Chapter Twelve Something About My Kids
Shortly before Anita ad I moved to Denver to begin training for the ministry Anita became pregnant. We were pretty excited about it of course, but our excitement turned to grief when Anita began spotting about 6 weeks into the pregnancy. I had only recently surrendered for the ministry and just then was training under our pastor in Hermiston and driving a public school bus for some needed income. When I got to the bus barn that morning, I told the dispatch lady about my wife. She told me what she expected was happening and told me I needed to get home and take my wife to the doctor immediately. I heeded her advice and headed to the house. I will never forget hearing from the doctor that day. It was a woman physician, real natural sort of person. After her examination of Anita she called me in the room and told us this pregnancy was, in her words, a “no go.” It sounded to me like something mission control would tell an Apollo crew. She scheduled Anita for a procedure to be sure she would not get an infection, and the pregnancy was over. I don’t know that I realized how devastating that was to Anita until some months later.
By the time Anita and I tried to have a child again, I was in Bible college in Denver. The burden of losing the first baby was weighing on Anita and we had several conversations about trying again. I was in Bible College. I was not making much income and we were for all practical purposes living on Anita’s income as a Christian school teacher. Trying to have a child just then did not make a ton of sense to me. One day, while speaking to a fellow student about all of this I realized that there would be no time that seemed like a good time to have a baby. For my wife’s sake I agreed to try again. Anita became pregnant something like six months after the loss of the first baby. But at Christmas time of 1982 she began to spot again. It was Christmas morning and we were experiencing one of those once in 100 years type of snow storms. I could see a hospital from outside our back window, but I could not get there. We had to wait a couple of days before the weather cleared enough for me to get Anita out. Even then, the television stations were pleading for people with four wheel drive vehicles to volunteer to transport doctors and nurses to the medical facilities. The doctor was such a blessing! He arrived in the room looking like he was Santa Claus (this is just two days after Christmas.)
White beard
Brown outback type hat
Pipe in his mouth
Red flannel shirt and
Rubber over boots
After examining Anita he confirmed that she had indeed lost the baby and in a very fatherly and confident way said, “This is two in a row. Let’s find out what is going on.” He discovered a cyst that he was confident was causing Anita’s miscarriages and a surgery was scheduled. As a side note I learned a valuable ministry lesson the day of the operation. Our pastor, Jim Duncan, from First Bible Baptist Church in Boulder, came and sat with me during the operation. We didn’t talk much. He had a magazine he read and I read something they had there in the waiting room. When the doctor reported that Anita came through the surgery fine Pastor Duncan asked to pray in thanksgiving and then e was off. I have tried to practice that same thing for those in my ministry. Once the surgery was over the same doctor looked at us and said, “Everything is fine now. Go have babies”
Of course Anita had to heal up. Some months later I was reading about Isaac and Rebekah and how he prayed that God would open his wife’s womb. Not until then did I come to the place that I wanted a baby. Before it was Anita’s desire, I was just willing for her sake. But the story of Isaac spoke to me and I began to pray. Not much later Anita was again pregnant with who turned out to be our son, Bohannan.
Other changes were happening in our lives as well. During the course of all of this I had been seeking the Lord’s direction for planting a church in the Pacific Northwest. We had been in contact with the two families in Astoria and had settled on moving there in April of 1984. So we planted the church in Astoria, living in an 18 foot motor home that belonged to my father in law, with Anita being as pregnant as possible! Bohannan was born in July of 1984. By the time of his birth we had moved out of the motor home and into an apartment in a complex that at that time was known as the Riverine Apartments. We got home from our Sunday night service and we were relaxing on our coach when Anita began to tell me about the back aches she had been enduring most of the day. We had not connected them with her pregnancy because they were back ache, not stomach aches. But when she commented that she thought she could time them a light came on in my head! The back aches were coming every five minutes.
We did not have a telephone in those days so I left Anita on the coach to head for a pay phone and call the hospital. Platteville Baptist Church was paying for our health insurance but it was with Kaiser and the nearest Kaiser facility was more than two hours away, in Portland; the St John’s district. I called the hospital in Astoria and spoke with a nurse who said that she was also pregnant and she would feel comfortable in Anita’s condition heading to Portland if we left right then. She told me if anything happened on the way I could always borrow someone’s phone and call an ambulance. Anita and I got in the car and headed to Portland. But we did stop at Farrell’s Burger and got a couple of 25 cent Big Wheel ice creams for on the way. Bohannan was born I think 21 hours after we go to the Kaiser hospital. It was Monday night. The nurse gave newborn Bohannan to me the first thing. I will never forget looking into his face as he squinted at the bright delivery room lights thinking to myself, “What am I going to do now?”
Bohannan’s name was a topic of conversation since before Anita and I were married. I had worked as a welder with a man by the name of George Stone. We called him “Stoner.” He and I were joking around one day. I told him that I wanted to have a kid whose middle name was Tiwater so I could preserve my mother’s maiden name. The trouble was, I joked, that I couldn’t think of a first name that went well “Tiwater McKenzie.” Stoner said, “How about Bohannan?” So when Anita and I began dating I told her if we got married we would have to name our first son Bohannan Tiwater McKenzie. Anita agreed. But when Bo was born, I backed off. It was Anita’s dad who insisted that we stick to the plan. He said the name sounded like a president! As Bohannan grew up people would ask his name and he would sometimes respond, “Oh, you’ll just say it’s a mouthful!”
Wednesday morning Anita and Bohannan were released from the hospital and we headed, for the very first time, as a family of three to our ministry in Astoria. So Anita was in church Sunday night with birth pangs and was in church Wednesday night with a baby. Bohannan never even made his mother miss a single church service!
And he was a hit in our small congregation right away. Bob and Bernie Brandon were our first nursery workers. But they didn’t take Bohannan out of the auditorium. I boasted that I could preach louder than Bohannan could cry. That was only true for a few weeks. It didn’t take too long before Bohannan’s cry would get louder as my preaching got louder. We set up my office as the church time nursery and the ladies (but mostly Anita) took turns watching our son.
Life in the McKenzie house was nice. I can remember that before we had any kids, I was just thrilled to be married to Anita. We had such fun together, she and I. We have always gotten along very well and I was quite happy even without children. But when Bohannan was born I was smitten. Not that everything was easy. When we first got home Bohannan started to cry. And he kept crying. For the first few days all he did was cry. Anita called him “Little Lord Bohannan.” I figured he would quit crying when he got tired enough so I wanted to leave him in his room ith the door closed. I can remember thinking to myself, “Why did they let us out of the hospital without some sort of owner’s manual for this kid?” Guessing that the problem was with nursing, Anita spoke with a woman from the Le Leche League who suggested that she drink a little wine to settle her nerves and let the milk down. I am a preacher and I was not going to buy any wine. We talked Anita’s dad into buying it for us, but Anita felt so guilty about having wine that it made her more nervous. We flushed the stuff down the drain without her having tasted it. After a couple of days I was fed up. I packed Anita and the baby into the car and headed to a nearby doctor. It wasn’t our doctor, but he was close. He gave Bohannan a bottle of formula and he crashed asleep. Anita did nurse both of our babies but we had a back up bottle of formula around just in case!
As Bo got older his blue eyes seemed to me to have lights in them. To this day I can’t think of Bo without seeing those piercing blue eyes of his childhood. He still has them to this day, but the years have darkened his features and somewhat hidden those shiny eyes. Bohannan was always busy. I was sitting in our living room reading a book, I think by Jack Hyles that said something about you’ll know it is time to have another child when your youngest is too busy to hug you any more. I sat the book down and asked Bohannan to come give me a hug. He was too busy playing so I got up from the chair and told Anita it was time to have another baby.
When Anita got pregnant with our second child, we were without health insurance. Platteville Baptist Church in Platteville, CO had covered health insurance until Bohannan was born. When they stopped covering us, we dropped health insurance. I was reading a lot of John R. Rice’s stuff then and he was against the use of health insurance anyway. I did observe that as long as we did not have insurance we did not seem to need it, but whenever we did have it, there was always a reason to need it. Since we did not have health insurance we needed to find the least expensive way we could to have our next baby. The hospital in Seaside, OR, just 17 miles down the road, had a deal where if a mother could get in and out of the birthing room in less than 24 hours there was a flat fee of $700.00. Anita began seeing Dr. Sally Marie in Seaside and we began to pay down our $700.00. Anita’s sister Shirley and brother in law Larry were staying in Seaside the week that Caleb was due to be delivered and they had offered to watch Bohannan if our new baby happened to come that week. It was Saturday night when Anita began having those back pains again. We watched carefully because this time we were only driving 20 minutes, not 2 and a half hours and this time we HAD to be out of the hospital in less than 24 hours. When it seemed like we had to head to the hospital it was nearing 11:00 PM. We all packed up and headed to Seaside and I stopped by the motel where Larry and Shirley were and took Bohannan to their room. But they would not open the door. I could hear them inside, but they would not answer the door. Still carrying Bohannan I ran down to the office but it was closed. I ran back up the stairs to the room and once again knocked. Still they would not open. Again I ran down to the office and frantically knocked on their door. Someone answered! I asked the cal Larry and Shirley’s room. They thought I was just one of their friends there with them at the convention. We finally got Bohannan settled with them and headed to the hospital.
I got Anita into the hospital just a few minutes before midnight. The attending nurse had no help so she had to make a call to get some other staff in the hospital and to call our doctor. Caleb was born at ten minutes after midnight. He was as dark skinned as could be and had a full head of black hair. He looked as different from Bohannan did as he could have. But he was beautiful. After making some phone calls I headed to the house to get some sleep. I ran our little Volkswagen Rabbit bus route for Anita that morning and preached the morning services before heading back to get Anita and Caleb They were out of the hospital in plenty of time for Caleb to attend church the very day of his birth.
Caleb’s personality was just about as different from Bohannan’s as his looks. While Bohannan seldom slept through the night – even when he got older, Caleb slept through the night (at least much better than Bohannan did) right from the beginning. Caleb was quieter and much more given to hugging us.
My children have been the joy of my life since the day they were born. I cannot imagine what life and ministry would have been without them. They have not been perfect children and I have not been a perfect father. But I rejoice in my sons each and every day.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven Early ministry
The earliest days in our ministry were the toughest and the best at the same time. When we first got into the building we had nothing so far as church furniture. So our first church benches were homemade. I had no podium and stayed that way until during the first summer when Pastor Bob Roarke came for a week. Pastor Roarke took some 1x4 rough cut cedar boards that were stacked in the back of the building and made from them a very handsome homemade pulpit. We used it with joy for all those years in the service station building.
Our auditorium room did have a natural gas heater in it, but we did not have the money to pay for the gas so that would not do for us. I found someone who was willing to give us a very old Franklin type wood burning stove. After creating a new handle for the stove door (out of my chipping hammer) we were in business. Most of the time people gave me wood rounds to split and burn. Sometimes I had to make trips to the mountains to get firewood.
Rod Hockley made one of those trips with me. My pick-up was a short box so I tried to take everything out of it I could so there was more room for firewood on those mountain trips. This particular morning I picked up Bro Hockley at his house in the morning and left my spare tire and jack at his house (saving room). Brother Rod joked with me as we were driving up to the woods, “No spare tire, now that is faith.” I joked back, “No, that’s just stupid!” Sure enough, we had a flat tire up there in the hills. I ran over a tree limb and drove it clear through the tire; ruined it for good. Trouble was, we were many miles up there in the mountains. Bro Rod stayed with the truck while I began the long hike down. I stopped at the first house on the route, several miles down the mountain from where my truck was and made a call for help. I did not have a phone at home in those days so I had to call Bro Hockley’s wife, who had to drive over to our apartment and tell my wife. She then had to drive over to the Hockley’s house to get the spare and the jack before she made the trip up to rescue us. I have very good memories of sitting there along that mountain road, meditating and praying while I awaited my wife. I also have good memories of splitting that wood out back of our building.
The Franklin fireplace was not an airtight stove so it burned a lot of wood. I would go to the building Sunday mornings about five AM. My routine was to start a fire, clean the building and then spend some time in prayer and Bible study before I headed back to our apartment to get my wife and baby for church. One time after cleaning the bathroom I washed my hands and threw the paper towel I dried with into the fire before sitting down with my Bible. A moment into my Bible reading and I realized my wedding band had come off in the paper towel and was in that roaring fire! I have no idea why, but that wet paper towel had not yet been consumed by the flames. I reached into the fire and retrieved it and my ring.
Usually heating with the wood worked fine. I got it down to a pretty good science after a while. But one time that fire got very hot. We had some students coming from the local Job Corps Center to our services at that time. One night one of those young ladies thought the building was going to burn down! She spent most of my sermon with wide eyes alternating between looking at the red hot sides of the fireplace and at me, hoping I would do something. I was preaching and nothing was going to stop me. But I was watching that fireplace turn red hot too!
We had some of the most fun times in that small building with our first little congregation. Some of my most favorite were our salmon BBQ’s. George Simmons would bring his BBQ to the church and we would get some of our folks to go catch a salmon or two. Then we’d invite people in town to come to church and have some salmon with us. We generally would get a visitor or two but I don’t remember that any of them kept coming to church through that event. I do remember building a very close heart to the Simmons family.
In those earliest days probably our most successful ministry for bringing in new people into our church was our Christmas programs. Karen Hockley babysat for a number of families and many of those children began to come with her to Sunday School and Church. So we were able to put together a simple Christmas program I think he very first year. It wasn’t much of a production. The children would dress up a little and sing some Christmas songs for about 10 minutes. Then I would preach a Christmas sermon from a “preacher of the past.” I got a monthly magazine that included each month a short bio of a preacher of the past and it always had a reprint of one of that preacher’s sermons. Of course, the December edition was always a Christmas sermon. It worked well, was simple to orchestrate and really did give us new families in our church.
I did a lot of door knocking, but we never saw any real results from that. We did get to bring some kids to church through our door knocking efforts. I met a family out in the Jeffers Gardens area of town that had two children they let us bring to church. Anita used our little Volkswagen Rabbit as a Sunday School bus and brought those two (and later a third) to church. Then Anita served as the Sunday School teacher for those kids too. They were a handful, but we loved them.
The earliest days in our ministry were the toughest and the best at the same time. When we first got into the building we had nothing so far as church furniture. So our first church benches were homemade. I had no podium and stayed that way until during the first summer when Pastor Bob Roarke came for a week. Pastor Roarke took some 1x4 rough cut cedar boards that were stacked in the back of the building and made from them a very handsome homemade pulpit. We used it with joy for all those years in the service station building.
Our auditorium room did have a natural gas heater in it, but we did not have the money to pay for the gas so that would not do for us. I found someone who was willing to give us a very old Franklin type wood burning stove. After creating a new handle for the stove door (out of my chipping hammer) we were in business. Most of the time people gave me wood rounds to split and burn. Sometimes I had to make trips to the mountains to get firewood.
Rod Hockley made one of those trips with me. My pick-up was a short box so I tried to take everything out of it I could so there was more room for firewood on those mountain trips. This particular morning I picked up Bro Hockley at his house in the morning and left my spare tire and jack at his house (saving room). Brother Rod joked with me as we were driving up to the woods, “No spare tire, now that is faith.” I joked back, “No, that’s just stupid!” Sure enough, we had a flat tire up there in the hills. I ran over a tree limb and drove it clear through the tire; ruined it for good. Trouble was, we were many miles up there in the mountains. Bro Rod stayed with the truck while I began the long hike down. I stopped at the first house on the route, several miles down the mountain from where my truck was and made a call for help. I did not have a phone at home in those days so I had to call Bro Hockley’s wife, who had to drive over to our apartment and tell my wife. She then had to drive over to the Hockley’s house to get the spare and the jack before she made the trip up to rescue us. I have very good memories of sitting there along that mountain road, meditating and praying while I awaited my wife. I also have good memories of splitting that wood out back of our building.
The Franklin fireplace was not an airtight stove so it burned a lot of wood. I would go to the building Sunday mornings about five AM. My routine was to start a fire, clean the building and then spend some time in prayer and Bible study before I headed back to our apartment to get my wife and baby for church. One time after cleaning the bathroom I washed my hands and threw the paper towel I dried with into the fire before sitting down with my Bible. A moment into my Bible reading and I realized my wedding band had come off in the paper towel and was in that roaring fire! I have no idea why, but that wet paper towel had not yet been consumed by the flames. I reached into the fire and retrieved it and my ring.
Usually heating with the wood worked fine. I got it down to a pretty good science after a while. But one time that fire got very hot. We had some students coming from the local Job Corps Center to our services at that time. One night one of those young ladies thought the building was going to burn down! She spent most of my sermon with wide eyes alternating between looking at the red hot sides of the fireplace and at me, hoping I would do something. I was preaching and nothing was going to stop me. But I was watching that fireplace turn red hot too!
We had some of the most fun times in that small building with our first little congregation. Some of my most favorite were our salmon BBQ’s. George Simmons would bring his BBQ to the church and we would get some of our folks to go catch a salmon or two. Then we’d invite people in town to come to church and have some salmon with us. We generally would get a visitor or two but I don’t remember that any of them kept coming to church through that event. I do remember building a very close heart to the Simmons family.
In those earliest days probably our most successful ministry for bringing in new people into our church was our Christmas programs. Karen Hockley babysat for a number of families and many of those children began to come with her to Sunday School and Church. So we were able to put together a simple Christmas program I think he very first year. It wasn’t much of a production. The children would dress up a little and sing some Christmas songs for about 10 minutes. Then I would preach a Christmas sermon from a “preacher of the past.” I got a monthly magazine that included each month a short bio of a preacher of the past and it always had a reprint of one of that preacher’s sermons. Of course, the December edition was always a Christmas sermon. It worked well, was simple to orchestrate and really did give us new families in our church.
I did a lot of door knocking, but we never saw any real results from that. We did get to bring some kids to church through our door knocking efforts. I met a family out in the Jeffers Gardens area of town that had two children they let us bring to church. Anita used our little Volkswagen Rabbit as a Sunday School bus and brought those two (and later a third) to church. Then Anita served as the Sunday School teacher for those kids too. They were a handful, but we loved them.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten Rain
Speaking of rain and the building, it is time I describe our two and a half year rental in that gas station. Since our first services were held at the Pasco’s home in Young’s River Loop, driving to Astoria involved driving over the Old Young’s River Bridge and driving past an abandoned service station next to the bridge. The building was a dull green color. The old gas pumps were still out front, and someone had spray painted on the garage doors, “For Rent.” It looked like graffiti when you first saw it. Since nothing in town was coming available, I enquired about the service station. The owner was a businessman from Portland. We could not afford to rent the whole building from him (I think he wanted $600 a month) but he agreed to rent two rooms to us. I believe the monthly rent began at $300 per month and was eventually increased to $325. There was a man who rented the garage portion of the building for about one month, but that was the only time we did not have full use of the building, even though we only rented a portion of it.
Naturally we wanted to make the place look as nice as we could as we worshiped the Lord there. We did not have a phone in those days so I wrote the owner asking permission to paint his building (I was anxious to get “For Rent” off the front of our church!) He wrote back and broke my heart. I misread his letter to mean that he wanted to charge me $300 more for the building if it was painted. I, of course, knew we could not pay that much more, especially when we were the ones painting the building. The process took several days, but his reply letter assured me that his intention was to PAY me $300 for painting his building. Over the course of the three and one half years we were in that building we also:
Built a steeple
Covered the gas pumps and
Resided the building
Our landlord turned out to be one of the kindest men I have ever had the privilege to know. He cared for us in ways he did not have to and did all in his power to make it possible for us to continue in the building.
Of course he did have reasons to want to keep us happy and able to stay in the property. It was not without its unique eccentricities so to speak. For instance, whenever it rained the floor of the entire building was under water! The room we used for the auditorium had a dark tile flooring. That would have been fine enough, I suppose, but when it rained there would be a nice layer of water under our feet. In order to make the matter a little more tolerable I decided to put an indoor outdoor Astroturf carpet over the tiles. It did not prevent the floor from having water on it, but at least we couldn’t see it as the carpet was floating over the top of it. Looking back now, I have no idea why the floor did not mildew. God taught me a lesson in his provision with the carpet though. We had no money. Our offerings were just barely enough to make the rent. I was not working and we did not receive much in the way of support from other churches. The Astroturf was a few hundred dollars; might as well have been a few thousand for us. But God provided. We got the carpet without hassle and without waiting.
I mentioned that we had rented two rooms in the building. One room was our auditorium. The other (the room that had been where the cash register was when this was still a gas station) was my office/nursery/Sunday School room. One wall was filled with built in book shelves which I painted and used as my library. The rest of the room was a half hexagon with all three sides being glass. It really made a beautiful office and on sunny days I was able to look out the windows, across the Old Young’s Bay Bridge and into the bay. It was marvelous! But then there was the rain. The only room in the building that was professionally carpeted was that small room; I suppose about 10x10 foot. When the rains hit, as with the rest of the building, that room was under water too. During the rainy season (and in Astoria most of the year is the rainy season) I would have to get up many hours early on Sunday mornings so I could dry that carpet. My Grandma Jewell had given me a small canister vacuum for my high school graduation. I reversed the motor so it blew warm air and pointed it toward the carpet. If I got started by 5:00 AM, most of the time I could have the floor dry enough that the carpet did not “squish” when people came in around 10:00.
And then there was the parking lot. Of course the lot was asphalted, as it had been a filling station. That was nice for parking on, but when the rains came, it turned into a swimming pool. There was a large drain in the middle of the lot, but with the storms we had in Astoria, that drain quickly plugged with grass, tree branches and leaves. There I would be, Sunday mornings, after turning on the vacuum, wading in seven or eight inches of freezing cold rain water trying to unplug that drain. There was so much vegetation in the rain water that I would have to stay out there, scraping away the junk until all the water had drained away, It motivated me to diligence in keeping our lot as swept clean as possible when it wasn’t raining!
The Astroturf carpet was a huge blessing to us in that building, but it was not without its own problems. Since the floor was so often wet, I chose not to try to glue it down, but allow it to “float” over the water when the floor flooded. Most of the time that was not too much of an issue. One time it was. Our auditorium had four doors . One door went to a small closet (which later became a Sunday School class) One door went back to a shop that I used to story things in (at one point we had our personal washer and dryer back there. The apartment we lived in did not have washer dryer space in the unit so, instead of using a pay laundry, we set our old washer and dryer in the shop. It was fine except when it was very cold outside. Then the motor of the dryer was not able to warm up enough to spin.) One door went to the room that was my office/nursery. And the final door went outside into the parking lot. Since that door opened up into the middle of the auditorium, I encouraged people to come into the auditorium through my office door. That entered the back of the room. One very sunny Sunday morning I had that door opened just a little to allow some fresh air in. I blocked the door so it would not swing wide open into the auditorium with a brick. This particular morning Pastor Bill Bramblett had come to visit (he did that often) and had brought his entire young married class with him. Our attendance more than doubled that day as that one class from his church was larger than our whole church! I was in front of the congregation giving some announcements when I saw Ray and Levina Brandon pull into the lot. As I spoke with the congregation (and all of Brother Bramblett’s people) I could watch as the Brandons parked, stepped out of their car, and headed toward the building. I could also see that they were not going to come in through my office, but were headed toward that open door into our auditorium. I was giving announcements so my mind was occupied with more than one thing (not only were there announcements, but I was going to be preaching, that was on my mind AND I had the extra mental stress of having this MUCH larger than usual attendance to preach to) so I was not able to fully appreciate what was about to happen. At some point I realized that the red brick holding the door from opening too wide was going to be a problem and I “dove” for it, but missed. Levina set her shoulder against the door and pushed with Incredible Hulk like force. The carpet, at that point sitting on dry tile with only the pews on top of it. Pulled out from under the pews and into a huge pile behind the door. What a mess. And what an embarrassment with these good friends visiting on that Sunday. Bill Bramblett has long since forgotten about that and is, to this day, one of my dearest friends and a hero of the faith for me.
We had some great times in that building. Like the service with Evangelist Rocky Shanks. Rocky is a unique person to say the least. The first time I invited him to preach for us we had a small miscommunication. I thought we were going to begin revival meetings with him on a Wednesday night. He thought we were going to begin on a Thursday night. Wednesday night I was furiously working in my small office, trying to put together a sermon of some sort, while Brother Hockley was leading our little congregation to sing every song in our hymnal. Rocky showed up about two hours before the services were to begin Thursday night. He ate a bite of dinner with Anita and I and excused himself to go do some soul winning before services. Rocky had visitors in the meeting that evening. Sunday morning we had our building jammed with the highest attendance we ever had in that property, 52. There was literally standing room only with people crammed up against the walks and Rocky kept them spellbound for an hour! His preaching style could hold a crowd, but by the time he was finished he had also made sure no one was ever going to come back again. He had threatened to beat up some of them, rip the lips off of others and take the children away from a few of the rest of them.
And then there was the revival meeting with Evangelist Roger Holmberg. I met Brother Holmberg at a pastor’s meeting in John Day, Oregon. Since he and I were just starting out in the ministry at the same time, I invited him to come preach for me. He became a regular, preaching for me at least twice a year for four or five years. Brother Holmberg is a kind a gracious person, and it is a good thing. The first time he preached for me I did not give him and offering. I was not aware we were supposed to do that. Several of those meetings he ended up going door knocking by himself as I was working. One night during a Holmberg revival flying ants swarmed our building. I do not know how to describe the scene. We are taught that nothing is as important as the preaching of God’s Word so we don’t let anything stop us from preaching. Not even flying ants. Our congregation of 10-15 people patiently sat there, batting away the flying ants from their faces while Brother Holmberg preached. And Brother Holmberg preached without complaining one time about having to bat the flying ants away as he preached!
The Lord blessed us in our building with some good free advertizing. The local newspaper caught on that we were planting a church in this abandoned service station so they came to do an interview with me. The result was a full page article with a picture of me filling one half of the page. The article was taken by the associated press and sent across the country. For years we received a small support check of five or ten dollars from a family in Indiana who had read the article. But that advertisement also alerted the county to our efforts. I had never dreamed that I need permits to start a church. Apparently I did. A county employee came to visit me and informed me that, though the building was approved for commercial use, a church is not considered commercial use and we would need to apply for a conditional use permit to continue to use the building. After a few weeks the county came back with the results of the application and said we could use the building, but there were several upgrades to the property we would have to complete. The upgrades would have cost into the thousands of dollars. There were things that had to do with upgrading the septic system (it was an old building and, to be honest, the drain field) certain doorway changes and they wanted us to build curbs restricting the flow of traffic into and out of our parking lot. The owner of the building was not interested in paying for these thousands of dollars worth of upgrades so I was left to trust in the Lord and do what I could. I could do two things….
1. A young member of our church worked for the Coast Guard. They had access to several pieces of creosoted logs. They became our curbing.
2. I wrote to Senator Mark Hatfield. I did not know anything about him except that he claimed to be a Christian. Senator Hatfield wrote back and told me that it was out of his jurisdiction to influence the county regarding their requirements, but he did say he would forward a copy of his letter to me to the county expressing his concern over what he called “exorbitant expenses.” I never heard from the county again. We never got the conditional use permits, but we were never told to vacate the property either!
Believe it or not, for most of the years we rented that property, I felt like I would have loved to own it for our church. The setting was absolutely beautiful.
The property sat on a spit of land that was surrounded on three sides by the Young’s Bay.
We were situation on Old Highway 101 and the traffic in front of our place was huge for the area. And
Our next door neighbor was Utzinger’s Hardware. Everyone knew where Utzinger’s was. If you needed it, Utzingers had it. And if you went to Utzinger’s, you probably parked in our parking lot.
So I thought to lace was beautiful. I had visions in my head of how the storage area behind our auditorium (the largest room on the property) could be our eventual auditorium. I could see us building in the future off of that auditorium over the bay. Having a church sanctuary on pilings over the water seemed somehow magical to me. Still does.
I prayed and I dreamed. And one day a man from one of the local fish processing companies came to visit me. Just off of our property, into the bay, were several pilings. Those piling, the man explained to me, belonged to our property and he was there to negotiate the use of them for the purpose of tying off his fish buying barges. His offer was a flat sum of money and a percentage from every fish purchased on those docks. It reached into the several thousands and it made purchasing the property more than possible. I thought a dream was about to come true. My problem? I did not own the property. So I approached the owner with the proposition and, in the one time I don’t think he had my best interests in mind (although now I know God knew what He was doing and He DID have my best interests in mind) instead of agreeing to work out a purchase, he saw the value of his property as having increased and raised the price several hundreds of thousand of dollars. The fish buyer was no longer interested. We continued to rent the property for another couple of years.
Speaking of rain and the building, it is time I describe our two and a half year rental in that gas station. Since our first services were held at the Pasco’s home in Young’s River Loop, driving to Astoria involved driving over the Old Young’s River Bridge and driving past an abandoned service station next to the bridge. The building was a dull green color. The old gas pumps were still out front, and someone had spray painted on the garage doors, “For Rent.” It looked like graffiti when you first saw it. Since nothing in town was coming available, I enquired about the service station. The owner was a businessman from Portland. We could not afford to rent the whole building from him (I think he wanted $600 a month) but he agreed to rent two rooms to us. I believe the monthly rent began at $300 per month and was eventually increased to $325. There was a man who rented the garage portion of the building for about one month, but that was the only time we did not have full use of the building, even though we only rented a portion of it.
Naturally we wanted to make the place look as nice as we could as we worshiped the Lord there. We did not have a phone in those days so I wrote the owner asking permission to paint his building (I was anxious to get “For Rent” off the front of our church!) He wrote back and broke my heart. I misread his letter to mean that he wanted to charge me $300 more for the building if it was painted. I, of course, knew we could not pay that much more, especially when we were the ones painting the building. The process took several days, but his reply letter assured me that his intention was to PAY me $300 for painting his building. Over the course of the three and one half years we were in that building we also:
Built a steeple
Covered the gas pumps and
Resided the building
Our landlord turned out to be one of the kindest men I have ever had the privilege to know. He cared for us in ways he did not have to and did all in his power to make it possible for us to continue in the building.
Of course he did have reasons to want to keep us happy and able to stay in the property. It was not without its unique eccentricities so to speak. For instance, whenever it rained the floor of the entire building was under water! The room we used for the auditorium had a dark tile flooring. That would have been fine enough, I suppose, but when it rained there would be a nice layer of water under our feet. In order to make the matter a little more tolerable I decided to put an indoor outdoor Astroturf carpet over the tiles. It did not prevent the floor from having water on it, but at least we couldn’t see it as the carpet was floating over the top of it. Looking back now, I have no idea why the floor did not mildew. God taught me a lesson in his provision with the carpet though. We had no money. Our offerings were just barely enough to make the rent. I was not working and we did not receive much in the way of support from other churches. The Astroturf was a few hundred dollars; might as well have been a few thousand for us. But God provided. We got the carpet without hassle and without waiting.
I mentioned that we had rented two rooms in the building. One room was our auditorium. The other (the room that had been where the cash register was when this was still a gas station) was my office/nursery/Sunday School room. One wall was filled with built in book shelves which I painted and used as my library. The rest of the room was a half hexagon with all three sides being glass. It really made a beautiful office and on sunny days I was able to look out the windows, across the Old Young’s Bay Bridge and into the bay. It was marvelous! But then there was the rain. The only room in the building that was professionally carpeted was that small room; I suppose about 10x10 foot. When the rains hit, as with the rest of the building, that room was under water too. During the rainy season (and in Astoria most of the year is the rainy season) I would have to get up many hours early on Sunday mornings so I could dry that carpet. My Grandma Jewell had given me a small canister vacuum for my high school graduation. I reversed the motor so it blew warm air and pointed it toward the carpet. If I got started by 5:00 AM, most of the time I could have the floor dry enough that the carpet did not “squish” when people came in around 10:00.
And then there was the parking lot. Of course the lot was asphalted, as it had been a filling station. That was nice for parking on, but when the rains came, it turned into a swimming pool. There was a large drain in the middle of the lot, but with the storms we had in Astoria, that drain quickly plugged with grass, tree branches and leaves. There I would be, Sunday mornings, after turning on the vacuum, wading in seven or eight inches of freezing cold rain water trying to unplug that drain. There was so much vegetation in the rain water that I would have to stay out there, scraping away the junk until all the water had drained away, It motivated me to diligence in keeping our lot as swept clean as possible when it wasn’t raining!
The Astroturf carpet was a huge blessing to us in that building, but it was not without its own problems. Since the floor was so often wet, I chose not to try to glue it down, but allow it to “float” over the water when the floor flooded. Most of the time that was not too much of an issue. One time it was. Our auditorium had four doors . One door went to a small closet (which later became a Sunday School class) One door went back to a shop that I used to story things in (at one point we had our personal washer and dryer back there. The apartment we lived in did not have washer dryer space in the unit so, instead of using a pay laundry, we set our old washer and dryer in the shop. It was fine except when it was very cold outside. Then the motor of the dryer was not able to warm up enough to spin.) One door went to the room that was my office/nursery. And the final door went outside into the parking lot. Since that door opened up into the middle of the auditorium, I encouraged people to come into the auditorium through my office door. That entered the back of the room. One very sunny Sunday morning I had that door opened just a little to allow some fresh air in. I blocked the door so it would not swing wide open into the auditorium with a brick. This particular morning Pastor Bill Bramblett had come to visit (he did that often) and had brought his entire young married class with him. Our attendance more than doubled that day as that one class from his church was larger than our whole church! I was in front of the congregation giving some announcements when I saw Ray and Levina Brandon pull into the lot. As I spoke with the congregation (and all of Brother Bramblett’s people) I could watch as the Brandons parked, stepped out of their car, and headed toward the building. I could also see that they were not going to come in through my office, but were headed toward that open door into our auditorium. I was giving announcements so my mind was occupied with more than one thing (not only were there announcements, but I was going to be preaching, that was on my mind AND I had the extra mental stress of having this MUCH larger than usual attendance to preach to) so I was not able to fully appreciate what was about to happen. At some point I realized that the red brick holding the door from opening too wide was going to be a problem and I “dove” for it, but missed. Levina set her shoulder against the door and pushed with Incredible Hulk like force. The carpet, at that point sitting on dry tile with only the pews on top of it. Pulled out from under the pews and into a huge pile behind the door. What a mess. And what an embarrassment with these good friends visiting on that Sunday. Bill Bramblett has long since forgotten about that and is, to this day, one of my dearest friends and a hero of the faith for me.
We had some great times in that building. Like the service with Evangelist Rocky Shanks. Rocky is a unique person to say the least. The first time I invited him to preach for us we had a small miscommunication. I thought we were going to begin revival meetings with him on a Wednesday night. He thought we were going to begin on a Thursday night. Wednesday night I was furiously working in my small office, trying to put together a sermon of some sort, while Brother Hockley was leading our little congregation to sing every song in our hymnal. Rocky showed up about two hours before the services were to begin Thursday night. He ate a bite of dinner with Anita and I and excused himself to go do some soul winning before services. Rocky had visitors in the meeting that evening. Sunday morning we had our building jammed with the highest attendance we ever had in that property, 52. There was literally standing room only with people crammed up against the walks and Rocky kept them spellbound for an hour! His preaching style could hold a crowd, but by the time he was finished he had also made sure no one was ever going to come back again. He had threatened to beat up some of them, rip the lips off of others and take the children away from a few of the rest of them.
And then there was the revival meeting with Evangelist Roger Holmberg. I met Brother Holmberg at a pastor’s meeting in John Day, Oregon. Since he and I were just starting out in the ministry at the same time, I invited him to come preach for me. He became a regular, preaching for me at least twice a year for four or five years. Brother Holmberg is a kind a gracious person, and it is a good thing. The first time he preached for me I did not give him and offering. I was not aware we were supposed to do that. Several of those meetings he ended up going door knocking by himself as I was working. One night during a Holmberg revival flying ants swarmed our building. I do not know how to describe the scene. We are taught that nothing is as important as the preaching of God’s Word so we don’t let anything stop us from preaching. Not even flying ants. Our congregation of 10-15 people patiently sat there, batting away the flying ants from their faces while Brother Holmberg preached. And Brother Holmberg preached without complaining one time about having to bat the flying ants away as he preached!
The Lord blessed us in our building with some good free advertizing. The local newspaper caught on that we were planting a church in this abandoned service station so they came to do an interview with me. The result was a full page article with a picture of me filling one half of the page. The article was taken by the associated press and sent across the country. For years we received a small support check of five or ten dollars from a family in Indiana who had read the article. But that advertisement also alerted the county to our efforts. I had never dreamed that I need permits to start a church. Apparently I did. A county employee came to visit me and informed me that, though the building was approved for commercial use, a church is not considered commercial use and we would need to apply for a conditional use permit to continue to use the building. After a few weeks the county came back with the results of the application and said we could use the building, but there were several upgrades to the property we would have to complete. The upgrades would have cost into the thousands of dollars. There were things that had to do with upgrading the septic system (it was an old building and, to be honest, the drain field) certain doorway changes and they wanted us to build curbs restricting the flow of traffic into and out of our parking lot. The owner of the building was not interested in paying for these thousands of dollars worth of upgrades so I was left to trust in the Lord and do what I could. I could do two things….
1. A young member of our church worked for the Coast Guard. They had access to several pieces of creosoted logs. They became our curbing.
2. I wrote to Senator Mark Hatfield. I did not know anything about him except that he claimed to be a Christian. Senator Hatfield wrote back and told me that it was out of his jurisdiction to influence the county regarding their requirements, but he did say he would forward a copy of his letter to me to the county expressing his concern over what he called “exorbitant expenses.” I never heard from the county again. We never got the conditional use permits, but we were never told to vacate the property either!
Believe it or not, for most of the years we rented that property, I felt like I would have loved to own it for our church. The setting was absolutely beautiful.
The property sat on a spit of land that was surrounded on three sides by the Young’s Bay.
We were situation on Old Highway 101 and the traffic in front of our place was huge for the area. And
Our next door neighbor was Utzinger’s Hardware. Everyone knew where Utzinger’s was. If you needed it, Utzingers had it. And if you went to Utzinger’s, you probably parked in our parking lot.
So I thought to lace was beautiful. I had visions in my head of how the storage area behind our auditorium (the largest room on the property) could be our eventual auditorium. I could see us building in the future off of that auditorium over the bay. Having a church sanctuary on pilings over the water seemed somehow magical to me. Still does.
I prayed and I dreamed. And one day a man from one of the local fish processing companies came to visit me. Just off of our property, into the bay, were several pilings. Those piling, the man explained to me, belonged to our property and he was there to negotiate the use of them for the purpose of tying off his fish buying barges. His offer was a flat sum of money and a percentage from every fish purchased on those docks. It reached into the several thousands and it made purchasing the property more than possible. I thought a dream was about to come true. My problem? I did not own the property. So I approached the owner with the proposition and, in the one time I don’t think he had my best interests in mind (although now I know God knew what He was doing and He DID have my best interests in mind) instead of agreeing to work out a purchase, he saw the value of his property as having increased and raised the price several hundreds of thousand of dollars. The fish buyer was no longer interested. We continued to rent the property for another couple of years.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine Finances
Finances early on were quite a challenge. I had $1000 in my pocket when we moved to town. And as I said earlier, I did have about $350.00 of monthly support promised from the two churches in Colorado. As I remember it, Tri-Town Baptist Church supported us for at least two years. I think Platteville Baptist Church discontinued support (for our health insurance) when Bohannan was born. We did also receive $25.00 per month from Berean Baptist Church in Pendleton, OR for several years.
Astoria was in an economic slump when we moved to town and there were no jobs to be had; at least not ones that I could find. So we had to make do with what we had. We lived in my father-in-laws’s motor home until July, when Bohannan was born. I just knew we could not keep a baby in that motor home with us. We were blessed to get a bottom floor apartment at the Riverine Apts, with the window facing over the bay and, by the way, at the little gas station building we had rented for our services. I could walk from the apartment, over the Old Young’s Bay Bridge, to the church building.
I learned early on we could trust the Lord to meet our needs. While we had almost no income in the church, and therefore less than that for our home, God saw to it that money was there when we needed it. One outstanding memory concerned the carpet on the church floor. The building had a tile floor which seemed fine until the rains came. Every time it rained our floor flooded with an eighth inch of rain or so. It made church pretty difficult and there was no stopping the flooding. I decided that an indoor outdoor carpet, like Astroturf, would be able to withstand the water and would also not show the water as badly. The carpet was three hundred dollars. Three hundred dollars we did not have. However, when it came time to buy it, God provided it.
On another occasion I had gone to visit a family who lived outside of town a ways (It was the Burkharts. Wayne Ward had told me about them). It was raining and the road was very curving and slippery and my tires were so bald that I was skidding around most of the corners. I came home and began to pray or tires. We had no money and I had no way to tell anyone about the need. We could not even afford to have a phone in the house so our only communication with friends and family outside of Astoria was by mail. A friend of mine in Richland, WA wrote me a letter about that time. He said he suspected that our car would need tires about now and if we would come to the Tri-Cities he would buy them for me. I consider that letter a miracle to this day. I would not wish that sort of poverty on anybody. But I can say today that I miss the unmistakable answers to prayers that Anita and I witnessed time and time again during those days.
Finances early on were quite a challenge. I had $1000 in my pocket when we moved to town. And as I said earlier, I did have about $350.00 of monthly support promised from the two churches in Colorado. As I remember it, Tri-Town Baptist Church supported us for at least two years. I think Platteville Baptist Church discontinued support (for our health insurance) when Bohannan was born. We did also receive $25.00 per month from Berean Baptist Church in Pendleton, OR for several years.
Astoria was in an economic slump when we moved to town and there were no jobs to be had; at least not ones that I could find. So we had to make do with what we had. We lived in my father-in-laws’s motor home until July, when Bohannan was born. I just knew we could not keep a baby in that motor home with us. We were blessed to get a bottom floor apartment at the Riverine Apts, with the window facing over the bay and, by the way, at the little gas station building we had rented for our services. I could walk from the apartment, over the Old Young’s Bay Bridge, to the church building.
I learned early on we could trust the Lord to meet our needs. While we had almost no income in the church, and therefore less than that for our home, God saw to it that money was there when we needed it. One outstanding memory concerned the carpet on the church floor. The building had a tile floor which seemed fine until the rains came. Every time it rained our floor flooded with an eighth inch of rain or so. It made church pretty difficult and there was no stopping the flooding. I decided that an indoor outdoor carpet, like Astroturf, would be able to withstand the water and would also not show the water as badly. The carpet was three hundred dollars. Three hundred dollars we did not have. However, when it came time to buy it, God provided it.
On another occasion I had gone to visit a family who lived outside of town a ways (It was the Burkharts. Wayne Ward had told me about them). It was raining and the road was very curving and slippery and my tires were so bald that I was skidding around most of the corners. I came home and began to pray or tires. We had no money and I had no way to tell anyone about the need. We could not even afford to have a phone in the house so our only communication with friends and family outside of Astoria was by mail. A friend of mine in Richland, WA wrote me a letter about that time. He said he suspected that our car would need tires about now and if we would come to the Tri-Cities he would buy them for me. I consider that letter a miracle to this day. I would not wish that sort of poverty on anybody. But I can say today that I miss the unmistakable answers to prayers that Anita and I witnessed time and time again during those days.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Chapter Eight
Chapter Eight Our First Congregation
Our building there was not very pretty and I think it made it difficult to attract visitors.
I would go out almost every day and try to invite people to come to our services. Once in a while I would recognize the people in a car that pulled into our parking lot as someone I had spoken to during the week. But when they would see the building, they would drive away.
God did give us some great people though. Early on I recognized that we would not have been able to survive in Astoria through those difficult years if it had not been for what I came to call the “quality” of people we had.
Rod and Karen Hockley
They, along with their daughter, Jennifer, were no doubt the best godsend I could have imagined.
They were committed to our church
They were gracious with me
They brought visitors to church all of the time and
They provided really good music
I cannot imagine that we would have stayed in Astoria if it had not been for this family. They quickly became family.
Mark and Christy Rowland
Mark and Christy gave us a reason to minister. They were simple and kind people whose children were born and grew up alongside of our own – at least for the first several years.
George and Jonnie Simmons
The Simmons came to our church about August, just after the first two families quit coming. George had a good job and was a faithful tither so that helped us out financially. We did not have much; but we always had enough to pay the bills and keep us in a place to live.
Bob and Bernie Brandon
Bob and Bernie never did join our church. The first time they visited Bob told me that they were church hoppers and would not stay with us long. He meant what he said and they did leave. But their time in our church was healing and helpful. We would go to their home nearly once a week for a meal and Bob treated our baby, Bohannan, as a grandchild. Bob and Bernie quit attending when they got upset at the Hockley’s for singing a son they had requested as a special and not as a congregational song.
Along the way others came and went. We led a bartender to the Lord when she visited our services one week. Her husband and children began to come faithfully for a while but she could never get over the guilt of her job and, rather than giving up the job, she finally quit church. Her husband was a competition bass fisherman. He took me out fishing with him one day. We had an outstanding time (at least I thought) but he would never come to church after that. It is part of the reason I question whether a preacher should ever become friends with his church members. That, and I can’t see it in the Bible either.
We led another young mom to the Lord one Sunday morning. I baptized that morning and then found out she was living with the man who was the father of the kids. They had not been married. She and the kids faithfully attended services Sunday mornings, evenings and Wednesdays for I think four years while I tried to get her boyfriend to get saved and to get them married. She and the kids quit church very soon after they got married.
Not everybody who came to church got saved though. One day I was in the office studying when the mail man walked in the door after delivering the mail. He had parked the postal vehicle at the gas pumps that were still standing there in front of the building. As he opened the door he joked “Fill ‘er up and give me a five minute sermon.” We spoke a moment or two and I invited him to attend our services. He was there the next Sunday. I went by to visit him the following week and the conversation was nothing more than his expression of disagreement over several things in the message. He continued to deliver our mail, but he did not come back to church. Another time a lady came to visit the services. Before church began she explained to me that she owned a building in town that had been used as the first meeting place of several of the area churches. She wondered if I would want to rent the place. I told her I did not think so, but if she wanted to stay for the church service I would speak with her more about it after the message. When I gave the invitation she came forward and announced that God had called her to start her own church in her building. And she did it too!
Our building there was not very pretty and I think it made it difficult to attract visitors.
I would go out almost every day and try to invite people to come to our services. Once in a while I would recognize the people in a car that pulled into our parking lot as someone I had spoken to during the week. But when they would see the building, they would drive away.
God did give us some great people though. Early on I recognized that we would not have been able to survive in Astoria through those difficult years if it had not been for what I came to call the “quality” of people we had.
Rod and Karen Hockley
They, along with their daughter, Jennifer, were no doubt the best godsend I could have imagined.
They were committed to our church
They were gracious with me
They brought visitors to church all of the time and
They provided really good music
I cannot imagine that we would have stayed in Astoria if it had not been for this family. They quickly became family.
Mark and Christy Rowland
Mark and Christy gave us a reason to minister. They were simple and kind people whose children were born and grew up alongside of our own – at least for the first several years.
George and Jonnie Simmons
The Simmons came to our church about August, just after the first two families quit coming. George had a good job and was a faithful tither so that helped us out financially. We did not have much; but we always had enough to pay the bills and keep us in a place to live.
Bob and Bernie Brandon
Bob and Bernie never did join our church. The first time they visited Bob told me that they were church hoppers and would not stay with us long. He meant what he said and they did leave. But their time in our church was healing and helpful. We would go to their home nearly once a week for a meal and Bob treated our baby, Bohannan, as a grandchild. Bob and Bernie quit attending when they got upset at the Hockley’s for singing a son they had requested as a special and not as a congregational song.
Along the way others came and went. We led a bartender to the Lord when she visited our services one week. Her husband and children began to come faithfully for a while but she could never get over the guilt of her job and, rather than giving up the job, she finally quit church. Her husband was a competition bass fisherman. He took me out fishing with him one day. We had an outstanding time (at least I thought) but he would never come to church after that. It is part of the reason I question whether a preacher should ever become friends with his church members. That, and I can’t see it in the Bible either.
We led another young mom to the Lord one Sunday morning. I baptized that morning and then found out she was living with the man who was the father of the kids. They had not been married. She and the kids faithfully attended services Sunday mornings, evenings and Wednesdays for I think four years while I tried to get her boyfriend to get saved and to get them married. She and the kids quit church very soon after they got married.
Not everybody who came to church got saved though. One day I was in the office studying when the mail man walked in the door after delivering the mail. He had parked the postal vehicle at the gas pumps that were still standing there in front of the building. As he opened the door he joked “Fill ‘er up and give me a five minute sermon.” We spoke a moment or two and I invited him to attend our services. He was there the next Sunday. I went by to visit him the following week and the conversation was nothing more than his expression of disagreement over several things in the message. He continued to deliver our mail, but he did not come back to church. Another time a lady came to visit the services. Before church began she explained to me that she owned a building in town that had been used as the first meeting place of several of the area churches. She wondered if I would want to rent the place. I told her I did not think so, but if she wanted to stay for the church service I would speak with her more about it after the message. When I gave the invitation she came forward and announced that God had called her to start her own church in her building. And she did it too!
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven Differences
The differences between the Pasco’s and Scull’s and the Hockley’s and Rowland’s did not take long to become a big deal.
First, I asked Bro Hockley to be the treasurer, a selection that Bro Pasco did not appreciate.
Secondly, I was invited to preach at Bible Baptist Church in Oak Harbor, WA. The church was the Pasco’s old congregation and Brother Pasco had personally recommended me to the pastor, Gary Prisk. However, I offended the Pasco’s and the Scull’s by asking Pastor James Watkins, from Cathlamet, WA to fill in for me without getting their approval of his doing so.
Thirdly, it was obvious that my doctrinal positions were more in line with the Hockleys than with the Pasco’s. It was not infrequent that, as I preached, Mrs. Pasco would gasp, slap her hand to her face and shake her head in disagreement. I determined fairly quickly I could not allow that to happen so one day, after she had done that, I commented publicly that whenever she did that I would know I was onto something I needed to park on awhile, so if she did not want me to preach on those things it would be best is she simply smiled at me and I would then move on.
The final straw happened in May. I recognized that I could not appease all four of these families; the differences were just too pronounced. I took my Bible and my concordance up to a remote place on a hill and turned a tree stump into a desk. There I prayed to the Lord and said something of this nature, “Father, ever since I became a Christian I have followed my pastors. When I was a member of Pastor Scudder’s church I believed what Pastor Scudder believed. When I became a member of Pastor Bellshaw’s church, I believed what Pastor Bellshaw did. When I went to Bible College and joined Pastor Duncan’s church, I believed what Pastor Duncan did. When we joined Pastor Smith’s church then I believed what Pastor Smith did. But Father Pastor Scudder and Pastor Bellshaw and Pastor Duncan and Pastor Smith are not here. I need to find out what You want me to believe.” I came down from that hilltop convinced I concerning my doctrines. I called the four men, heads of those families and told them; “This is what I believe, take it or leave it.” I already knew that two of those families would leave it.
The Pasco’s had already arranged a job move. They continued with us through most of the summer. Guy Scull took me aside and said, “I have always been able to support my pastor 100%. I support Pastor Blue in Lynnwood 100%. I supported Pastor McCormick in Gladstone 100%. I support Pastor Meskch in North Bend 100%. I cannot support you 100%so we will be leaving.” The Guys continued to live in the area for the next several years. They did not attend church anywhere during all of those years. I found Mrs. Scull outside of our house one day. I think she wished she could talk her husband into coming to church, but it never happened.
The differences between the Pasco’s and Scull’s and the Hockley’s and Rowland’s did not take long to become a big deal.
First, I asked Bro Hockley to be the treasurer, a selection that Bro Pasco did not appreciate.
Secondly, I was invited to preach at Bible Baptist Church in Oak Harbor, WA. The church was the Pasco’s old congregation and Brother Pasco had personally recommended me to the pastor, Gary Prisk. However, I offended the Pasco’s and the Scull’s by asking Pastor James Watkins, from Cathlamet, WA to fill in for me without getting their approval of his doing so.
Thirdly, it was obvious that my doctrinal positions were more in line with the Hockleys than with the Pasco’s. It was not infrequent that, as I preached, Mrs. Pasco would gasp, slap her hand to her face and shake her head in disagreement. I determined fairly quickly I could not allow that to happen so one day, after she had done that, I commented publicly that whenever she did that I would know I was onto something I needed to park on awhile, so if she did not want me to preach on those things it would be best is she simply smiled at me and I would then move on.
The final straw happened in May. I recognized that I could not appease all four of these families; the differences were just too pronounced. I took my Bible and my concordance up to a remote place on a hill and turned a tree stump into a desk. There I prayed to the Lord and said something of this nature, “Father, ever since I became a Christian I have followed my pastors. When I was a member of Pastor Scudder’s church I believed what Pastor Scudder believed. When I became a member of Pastor Bellshaw’s church, I believed what Pastor Bellshaw did. When I went to Bible College and joined Pastor Duncan’s church, I believed what Pastor Duncan did. When we joined Pastor Smith’s church then I believed what Pastor Smith did. But Father Pastor Scudder and Pastor Bellshaw and Pastor Duncan and Pastor Smith are not here. I need to find out what You want me to believe.” I came down from that hilltop convinced I concerning my doctrines. I called the four men, heads of those families and told them; “This is what I believe, take it or leave it.” I already knew that two of those families would leave it.
The Pasco’s had already arranged a job move. They continued with us through most of the summer. Guy Scull took me aside and said, “I have always been able to support my pastor 100%. I support Pastor Blue in Lynnwood 100%. I supported Pastor McCormick in Gladstone 100%. I support Pastor Meskch in North Bend 100%. I cannot support you 100%so we will be leaving.” The Guys continued to live in the area for the next several years. They did not attend church anywhere during all of those years. I found Mrs. Scull outside of our house one day. I think she wished she could talk her husband into coming to church, but it never happened.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Chapter Six
Chapter Six Our First Building
Finding a place to meet to plant a church was no easy matter. First of all, I had no money and no real promise of gaining any. Secondly, the business owners in Astoria were not thrilled to have a new church in town anyway. 1984 was a recession time in Astoria’s economy. Many of the storefront buildings in downtown Astoria were vacant. Most of them were owned by a woman named Mary Flavel, descendent of Captain Flavel, the first Columbia River Bar pilot. She told me bluntly that she would never agree to rent any of her properties to a church regardless of how much we could pay. I had to look elsewhere.
As a part of my search efforts I spoke with a realtor who took us out Walluski Loop road and to a grange hall out there. While the scenery was beautiful and the price would have been fine, I determined it was just too far out of town to reasonably expect people to drive for church services. We settled instead on an abandoned service station across the old Young’s River Bridge. It was a drab green color and had the words “for rent” spray painted across the garage doors. It was also attached to Utzinger’s Coast to Coast store.
I could not afford to rent all of the building so the owner, a businessman from Portland, agreed to let me rent a large room that could have been used as a convenience store and the office, where the cash register would have been. We made some benches out of scrap lumber in back of the building. I had a small home made lectern, the Sculls offered to put their piano in the building and we were set for church.
I don’t remember exactly, but I imagine we were holding services in there by the first of May. The Pasco’s were a pretty large family so with them and the other three families (not counting myself and a very pregnant Anita) the room was quite full. I turned the office area into my study (and the nursery once our baby was born) and we set out to win souls and try to reach the town. Rod Hockley suggested the name, Lower Columbia Baptist Church.
Finding a place to meet to plant a church was no easy matter. First of all, I had no money and no real promise of gaining any. Secondly, the business owners in Astoria were not thrilled to have a new church in town anyway. 1984 was a recession time in Astoria’s economy. Many of the storefront buildings in downtown Astoria were vacant. Most of them were owned by a woman named Mary Flavel, descendent of Captain Flavel, the first Columbia River Bar pilot. She told me bluntly that she would never agree to rent any of her properties to a church regardless of how much we could pay. I had to look elsewhere.
As a part of my search efforts I spoke with a realtor who took us out Walluski Loop road and to a grange hall out there. While the scenery was beautiful and the price would have been fine, I determined it was just too far out of town to reasonably expect people to drive for church services. We settled instead on an abandoned service station across the old Young’s River Bridge. It was a drab green color and had the words “for rent” spray painted across the garage doors. It was also attached to Utzinger’s Coast to Coast store.
I could not afford to rent all of the building so the owner, a businessman from Portland, agreed to let me rent a large room that could have been used as a convenience store and the office, where the cash register would have been. We made some benches out of scrap lumber in back of the building. I had a small home made lectern, the Sculls offered to put their piano in the building and we were set for church.
I don’t remember exactly, but I imagine we were holding services in there by the first of May. The Pasco’s were a pretty large family so with them and the other three families (not counting myself and a very pregnant Anita) the room was quite full. I turned the office area into my study (and the nursery once our baby was born) and we set out to win souls and try to reach the town. Rod Hockley suggested the name, Lower Columbia Baptist Church.
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