The possible significance of Faulkner's Shingles for the Lord

Faulkner's story Shingles for the Lord is a great example of his comic mode at its apex - three men called upon to devote one day of labor to cutting shingles from felled trees for a new roof for their tiny country church. One of the men - the story narrated by his young son who comes along to help stack the cut shingles - arrives two hours late (he had to borrow a maul and wedge from an elderly neighbor who unaccountably had been up all night involved in a fox hunt) and over the course of the morning the men negotiate how the late-arrival will make up his lost time. One of the guys tries to figure it out in "work units," a term and practice he'd learned when he applied from WPA funds (which he'd abandoned after learning he'd have to sign over his farm, or some such thing - and ever after would fight anyone who mentioned the WPA). The negotiations are long and complicated - probably no reader could possible follow them w/out a diagram - but they end up involving trading several hours of labor for a share in the ownership of a hunting dog. The narrator's dad - Grier, I think? - and dog owner comes up with an even more complex scheme, which involves he and his son coming back to the church at night to strip the old shingles, but during this process he upends a lantern, which hits the floor and ignites the entire church. The community shows up to help put out the fire but the church is destroyed and the minister tells them their task is now to build a new church on the same site. He tells Grier, however, to get lost and not to help until he can prove his worth or his faith. Aside from the broad comedy and the sketch of life among the impoverished rural white folk in Mississippi, what's the significance of this story? I can't quite grasp it, but I believe there's a deeper level of meaning involving the life and death of a church and the life and death of a man, or of mankind. Repairing a church is a community activity, bringing the men together for this shared responsibility, but the burning of the church is like a death and resurrection and the men of the village are helpless before that force. They can't extinguish the fire, they can only watch and then rebuild. There's also the sense that Grier is expelled from the faith - or from the garden - for his sin of over-reaching, scheming to deceive others while in the process of paying his "dues" to the congregation. The clash between the mercenary and the charitable instincts ignites the spark that destroys the church, or the faith of the few.