Hanging at the Well
A Testimony to God's Grace
Chapter 16: Reshaping the Vessel
In the Spring of 1974 I began to hear people talk about The Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts. At first I was not interested. “Why should I attend a seminar that I could teach?” However, friends continued to encourage me to attend. There happened to be one scheduled for Bakersfield and this would give me an opportunity to visit my family and my mother would watch the boys while we attended.
The Bakersfield Civic Auditorium was packed. We arrived early enough to get a seat toward the front. The first session was on “Self-Image.” I can still remember the thoughts and feelings of that night. Bill Gothard wasn’t a half hour into his lesson when I felt that someone had told him that I was coming and he was aiming right at me. I sat in an audience of 4,000 people and felt like I was the only one in the room and this guy was reading my story. I began to weep as God convicted me over and over about what had been driving my life.
The rest of the week-long seminar was rewarding, but I will never forget that opening night. I returned to Kingman totally broken once again. When I opened the mail there was a book from a book club that I had not ordered. It was entitled, The Velvet-Covered Brick by Howard Butt. It was the first book I had ever read on the subject of Leadership. Once again I was convicted that both my attitude and goals had been wrong.
I made an appointment with Dr Bill Boice, Senior Minister at First Christian Church in Phoenix. I opened my heart to him and he recommended that I start having sessions with Dr. George Schaffer, a retired Baptist pastor who had set up a counseling office at First Christian. I drove from Kingman to Phoenix once a month to meet with him. He identified my obsession with success which was only made worse by not having a definition for success. He also helped me understand the hypochondria that kept reappearing. However, the struggle with psychosomatic health issues would continue for a few more years.
One of the first actions in my healing process was to write a letter to the Elder of the Greenville church. I thanked them for being a part of God’s plan to reconstruct me. I asked their forgiveness for all the grief I had caused them and told them that I would be praying for their success. I never heard from them, but that was okay, I had broken emotional strings I had not released when I left Illinois.
Now I was free to be the man God wanted me to be. Now I could concentrate on being a husband and father. Both my leadership and preaching would change. However, by this time I had resigned from Kingman with no place to go. I was out of a job with no prospects on the horizon.
Chapter 17: Two Last Chances Combine
My ministry in Kingman was scheduled to come to an end on the last day of November 1974. I had applied to several churches throughout the southwest and three of them had shown some interest, one in Phoenix, one in New Mexico and one in California. Around Thanksgiving I was getting nervous. Peggy and I prayed, “God show us where you want us. Please, Lord, close two of the doors.” Within three days of that prayer all three doors closed. That was not quite the answer we were looking for.
The church in Phoenix decided that I did not fit their profile. The church in California hired someone else. The church in New Mexico had sent a couple to interview us. They came to church the Sunday before Thanksgiving and left without saying a word. I learned two days later that they had received a phone call that morning telling them that their minister had retracted his resignation and was staying.
I had been asked to speak for the community Thanksgiving Eve service sponsored by the Kingman Ministerial Alliance. As I was walking out the door the phone rang. The man said he was an elder at Glendale Christian Church in Glendale, AZ. I didn’t even know there was a church in Glendale, AZ. He wanted to come to Kingman on Sunday to talk to me. The meeting was arranged.
That Sunday following Thanksgiving Daryl and Margie Olson drove to Kingman and they came for lunch in our home. They said the church was looking for a new minister and they were checking out possibilities. We would later learn that the Search Committee at Glendale had given up and Daryl was acting on his own. Bill Frost, an elder and a barber, had heard about me from one of the preachers who came to his shop. Daryl took it upon himself to call me.
Two weeks later I was in a meeting in Glendale and asking myself, “God, what in the world are you doing to me?” I sat in the living room of one of the leaders as they made phone calls trying to get a quorum together to talk to me. They finally talked enough people into coming that we could go ahead with the meeting.
Glendale Christian Church was the first church planted by the Arizona Evangelistic Association. It had grown fast in its first two years and then nearly died. I later discovered that they had fired their last minister and could not find anyone interested in coming. They had hired a man from California and two weeks before he was to arrive he called and told them he would not come. The church leadership was very discouraged and had taken a vote on whether to try to call another man or close the door. It was a split vote. Therefore I became their “last chance.” And, they were mine.
Chapter 18: The Carol Avenue Gang
Changed lives and long-lasting friendships are truly some of the greatest joys of life. As we lived in the middle house of our two blocks of Carol Ave, we were blessed with both joys.
When we moved from Kingman to Glendale we first rented a house on N. 65th Ave just south of Glendale Ave. We only wanted to rent for six months as we looked for a place to purchase. I had plotted the locations of all of the members of Glendale Christian Church on a map and discovered that only four families lived within Glendale city limits. Peggy and I had only one prayer concerning where we would eventually live, “Lord, lead us to a neighborhood in Glendale where we can minister.” God provided a miraculous answer.
The church was meeting in the YWCA and rented an office in downtown Glendale. Across the hall was the office for the Multiple Listing service for local realtors. The secretary was a Christian woman who very much wanted to help. Therefore, she was constantly bringing us listings of nice homes in our price range. Our realtor was Rod Thompson, an elder in the Palo Verde Christian Church and a member of the Arizona Evangelistic Association board.
A listing came through the MLS office for a home on Carol Ave which was located on the northern end of Glendale (those who know Glendale today will get a laugh out of that). Rod took us to see the three-bedroom house and it was immaculate, but just above our price range. As we stood in the driveway talking someone noticed the house across the street, a horribly kept trash dump – sad for a house only five years old. In the tall weeds on the corner was a for sale sign. The house was vacant, so we look through the windows and saw floors strewn with trash. The carport contained a junk car, sixteen bags of beer bottles and pornography and four dead trees still in their nursery containers. The owner had started a block fence but had stopped. leaving a foundation with rebar sticking into the air. The yards were completely overgrown with weeds. The inside was just as bad, but there was no structural damage. Nevertheless, it had four-bedrooms and the price was lower than the one we had come to see. We decided to buy it.
Peggy had started working as a teacher’s aide at First United Methodist Preschool (FUMPS) and had become friends with Barbara Smelser, a dynamic Christian lady. When she told Barbara about the house we discover that she also lived on Carol Ave, about six houses east of the one we purchased. She told us that they were the only Christians they knew within that two block section.
We had to do a cleaning job before we could move into 5601 W. Carol Ave. The church people came for a “house cleaning,” claiming it to be similar to an old fashion “barn raising.”
The first day we worked in the house two men came from the neighborhood and thanked us for cleaning the property. They then invited us to the Friday night beer party where they try to see who could get the drunkest. We thought, “Oh, my, what kind of neighborhood did we find?” The next day the two men reappeared truly embarrassed and apologetic. Somewhere they had discovered that I was “a man of the cloth” and they had invited me to a beer party.
Having school aged children is a great way to meet your neighbors; especially if you have to meet twice a day at a school bus stop (before Heritage Elementary was built). We began to invite our children’s friends to Sunday School and VBS. Some families to the east of us had started “checking out the church.” We had not made much impact on the “beer party end of the street.” However, I wanted to coach a baseball team in the city recreation league (no Little League at this time in Glendale). When I went to draft my team I did not think about skills, I only looked for boys within our subdivision – two lived on Carol Ave. That opened the door to many families we had not yet met.
I wished I could share the conversion stories of each family. However, that would take another book. The Marrs, Altmans, Bensons, Smiths, McMillens, Caldwells, Newkirks, Lyons and Vickers, all either accepted Christ or rededicated their lives to Christ through the ministry of Glendale Christian Church. The Peach family, the Fryes and the Hockings became Christians in other churches where they had family or relationships. Carol Zeleski and her son, Spencer, started back to the church where she had been a member. The house we had looked at across the street became a rental and we saw the Millers and Becktold’s become Christians during the short times they lived on Carol Ave. Later, Curt and Jody Decker, who had become Christians at GCC, moved to a house on “our street” (and remain the only ones still living on Carol Ave at this writing).
We truly enjoyed our seventeen years on Carol Ave. Many of these people are still friends today, even though we left Glendale in 1992. Some are giving financial support to our ministry as missionaries.
As a part of an evangelism seminar held at GCC, the guest speaker asked people to diagram their “sphere of influence.” We charted all the people who attended Glendale Christian Church from Carol Ave or who were invited by people from Carol Ave. We listed 102 names. God had truly answered our prayer.
Chapter 19: New Church Property
When I was brought to Glendale for my initial interview the people showed me the property they owned on N. 61st Ave between Olive and Northern. When I first saw it I prayed, “Lord, if you bring me here, please sell this property.” It was a poor location for a church. The church had originally purchased ten acres, but they had sold off the south side to pay for the rest. Because of this they lost the side street access that would be needed for access. Later they sold a one-acre strip on the north which left them with a long narrow four-acre strip that only had 130 feet of frontage on 61st Ave.
At the west end of Carol Ave there was a seventy-two acre wheat field that was posted for sale. I had called Wescor Development, the listing company. I inquired about the property but they wanted to sale it “all or nothing.” There was no way we could ever purchase the entire amount. So, we continued to pray.
One morning I felt a strong urge to call Wescor. I passed if off as a dream. As I drove past the property that day I again had a strong sense that I needed to call the realtor. I again ignored it. A third time the thought came to me so strongly that I picked up the phone and called. The man to whom I talked just about came through the phone he was so excited. He was willing to cut out any portion of the property we would like. I felt something was amiss. So, I called Rod Thompson, our realtor friend and asked him to check into it.
The next day Rod called and said, “Last week Wescor lost their listing on that property. They are hoping that by bringing you in that they will get the listing back. If you are interested, we are free to talk to the owner.” It turned out that the property was owned by five sisters. Their father had emigrated from Pakistan before World War II and had purchased this land for one dollar an acre. They were facing a serious capital gains tax. All five sisters lived in Glendale, but one was a member at First Christian Church in Phoenix. We found them very cordial and willing to work out a deal with us. The only problem was that the father’s will stipulated that no deal could be made unless all five agreed.
Rod Thompson worked a deal with them for three and half acres with an option for another acre and half (It was a verbal option that was forgotten a year later when the sisters sold the remaining acreage to Roadrunner Homes. When we found out that the property had been sold there was no way to go back and exercise our option.) The interesting event came the next week when the five sisters reinstated Wescor Development as the listing broker on the land. This means that we purchased the present property on 59th Avenue the only week that it was available without buying the whole.
Now we faced the problem of selling our 61st Ave property during one of the most depressed land markets in recent history. In 1976 Glendale was overbuilt with apartments and strip malls (for which our property was zoned). No one was buying property. Believing God was leading, we put our property on the market. There was a piece for sale just north of ours and we used it as a “fair market value” for ours - $74,000. We had two quick inquiries, both of which told us that there was no way we would ever get that amount of money for our landlocked piece.
The third day our property was on the market a small elderly cowboy walked into our office and introduced himself as Glendale’s oldest realtor (sorry, I can’t remember his name). He asked if he could sell the property for us. I told him that we were working without a listing agent but he was free to bring whatever deal he might find. The next day the man returned with a check for $74,000. I was stunned. As it turned out the VFW (of which he was a member) had been looking for a location where they could build a new hall and offer BINGO. Our property was the only available location near downtown that had the correct zoning.
Within two weeks of making the deal with the five sisters we had the money to pay them, retire all the church loans and put $25,000 in the bank to begin our building fund. We do serve a God of miracles.
Chapter 20: A Building for Glendale
In 1976 the church moved from the YWCA to the new Heritage Elementary School on N. 53 Ave and Mountain View Road. This new location put us only six blocks from our new property and a presence in the community to which we wanted to reach.
Before I share the building story, let me share the events of one important night in 1977, without which, the building would have been far removed from our vision. During the first Board Meetings of the year I had felt a strange disconnect from the men in leadership. I could not understand what was happening as we had had such a positive relationship. At the second meeting the men pulled their chairs into a circle to begin the meeting and left me sitting outside the circle. I started praying.
Call it a voice, call it what you may, but I clearly knew that I was to interrupt the meeting and tell the men that I was not leaving the church. I stood up and said, “Men, I need to share something with you. I do not plan to leave Glendale Christian Church. I came here for the long haul, through thick and thin.” I turned to Daryl Olson whose youngest son, Wally, was in kindergarten, and said, “Daryl, if God allows, I will be here when Wally graduates from high school.” The men opened the circle and let me in. Two of them said, “Our previous two ministers were each here less than three years. We figured you would be looking to leave at this time.”
It was during that meeting that we rolled out the preliminary site plans for our property. When construction actually began about a year later, we were all excited and the men and women of the church jumped in with tons of volunteer labor. However, we faced a major problem. We were financing the building through the sale of first mortgage bonds amortized over fifteen years. The bonds were set to bring the donor 5, 5 1/2 or 6% return. One week before our issue, the US Treasury Department released its first run of investment CD’s promising six percent for a six-month investment. Our bond sales were dead in the water. However, our people stepped up and purchased $158,000 of the $250,000 issue; a figure that surprised our bond company.
We hit a dead end. We could not sell another bond. We worked on our building until the money was gone and then, with it more than half completed, we had to board it up and stop. For three months it sat untouched. I became so discouraged I could not drive down 59th Ave; I would go out of my way to miss it. Then the miracle happened.
I went to our downtown office and told Linda Betts, our secretary, to hold all calls and pray, I was going to sell the bonds within a week. I went into my office and got on my face on the floor and called out to the Lord to ask Him to show me what to do. I lay with my Bible open and asked Him to lead me to passages that would give me direction. The first place I opened was to the Resurrection Story in one of the gospels. I read it and prayed, “Lord, thanks for the reminder, but now please lead me to a plan.” I opened my Bible again and it fell to the Resurrection Story in a different gospel. I read it again (as I had committed reading wherever I turned) and prayed, “I believe in this with my whole heart, please show me a plan.” I opened my Bible for a third time and it fell to a third gospel account of the Resurrection. I read it and then I heard, “If I can raise my son from the dead, I can sell your bonds.”
I got up encouraged; I knew the building would be completed. And, I had a plan. I was going to take our remaining bonds to the owners of Roadrunner Homes (who were building the houses around our property) and make a deal with them to complete our building. On Sunday morning I told the congregation, “Please pray for me, I have a plan to sell our bonds.” We had a special time of prayer.
John Wallace had come that morning as a last minute replacement for our scheduled Gideon speaker. He had heard my announcement about the special prayer request and told me he would be praying. On Monday morning I called to make an appointment with Roadrunner Homes, but could not get through. John Wallace called and wanted to meet me at the building. He claimed to have construction experience and wanted to offer suggestions to lower our costs. I was in no mood to meet with him, especially at the building site. However, he persisted.
I met with him that morning and we toured through the building. He apologized, “I am sorry, you have gone too far for my suggestions to be of any value.” We walked outside to leave when he started noticing the new home construction. He said, “You must finish this building so you can reach these young families moving here.” I affirmed his remark, anxious to get back to the office to make my call.
John Wallace, was seventy-two years old and lived in Sun City. He looked me in the eye and said, “Do you have any idea what it is like to go to church week after week where there are no children?” “I can’t say that I had ever thought of it,” I replied. “Do you know what it is like that every minister you have is in his last ministry?” “No,” I said, “I do not.” He leaned his head back and looked into the sky (it was almost like he had gone into a trance). He started mumbling about numbers. When he was done, he asked, “How many bonds do you have left?” I told him, “Ninety-two thousand dollars.” He said, “I’ll take them all.” I stuttered, “You want them all? “Yes,” he said, “all of them.” I was stunned! I was shocked! I was speechless! He then said there were two conditions. First, his wife must agree. Second, we would have to convert them from compound to simple interest bonds (which immediately would save $72,000).
I went back to the office and told Linda and we praised the Lord together. I then called her husband, Art, who was our Building Chairman and who was just as discouraged as I was. I said, “Art, we have a real problem.” He said, “Oh no, what now?” I said, “We don’t have any more bonds to sell.” It took a minute for my words to sink in. I told him what had happened; then he shouted, “Praise the Lord!” I told him to call Sam Johnson, our Building Superintendent and see how fast we can get him back on the job. The next night we called a special Board Meeting but had not told any of the members what was up. John Wallace came to the meeting in our home and personally offered to purchase the bonds and shared with them the conditions (both of which had been confirmed as possible before the meeting).
The building was completed in November 1978, to try to share the mood and excitement would be futile. After ten years in existence, and nearly dying in 1974, Glendale Christian Church had a home of its own.
Let me share one more miracle before I close. About a year later, The City of Glendale required us to widen 59th Ave in front of our property and to move the drainage ditch along Mountain View and pave our half of the road. The city was widening 59th at the time so we made a deal with the city and their contractor to include our portion. When it came time to pay our part we were $4,000 short. On the day it was due, one of the members of the church came to the office and said, “We have just sold our extra car, here is our tithe.” It brought the amount to within a thousand of what we needed. Gary Altman, a member who was a civil engineer and working with the city, took the money to the city. When he gave them what we had the woman said, “Someone has miss figured, you only owe $3,000.” I don’t remember the exact figures, but I do remember that we received a reimbursement check from the City of Glendale for $14.00.
Proceed to Chapter 21