GOOD DAYS IN ROCKFORD, ILLINOIS
I've never heard of a faster move than ours when we changed our address from Houstonia, Missouri, to Rockford, Illinois on March 26, 1960! We had all our possessions well in shape to move, but had not anticipated the speed with which the men from Evergreen Covenant Church moved us. The men with the truck started an hour or so before we could leave.
We drove slowly out of town, taking a last look at the familiar church building and homes of friends. We saw one elderly lady hoeing in her garden, waving goodbye with her hoe. Only a few months before we had visited her in the hospital in Kansas City, finding her lying totally paralyzed from a severe stroke. Now she was out hoeing in the garden! That was a good feeling, and we thanked the Lord again that she was strong and able to tend her garden again.
Frank Johnson, the Rockford man assigned to ride with us, had the exact route marked on a map so there was no possibility of our becoming lost. We drove angling northeast across Missouri, and into Iowa. Somewhere near Des Moines we had a flat tire on our old Chevy. We quickly put the spare on, but had to stop in the city to buy a replacement tire at the Wards tire store. We had lunch there, too, and then were on our way again. The truck was well ahead of us, and arrived in Rockford some time before we did.
The church did not own a parsonage then, and had rented a large farmhouse for us, about three miles from the church. When the truck arrived, the wives of the men who were helping with the move, and others, joined in putting our furniture in what they thought were the appropriate places. Thus when we arrived there was hot food for all, and a great time of getting acquainted. Tired from the long drive, I remember, we really appreciated the thorough way in which our move had been done. Even the beds were made, all ready for our rest! The men of the church, who had worked together in the same way in building the church building, took real pride in their way of cooperating and getting involved in the work with their hands. That was the typical good spirit seen among the whole congregation. When we later had work days at the church we never lacked sufficient workers; everyone--men, women, and children--would turn out. That move was completed on Saturday, March 26, 1960. The next morning I preached my first regular sermon at Evergreen Church to a good audience. We had much "settling in" to do, so most of the following week was taken up with that.
First, David and Mary had to be enrolled in school. We found that the parsonage was located not in the Rockford school district but in that of Winnebago, a small town about fifteen miles from Rockford. We had to take them there, get them registered, and arrange for the school bus to stop for them. Then there was the problem of having a phone installed, so that we could be in touch with the people of the church. I found the daily 3 mile drive to the church, to my study, something of a nuisance. I began to spend my mornings at the study, in prayer, and preparation for the sermons and Bible study lessons for the week. Then I would go home for lunch, and spend most afternoons on necessary errands and making home visits to my parishioners. I tried to make "loop" trips, to reach as many as possible in the fewest possible miles of driving. Although our salary at Evergreen was considerably larger than we had enjoyed in Houstonia, there was no leeway for waste.
About half of the congregation consisted of people who worked in town, mostly in the hospitals (nurses) and factories (skilled machinists, tool and die finishers), and the other half those who farmed. It was an interesting group of skilled people. Of course, there were also several elderly retired people. I had a wide territory in which to make visits. While visiting members in the farming area, I often stopped to get acquainted with the people who lived on other farms. Some of these later began to attend the church services. Church membership was then about seventy-five, with morning worship attendance at around one hundred. Sunday School attendance was almost double that, around two hundred. Many children from the neighborhood came to Sunday School, though their parents seldom came. Those statistics increased a little in the next few years, but not a great deal.
I soon learned that there were seven Covenant churches in Rockford, with another in nearby Stillman Valley, 20 miles west. Pastor of the latter church was one of our old friends from seminary days, John Bergman. Pastor Swenson of First Covenant Church, that had planted most of the others in the Rockford area, felt some responsibility for us who were pastors of the smaller churches. We met frequently with him for talks and prayer together. The whole atmosphere in Rockford was wonderful, with many very committed Christians working hard in their churches.
My schedule was a busy one, with sermons to prepare for Sunday morning and evening services, and a Bible study for the mid-week prayer meeting. I also taught an adult Sunday School class most of the time while there at Rockford. Then, beginning in the fall each year, I had the Confirmation Class of Junior High age young people meeting with me each Saturday morning. This course of study ran about nine months. At least my hospital visits were nearby. Three women of the church were registered nurses, working in the Swedish American hospital in Rockford. When ill, most of our people went to that hospital, where the care was excellent.
At Jane's wise insistence, we started both David and Mary in piano lessons in Winnebago that spring. Their teacher was fine, and made them work hard. We enjoyed attending the little informal recitals she scheduled for all her pupils. They caught the school bus down at the road about one hundred yards from the house, so getting them to and from school was simple. On days when they had piano lessons after school, we drove to Winnebago to bring them home.
Living in that farm house was pleasant, with about 300 acres of land attached, mostly in timber. There were big oaks, some black walnut, cottonwood, and much just plain "brush." Each evening the continuous calling of the whippoorwills entertained us. They never seemed to pause for breath--it was fantastic! Also, we found deer were plentiful. We found a tiny fawn one day, only a few hundred yards from the house.
One day that summer a spectacular electrical storm came through the area. In the midst of the storm there was an exceptionally bright flash of lightning, and a tremendous crash of thunder. After the storm had passed, we found that a big cottonwood tree only about seventy- five yards from the house had been hit by lightning. The lightning bolt blew a strip of bark from the trunk of the tree from the top to the ground. We were glad the tree was there, to intercept that lightning. Otherwise the bolt might have struck the house!
Beside the longish daily drive from the parsonage to the church and back, there were a couple other disadvantages to our living in the country. We had a very large lawn, watered only by nature, to keep mowed. We were glad to have the power mower that we had brought from Missouri to use. We had to mow a wide strip of lawn from the house clear down to the road, about one hundred yards north of the house. Also, we had to clean up a mess of branches and other debris left there when someone had removed a row of lilacs along the driveway. That took many hours of hard work.
Another advantage of being in the country was enjoying the many different mushrooms found on the farm, and along the roads. We learned to eat eight or ten different varieties while living in Rockford.
There in Rockford I developed a plan for praying for all the church members. That was my first activity after arriving at the church in the morning. I walked around the sanctuary as I prayed thus getting some exercise. I prayed through the church membership list, about fifteen families each day,. I prayed for the people by name, including their children, and asked for God's help and blessing for each one. That practice helped me much when I made visits to their homes. We won't easily forget the first Easter we spent in Rockford. When I got up on Easter morning the house seemed unusually cold. A heavy rain had fallen during the night, and now for some reason the furnace wasn't running. I went down to the basement and discovered about a foot of water on the floor, and the furnace (a stoker) cold. There wasn't time to do anything about the problem before we had to leave for church.
I enjoyed my work, preparing sermons, preaching, the whole ministry. At first I designed the bulletins, typed them, and ran them off on the mimeograph myself. Later a young woman in the church volunteered to do that work each week; she was a big help to me.
While we lived in that farmhouse, my father came to visit us, after visiting relatives in Wisconsin. Dad enjoyed his visit with us, and we surely enjoyed having him see the church, the farm where we were living, and the city of Rockford.. Soon after he left, our friends Dave and Marge Peterson came by to visit. Dave was then serving as a public relations man for the Montana Institute of the Bible. That was the small Bible school in Billings where I had taken some classes.
In June of 1960 I attended the Evangelical Covenant Church annual meeting in Chicago, and met with the Ministerial Committee. They refused to even look at my previous simple ordination, and informed me of the requirements for ordination in the Covenant. For the first year I could only have a ministerial license; there was no difficulty in obtaining that. They said that if I were to continue to minister in a Covenant church, I must attend their seminary in Chicago, and take certain prescribed courses. Then, after passing their examination requirements, I could be ordained. It was a long and difficult assignment! I did have some trouble with the Committee. I told them straight out why I did not believe in the baptism of infants, and could not perform the rite. I agreed that I would invite another Covenant pastor to come in to conduct the service, if it were requested. As a matter of fact, while I was there at Evergreen Church in Rockford no one ever requested it. We had several services for the consecration or dedication of infants. I also agreed to take the courses at North Park Seminary, when I could arrange it.
Everything went quite well that first year at Evergreen. In the summer months we had Sunday evening services with three other churches in the area. We also invited one of my seminary classmates to conduct evangelistic services in the fall of 1961. The meetings resulted in several decisions for Jesus. Our children, and many from Evergreen church, attended a fine Covenant camp on Lake Geneva, in Wisconsin, each summer. There were frequent retreats and special meetings for pastors, too, and I loved to meet and share with the other men. I always felt that the Covenant had a real sense of mission, and promoted teamwork well.
In midsummer of 1960, the board of the church decided that the church should purchase a small house and bit of land just north of the church, to use as a parsonage. The house was old and very small, but we could manage in it all right, we thought. We moved into the house on August 7th, in plenty of time for the children to register for schools in Rockford. Both Mary and Martha attended an elementary school just "kitty-corner" across the street from the church. David enrolled that fall in the new large Auburn high school several miles away.
This new living arrangement saved hours of valuable time, and much driving and gasoline, for I needed only to walk a few yards to be at the study. David got the job of mowing the church lawn, which he appreciated (most of the time!). There were several large maple trees along the driveway of the new place, and we came to love those great trees, except for the piles of leaves they produced. In the early spring each year, when the sap began to flow, I enjoyed the sweet little icicles that formed where the sap dripped from broken twigs. There was also a large fir tree immediately in front of the house. Martha promptly climbed it, clear to the top! Just north of the house there was an extensive woodlot, with many different mushrooms growing there. There was a garage under the house, a small shed in the back yard in which we could store tools, and plenty of room for a large garden. We had a fine garden there each year, beginning in 1961.
Soon after we moved into the "new" parsonage, we were given a well-bred long-haired cocker spaniel, Trooper. We had him only a short time before we found that we couldn't keep him. Many cockle burrs grew in the area. Trooper constantly wandered about, and got his long coat terribly tangled with the burrs. It was impossible to keep his coat clean. We gave him to a farm family later.
We also got a little yellow kitten, who rapidly developed into a big, heavy cat. We called him Toughy. He, rather than Trouper the dog, kept strange dogs out of the yard! Toughy would walk calmly toward any dog that came near, and every time that dog would skeedaddle, rather than face that big cat. We had lots of fun with him, playing in the piles of maple leaves in the fall, and going mouse hunting with him in the woods.
In the spring of 1961 a farmer friend, a member of the church, came with a tractor to plow a garden spot, down below the house. The soil was rich and black. It was fine for gardening. For the first time in my life, I could grow okra! Also, beyond the garden area there was a sort of "wilderness" in which we found wild asparagus in the spring each year, and lots of wild blackberries in the late summer. All the vegetables did very well.
As cool weather came on in that fall of 1960, I became better acquainted with the coal stoker furnace. All went well unless the fire went out. That happened only once, while we were busy at a service in the evening. When we came home, late in the evening, we found the house cold and full of awful fumes. The furnace fire had gone out, and the furnace was full of stoker coal. Controlled by the thermostat, that was calling for more heat, the stoker was still stuffing in more coal! I had a merry time, believe me, shovelling all that coal out of the furnace, back into the stoker hopper. The fire had to be rekindled, and the house ventilated to get rid of the bad air. We soon found that Illinois winters are for real, much more severe than those we had seen in Missouri, though not as cold temperature-wise as in Montana. There was much snow during the winter months. It seemed to me that I shovelled the walks at the church just about every Sunday morning those winters. No one else volunteered to do that job!
We made many new friends there in Rockford. One man, Harold Demus, pastor of a nearby small Presbyterian church, and his wife and children, became our good friends. We truly missed them when in 1963 they left to go to a much larger church in a Chicago suburb. Art Carlson, pastor of another Covenant church in Rockford, a man considerably older than I, became a great friend. There were many others, too many to list.
We found many earnest Christians at Evergreen. Nearly all the members worked days, and could not help much in calling in the neighborhood. I not only called on church families, but also visited in the homes of Sunday School families (people who sent their children to Sunday school, but didn't attend, themselves). I also enjoyed meeting nearly all the people living along the roads in the area. Reviewing one of my old desk calendars from those years, I find that I went out nearly every evening of the week. I rarely took a complete day off from work. Those were busy days! I know now that I badly neglected my own family, and that was a serious mistake. Also, I tried to hold the children to a rigid pattern of Christian behavior, which no doubt did much to turn them away from the real life of faith. I don't know how to undo that now! When we arrived to pastor Evergreen Church, there was a sizeable debt, and the church was receiving regular support from the Covenant. One of my first goals was for the church to become financially independent. We met that goal by the end of our second year there. That effort won the appreciation of the Conference Superintendent!
As the years went by, we found we had time for some visiting, and for regular vacations. John and Nina Bergman moved to Warren, Michigan, in about 1961, and we went there to visit them one Christmas. The travel across lower Michigan in a blizzard was memorable, but we made it all right. We had a grand visit with them and their two adopted children. We also made a trip one summer to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, and visited my brother Robert and his family in Denver. We went up into southern Wisconsin, too, to visit my Uncle Dick and his family, and Aunt Dot Von Valkenburg, and Aunt Eckie. All those relatives had been very good to us children when we were growing up on the homestead.
I often was asked to conduct weddings of young people in the community. I usually enjoyed those, but did not much like to officiate at the many funerals. For some reason unknown to me, people in a community feel they have a right to ask the pastor of a local church to conduct funerals or weddings. They do this whether or not they are a part of the church. Some funerals, especially, were very difficult for me. I felt sad to know that the person who had died had never had anything to do with Jesus or the church.
I have pleasant memories of one funeral, though. A family in the community, not part of our church, but active Christians, had a sad experience. The elderly grandmother was suffering with cancer. She refused to go to a hospital or nursing home, so suffered at home, cared for by her old husband. Toward the end she drifted off into a coma, and would not respond to anything. I stopped one day to talk with the husband, as he sat in an old rocking chair by her bed. On the inspiration of the moment, I decided to sing a couple of old familiar hymns. I did it without accompaniment. Very quietly, and without making a sound, the sick lady smiled! She had heard! She died a day or two later, never having come out of the coma. They asked me to have the funeral, to be held at a little Free Methodist Church miles away in Wisconsin. We drove up, part of a little funeral procession. Jane and another lady sang a duet, and I preached the funeral service in the little church building.
It was a gorgeous day, with lovely clouds in the sky. When the service was over, the pall bearers simply carried the casket out of the church and into the graveyard right beside the church. The service ended with family members filling in the grave. It was sad, in a way, and yet a blessing, as we all knew she had trusted and loved the Lord, and was now with Him forever. I wished that all funerals could be like that!
One wedding I will never forget. In fact, few people know the whole truth of the matter. I guess I can now reveal it all, without mentioning any names. I had worked carefully with the young couple, planning and rehearsing their very formal wedding. Then, just two days before the wedding, I received a call from the groom's mother. She told me her son was too young to obtain a marriage license in Illinois! The wedding would have to be postponed!. The situation looked hopeless.
Then I learned, through some telephoning, that people could be married in the state of Iowa, without any delays for medical reports. So the day before the formal wedding, I drove with that young couple to the nearest county seat in Iowa. We first found a Methodist church, and asked the pastor if he would marry these two young people. He agreed, so we dashed to the court house and bought the license. We then went back to the parsonage, and the two were married by the old preacher, with his wife and me as witnesses!
Then it was back to Rockford, with the agreement that they would not act like married people until after the formal wedding the next day! Everything went just fine, and no one except the family and Jane and I knew the true situation. I went through the usual motions of having the couple sign forms, etc., after the wedding, but never mailed the marriage certificate in for registration. The Iowa wedding was the official one.
In the spring of 1962, I think it was, a church member stopped by and asked me casually how long I was going to drive our old wreck of a car. It was a 1950 Chevy sedan, and still looked and ran pretty well, in my estimation. As so often happens, that remark of his planted "new car fever" in me. So we began to look around. That was bad! We soon found a used, low mileage Ford Falcon sedan, a 1960 (first year) model, light blue in color. It was fun to drive, easy to park, and considerably easier on gasoline than the Chevy had been.
We soon began to find out why the previous owner had sold it! That Falcon car was a lemon! On our vacation trip that summer to Colorado, and Rocky Mountain National Park, the thing would barely climb the hills, and used quarts and quarts of oil. When we returned to Rockford, we had to have a new "short block" put in--the old one was beyond repair. After that it was the transmission, and then the clutch, and the differential, and so on and on. It was without question the most expensive car we had ever enjoyed! Despite all those repairs, we drove it until 1966, when we were living in Spokane, and had replaced just about everything except the body!
Finally, under considerable pressure from the Covenant, I began attending the required "familiarization" classes at North Park Seminary, in Chicago. That was in the fall of 1962. My usual plan was to have Jane take me to catch a train in Rockford about 6AM (harder for her than for me!), study some on my way in to the city (about an hour and a half). Then I would get off the train at Central Station, walk a quarter of a mile or so to catch the elevated train north. That took me within about six blocks of the seminary. With my classes and study time completed, I reversed the process, arriving in Rockford about nine in the evening. A whole day was gone! I had to do this three times a week, except when I decided to skip classes!
The quality of the instruction at North Park Seminary disappointed me. The professors were mostly former pastors who had been designated to teach. That first year I did have one excellent teacher, Karl Olsson, then president of the college and seminary. He was (and is) a brilliant scholar and historian. He taught the course on the history of the Covenant church, from the beginning of the revival movement in Sweden, and continuing in the United States among the immigrants. I loved that class and the subject matter. There were some very brave people in those early days, around the middle of the nineteenth century!
Sigurd Westburg, a retired missionary, was another good teacher. He taught classes on the philosophy and history of Covenant missions. But my other classes, especially under the professors of both Old and New Testament, were very nearly a waste of time. It was an expensive business for me. And with all that study going on, I had no let-up in the services I conducted, sermons to prepare, etc.
That winter I sometimes drove in to Chicago in the little Falcon, thus saving a bit of time. However, I saved little money, because of the expensive tolls on the big tollroad that runs from Rockford to Chicago. Altogether I earned some fifty credits at North Park Seminary, to meet the Covenant requirements for ordination.
My greatest problem in serving as a Covenant pastor was my refusal to baptize infants. I thought then, and still think, that it is a bad practice, and leads to a false sense of spiritual security. People think they are in a right relation with God because they have been baptized. It always appeared to me to work against the concept of a "new birth."
I didn't enjoy my sessions with the Conference and Covenant ministerial boards through those years 1960 to 1964. Much pressure was put on me to conform to the standard Covenant practice. I know that I became unpopular with some of the ministers because I would not change my stand. Sometimes I felt that the pastors on the boards were embarrassed because they could not justify the practice from Scripture. They simply clung to tradition brought over into the Covenant from the state Lutheran church of Sweden.
The Evergreen Church board believed as I did, and came under the same sort of pressure to change their policy. Once I was told very directly by an official of the Covenant that I was not wanted in the Covenant, and would never be ordained. Despite that, I kept on with my studies in Chicago, and working hard at the church. By midwinter of 1963-64, I had met the scholastic requirements for ordination, but still didn't know what the outcome would be.
I remember many very good times from our days in Rockford. I enjoyed the various camps and conferences held for ministers. I went twice with men from our church to work on the grounds at the Covenant campground at Lake Geneva, in Wisconsin. We always had good times working together, and the camp was wonderful. The Covenant owned some 2000 feet of shore front on the lovely big lake, and had good buildings and equipment for summer camping. We had one or two ministers' retreats there, also, in the winter time.
Except for the troubles concerning ordination, my attendance at midwinter conferences of the entire Covenant, and the annual meetings, was pleasant enough. I became good friends of some pastors, particularly among the older men. Our children also enjoyed attending Covenant Bible camps. Twice we went as a family for great vacations in northern Wisconsin.
Also somewhere along in those years, I joined the Rockford Civic Chorus, and sang in Handel's Messiah and other programs with the city's symphony orchestra. That was very enjoyable. I also sometimes sang a solo in a church worship service.
I must admit that by 1963 I was becoming discouraged with the slow progress of the church in Rockford. Despite much effort and prayer, we simply were not growing. I looked around for some means of promoting both spiritual and membership growth. I soon found what I thought might be the answer--a program called "Growth by Groups," prepared by Lyman Coleman. I wrote to him, personally purchased the expensive materials, and then tried to interest the board of elders in the plan. The plan called for starting a number of home Bible study and prayer groups, all following the same excellent course of study. I would work primarily with the leaders of the various groups. I hoped that most of the people in the church might be involved. Attendance at our Wednesday evening prayer meetings had dwindled to a handful of regulars. The home study meetings would replace the Wednesday evening meetings at the church.
That was the plan, and I still think it was a good one. The difficulty was that I just could not "sell" the board of elders on the plan. What I had long since recognized on their part--an extreme conservatism--stood in the way. They wanted to know if First Covenant Church was doing this; I had to say "no." Well, was it being done anywhere else in the Covenant? I didn't know. They voted it down. When I asked for further consideration, I was told that I was just trying to get my own way. That was probably true, but I honestly felt we needed to change our methods.
I was discouraged by the declining attendance at Evergreen, and the rejection of the Growth by Groups program. Soon after, I told the Central Conference Superintendent that I felt I should possibly move to another church. Almost immediately I was called by the North Pacific Conference Superintendent in Seattle, asking if I would be interested in moving to a church in Spokane, Washington. I suspect that someone in the Central Conference saw an opportunity to rid the conference of the fellow who refused to baptize infants! The idea of moving to the northwest was very appealing, so I agreed to go to Spokane to candidate.
I went by train, a long, long ride, in mid-February of 1964. The people in Spokane met me at the station, and did everything they could to impress me with their need. I think my sermons (two of them, at the morning and evening services on one Sunday) impressed them. They took me on a tour of the city, well covered just then by heavy, dirty snow. It was a dismal prospect. The Sunday school was large enough, but the church membership had failed to grow. The church had been organized about seven years, and should have been growing. I didn't feel any special leading of the Lord in the matter, and went back to Rockford pretty well convinced that I should not go to Spokane. The church in Spokane didn't offer any increase in salary, and the area in which it was located was sparsely populated, with many vacant houses in the neighborhood. I didn't see much chance for growth there.
The call from the Minnehaha Covenant Church in Spokane came, much as I had expected. After much prayer, I sent a letter saying I didn't feel I should accept the position. Then several officials of the Covenant really went to work on me. Joe Danielson, the Secretary of Home Missions, invited me to lunch one day, in Chicago, and told me how helpful I could be at Minnehaha. They couldn't seem to get out of debt; I had been successful in getting my present church to pay off their debt. That was true! The North Pacific Conference Superintendent called me long distance, and urged me to accept the call. With some misgiving, I finally agreed to make the move. I felt I was no longer effective at Evergreen Church.
In May of 1964 I met again with the Central Conference ministerial board. Though reluctant, this time they agreed to my ordination, to take place at the Annual Meeting of the Covenant in Minneapolis in mid-June, 1964. We were planning to leave Rockford to move to Spokane in July.
The ordination service was impressive, Jane said. John and Nina Bergman were there at the meeting. Jane and I enjoyed travelling back to Rockford with them (they were on their way back to Warren, Michigan). We all stayed overnight in a little motel cottage on the bank of the Mississippi River, in southeastern Minnesota. That evening we rowed in a large rowboat down the river to a restaurant for dinner. What an adventure, to row on the Mississippi!
Soon after returning to Rockford, we began packing. We left the church with mixed feelings. At the last moment the Board decided that I had not earned any vacation time that year. That meant a loss of about two weeks' salary--and that hurt! Beside that matter, I had other depressing feelings. I felt sad that things hadn't gone better at Evergreen Church, and also had some anxiety about the new assignment in Spokane. I felt that I was not effective as a pastor, and wondered even then about leaving that line of work.
The church in Spokane would pay our moving expenses, but we had to reduce the shipment if possible. So we had a big yard sale. Among other things, we sold our faithful lawn mower, a very good one. I also sold my guns--the beautiful little Winchester .218 Bee rifle, and my Ruger .22 pistol. We needed all the cash we could get. I have often regretted that sale, as I have never been able to replace those fine weapons.
Finally we were ready to move. We left Rockford, our home for a little over four years, pulling our little one-wheel trailer with our camping stuff in it. David had already gone to Montana to work at my sister Jean's farm. Jane, the girls, and I drove down through Kansas, to visit Jane's mother and other relatives, then on to Spokane. Our Rockford days were over--surely the best years I had while in pastoral work.
Looking over my old desk calendars, kept for some unknown reason, I find myself becoming depressed all over again because things didn't go better there. I can only be satisfied that I preached the Gospel and the Bible as faithfully as I knew how, though nothing much had happened. Perhaps things would go better in Spokane!