Some lessons are only learned the hard way.
I had gone to work for Astoria Oil Services in about October of 1984. It was a miraculous thing that, in such a small town as Astoria, an opportunity to ply my trade as an Ironworker would come along. Astoria Oil Services built an oil refinery for the Alaska oil fields, in Astoria. We built the refinery (several buildings) at the Port of Astoria and, when it was completed, barged the buildings to Alaska.
My name was on the unemployment office list. When the job came to town, I was called early on. Though the work was completely Ironworking, the Boilermaker Union had the job. Most of the employees were loggers, fisherman and an occasional shipyard worker. I knew one or two boilermakers on the site and there were I think two or three (including myself) Ironworkers. The day I interviewed another Ironworker was in the opposite side of the room being interviewed at the same time. The guy interviewing me was so excited to have experienced Ironworkers to add to the labor pool.
Because I was in town to pastor and not to work the job, I insisted that I would not work weekends, overtime and that I would take Monday and Tuesday off once a month to attend a pastor's fellowship meeting. They agreed to the terms and chose to pay me a very poor wage, even in comparison to the fishermen and loggers they were hiring to work alongside me. The job turned out to be a real blessing in many ways.
First, it relieved some financial pressure.
Second, it relieved some emotional pressure. For eight hours a day I could escape the pressure of trying to get the church off the ground.
Third, I had many opportunities to witness and saw a few men make professions of faith. Though I did not personally win him to Christ, I had witnessed to Mark Tanguay and was there the day he did trust Christ. Brother Tanguay and his family eventually united with our church and he is to this day one of my dearest friends.
Fourth, God put a man on the job who was a real help to me. I do not remember the man's name. He was a member of one of the nearby Conservative Baptist churches and, knowing that I was a pastor, he would slip up to me a few times each week and ask me for a quick sermon. I would be welding when I pulled up my helmet and there he would be. Because I never knew when he would show up I developed the habit of meditating and working on sermon outlines while I was welding. That way I would have something to give him. It also gave me something to work on for church messages.
My first assignment at Astoria Oil Services was on the Raising Gang. We put the pieces of the building together. My job was as the "hook on" man. It was my responsibility to read the blue prints to figure out which piece of iron went up next, to properly rig it to the chokers and hook it on to the crane. To have less down time for the crane, we would hook on five or six members of iron at a time, the first member would be on the longest choker, making it available to the connectors up on the steel. The second member would be on the next longest and so on. The connectors on this job were a pair of boilermakers. I do not remember the names of both of them but one was Brad. I imagine they were decent boilermakers but they had no idea how to connect an iron structure.
• Time after time I would send the iron to them and they would say they did not fit.
• Time after time I would try to yell (over the sound of the crane) instructions on how to connect the pieces from the ground (God used this to help me develop lungs for preaching) and
• Time after time I would end up climbing up the building and connecting the members for them then climbing back down to hook on the next members for connecting.
During one of our breaks I attempted to witness to the two boilermakers. Brad became infuriated with me and said, "Marvin, I respect you as an ironworker and will work with you. But if I ever see you on the streets witnessing in the name of Jesus, I will kill you on the spot!" I believed he meant it. The story was that he had been away on a job when a local Pentecostal church made contact with his wife and kids. They began attending that church while he was away. They each made professions of faith and they began to pray for Brad to be "saved" too. When he came home, the pastor came to the house and preached his version of the Gospel to Brad. When Brad did not get saved, the pastor turned to his wife and kids and instructed them to leave him. I figure he had a good reason to be angry! Two or three years later I was in the McDonald's restaurant in Astoria and saw Brad's Boilermaker partner. He was thrilled to tell me that Brad had become a Christian (not Pentecostal though). Not that this guy was a Christian - he just remembered the showdown between Brad and me that day at Astoria Oil Services.
I continued to work there, one of the few qualified employees, making one of the lowest wages for several months. Unbeknownst to me the Union representative had discovered what I was being paid and began lobbying to get me a raise. Just before the holiday's I received that raise - several dollars and hour worth, and a check recouping me for retroactive pay from the day of my hire. The Lord does take care of his own.
But not everything was great there. Sometime around the holidays he project adjusted from the connection phase of construction where we put the buildings together, stuffed all the bolts and rattled them tight and plumbed the structures, to the completion phase where we did everything else to finish them. I was placed on a detail gang s a welder. My foreman was Mike Dessert. Mike was a Christian, but from a different background than fundamental Baptist. His doctrine sounded very much like ours and I was glad to receive him into our church. But Mike and his family were not the same as we.
It did not take long before the fur began to fly. At first it wasn't too big of a deal. I thought I was teaching Mike. During breaks at work he would come to ask me questions about things we did and things I preached. I knew he had not done those in his last church, but I did not know he was not buying that we did them. I thought he was growing. One day I opened the door of our church building to find one of the church keys on the floor.
• No note
• No explanation
• Nothing to even tell me whose key it was.
Mike Dessert had quit the church. He was still my foreman at work, but he didn't have the manliness to even look me in the face and give me the key. I have since learned that this is the standard method of church quitters.
I have also learned that it is a very rare thing for a person who has been involved in a non denominational type of church to ever really become a Baptist.
• They might join a Baptist church.
• They submit to the teachings and practice for a time
But it is the rare case for them to truly grip hold of the heritage and convictions of Baptists. In some cases they have even gone into the ministry and became ordained as Baptist pastors, but only years later does is it revealed that, deep in their hearts, they were always what they always were, non denominational, and they lead their churches to practice Christianity in the more non-denominational church way. That's why we see so many Fundamental Baptist churches slipping into practices that are more in harmony with Bill Hybels and those of the less doctrinal churches; they never were Baptists. They have not compromised their Baptist convictions; the truth is they never had them. They merely went along with them when it was best for them to do so.
The lesson? Return to old Ana Baptist principles and practice church in such a way that it is difficult to join the church and easy to leave. The membership of a Baptist church must be, as best as we are able, Baptist.
I worked at Astoria Oil Services twice; the first time was from October 1984 to June 1985. After taking the summer off to try to focus on the church, I returned in September of 1985 and worked there until January of 1986.
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