Chapter Four

Chapter Four Platteville
February of 1983: I had gone to Platteville, CO alone under the commission of the First Bible Baptist Church of Boulder, CO. We organized a large door knocking effort using students from Baptist Bible College West. Our original meeting place was the basement of the Methodist church.

Though we had canvassed every home in town, the only family that came to the services was some members of First Bible Baptist. They lived in Mead, not too far from Platteville. Other than the Hennings, no one else visited our mid-week Bible studies.

Over the course of the next few months, we had door knocked around town and had learned that there was another effort to plant an independent Baptist church in Platteville and it was taking place at the very same time. I eventually located a flyer from that effort and in June of 1983, contacted the pastor, Don Smith. They were being commissioned by the Tri-Town Baptist Church in Frederick, CO and were using the same name as us. After meeting we agreed to work together with Pastor Smith as the pastor. I would be co-pastor and gain valuable experience in future church planting in the Northwest.

God seemed to bless our efforts together and the church began to average in the 20’s and 30’s with some higher days near 50. It was an encouraging thing and Pastor Smith, though much different than myself in personality, did me much good. I was ordained in that church on December 29, 1983.

At the New Year, Anita and I began making plans to return to the Northwest. Understand that when we moved to Colorado, we thought we would return after college to LaGrande, OR to plant a church. While we were in school, however, word got back to us that someone else had already gone to LaGrande. We needed to find a new place. My original plan was to live with my grandparents in Lyle, WA for a few months while Anita and I surveyed the states of Washington and Oregon in search of God’s leadership as to where to plant a new church. However, Pastor Smith refused to allow us to go out of the church there in Platteville until we knew the town we would be sent to. It seems harsh but we were asking them to be our sending church. Now that I have a few years of pasturing under my belt, and have some experience in planting churches, I completely understand a sending church’s desire to be very much in the loop of the decision making process.

Rather than moving to the Northwest and then finding the town we would plant a church in, I began making phone calls. I believe my first call was to Evangelist Mike Gass. He gave me the name of several churches, some in Oregon, and some in Washington that he believed were searching for a pastor. While none of those churches panned out, we did get the names of several other pastors to call. One of them was Ken McCormick, of Tri-City Baptist Temple in Gladstone, OR. Pastor McCormick told us about two families in Astoria, OR who had been praying for a man to come and plant a church there.

After our research, Anita and I had narrowed our field of choices down to three towns; Baker, OR, Hood River, OR and Astoria, OR. I sat down with Pastor Don Smith, and Pastor Bob Roark (of Tri-Town Baptist Church) for lunch at the Cottage Kitchen in Platteville. I described for the two men what I knew about Baker, Hood River and Astoria. To be honest, I cannot remember what I said about Baker and Hood River, but I do remember very clearly what I said about Astoria. I told them that I had never been to the town but all I could picture was trees that only had leaves on one side because the wind blew all the time and that stinky ocean smell. (I had been to Florence, OR a couple of years earlier and that was my impression of it. I figures all of the coastal towns would be about the same.)

Pastor Smith and Pastor Roark laughed and told me that was where they wanted me to go. I do not, to this day, regret following their leadership on the matter.