area. So in order to not be fair-weather friends with the Lord, they asked the German State Church for funds to build their own church ... and were rudely refused. But instead of sulking, the people of Mitterfirmiansreut used their ingenuity and made do with what they had at hand -- which happened to be a metric ton of snow.
Das Schneekirche, or the Snow Church, was 46 feet long, 23 feet wide, and 13 feet high. More impressively, it wasn't just for show, or something Mitterfirmiansreut (it really does get more fun the more times you say it) could use to raise the middle finger to their stingy higher-ups. The Schneekirche started conducting weekly services on March 28, 1911 and did so for several months until attendance dropped heavily, on account of the structure melting. Fortunately, by then the protest had gone the 1910s equivalent of viral, and the village received enough donations to build a house of the Lord out of much more permanent stone.
But fast-forward a whole century, and in 2011, people decided to revive the old Mitterfirmiansreutian spirit and build a new 21st-century Snow Church. The modern Schneekirche was formed out of blocks of ice coated with snow, and was affectionately referred to as "God's Igloo" by the press.
Ekpah/Wikimedia CommonsNobody builds a snow fort like the Almighty.
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