FINAL YEARS AS A PASTOR
We arrived in Spokane late on a Monday afternoon, July 20th, 1964. We had been on the road several days, coming across Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Montana, and Idaho. Of course the area around Spokane looked different without the dirty snow I had seen in February. Now it appeared brown and dry, after a hot summer.
We drove to the home of Vic Anderson, where I had stayed when candidating. Vic took us all out to a good dinner at the Stock Yards Cafe, then back to the parsonage. Our household goods had already arrived. Several people from the church came in that evening to help us sort things out. With their help, we got our house fairly well organized by bedtime. The willing help and friendliness of the people encouraged us.
Although I wasn't yet officially installed, I had my first funeral the following Saturday--for a man in a family who were complete strangers to us. The Conference Superintendent and his wife also stayed at our house that Saturday night. He preached my official installation sermon the next morning. The congregation gave us a reception that Sunday evening; a very nice beginning. My salary at this church started at $500 per month, with the parsonage provided, though we paid the bills for heat and city utilities. The church also paid into my retirement account. The Social Security tax was my responsibility. They also provided a small allowance for car usage. We were a little better off financially!
The church building and parsonage were on a good- sized lot, land donated by Vic Anderson. Vic had a small dairy farm located just a few blocks east of the church property. He pastured his herd of Holstein cows in an eighty-acre pasture immediately south of the church. It was a rustic setting, though well within the city limits. To the north of the church rose Beacon Hill, named for the aircraft warning beacon located on it. Also, a public golf course lay only a half mile away, northwest of the church property.
Houses in the area were mostly small dwellings, of wood frame construction, built in the era following World War II. Many were vacant, and many occupied by renters, rather than owners. Cooper School, the local elementary school to which Martha would go, was only ten blocks away. Rogers High School, where Mary would be a Junior, was maybe two miles distant. Rogers was one of six or seven High Schools in the city, and served the poorest area of Spokane. Hillyard, the business area nearest to Rogers High School, and located about a mile and a half north of us, was familiarly called "dog town." The Great Northern Railroad, then negotiating with the Burlington for consolidation, had once had major locomotive building and repair shops in that area. The shops employed hundreds of men when at their busiest. When we arrived, the shops were closed and were being dismantled.
South of the church about a half mile ran the Spokane River, in a deep channel. The greater part of the city lay south and west of the church, though there was a growing unincorporated area stretching east along the valley for twenty miles. The population of Spokane at the time was about the same as that of Rockford--approximately 180,000.
The congregation of Minnehaha Covenant Church included about seventy members, and a very active Sunday School of about two hundred. The church membership grew but little in the next few years. The Sunday School declined slowly. The church had begun as a mission Sunday School held in Cooper School. People from First Covenant Church had started the work. After a few years, the people formally organized a church, and built the sanctuary. The chartered church organization was about eight years old when we arrived.
Here, as at my former churches, I found no adequate church records. I bought a good record book, and worked at bringing the membership and other records up to date. We also went through the usual necessary business of getting auto and drivers' licenses for ourselves. In the first few weeks I made many calls in the homes of church members and Sunday School families. The church had an adequate church office, and a good mimeograph for printing of bulletins. We had fine musicians available to play the organ and piano, and a very good choir director. Our daughter Mary played the piano for choir rehearsals that first winter.
We also found that the church people counted on using the parsonage basement for a Sunday School class each Sunday. There was no garage at the parsonage, instead there was a convenient breezeway to park our car and the church lawn mower. I used that mower to mow the parsonage lawn, too. The meeting schedule included regular Sunday morning worship, a less formal Sunday evening service, and a mid-week Bible study meeting Wednesday evening. During the school year, I led a Saturday morning confirmation class for 7th and 8th graders. We had a large class that first year, though there were fewer in attendance in successive years. I found plenty to keep me busy right from the beginning. I made calls in all the church member homes as quickly as I could, to get acquainted. Also, I made regular calls in the homes of Sunday School families, and at times went door to door, inviting people to attend services. During the years I pastored this church, the whole community called on me to conduct weddings and funerals, regardless of whether the people involved had any previous connection with the church. Soon after arriving in Spokane I joined the Spokane evangelical ministers' fellowship, and took an active part in the annual Sunday School convention. The group elected me president for 1968. More about that later! We also had many joint meetings and other activities with First Covenant Church, Minnehaha's "mother church." On occasion Pastor Otteson and I exchanged pulpits. That was interesting, as First Covenant was a much larger church, and had a fine big sanctuary and a real pipe organ. The congregation there always made me feel right at home. As in Rockford, the old-time Covenant people had probably too much respect for pastors, placing one on too high a pedestal. That always bothered me, as I knew I was certainly no better, and probably a poorer Christian than some of the lay people.
On that first Labor Day weekend in Spokane, Jane and the girls and I, and a friend of Mary's, went camping. We drove to the Indian Creek Campground on beautiful Priest Lake in Idaho, about ninety miles from Spokane. We had a fine camping spot on the beach, and really enjoyed ourselves. While there Jane and I walked one morning far up into the hills, and enjoyed picking the late huckleberries we found there. That was our introduction to huckleberry picking, which we enjoyed doing nearly every year after that. The berries are plentiful in many areas north and east of Spokane.
Our son David was then working at my sister Jean's place in north central Montana. He came to Spokane in late August, intending to go back to Illinois to college. Then we learned, to our dismay, that the University of Illinois had cancelled his earned honors scholarship because we had moved out of the state! We all were very sorry about that. So instead of going to Illinois to school, he took courses at the nearby Spokane Community College. He also found a part-time job at the Penney's store, selling shoes. He was good at that, and did well.
Mary got started in Rogers High School, and Martha at Cooper School. Martha had quickly adjusted to the change in location, and made friends quickly. Mary had a more difficult time, and didn't adjust well to the change of schools that first year in Spokane. That was another mark, in my mind, against the practice of hiring pastors to move from one church to another. I had begun to think the practice, so commonly accepted in most churches, was not Biblical. About this time the Falcon acted up again--we had to have the radiator core replaced. That car seldom went more than a few months without some major failure! Then to make a little more money to pay for such items as car repairs, Jane and I became Amway dealers. That was fun, but really a fiasco! We found a friend at First Covenant who bought our stock of supplies, with the exception of some things we could use. After several months of trying, we had netted something like $90 for all our time and effort!
As at Rockford, I rarely took a day off from work, and was busy many nights of each week. I know that I did not give enough time to the family.
Eugene Lowe, our Chinese friend from Pasadena, came for a visit in November. He spoke in a morning worship service, and did very well. He was then attending Fuller Seminary on a part-time basis. Among his many other skills, he had recently earned a pilot's license. The next day he took David and me for a great airplane ride over the city, and south over the Palouse hills. I got a few pictures from the plane. We always enjoyed visits from the Lowes.
Guess what? More trouble with the Falcon in December--starter and ignition system repairs, $36! Then again on Dec. 31, I had the brake lights repaired. There was always something wrong with that car!
A note from my diary of Dec. 21st, 1964, reads--"16 inches of new snow, went out calling anyway; got stuck 7 times!" That was the first of many heavy snows that winter! The year of 1965 went by much like 1964. Early in the spring Vic Anderson brought his tractor and plowed the garden spot I wanted, just east of the house. The soil was very rocky, but produced a good garden. I have always found that work in the garden is more fun than work. Hoeing is a good unwinding activity!
In the summer of 1965 our son David enlisted in the Marine Corps, and left for basic training in California. He did well there, and later attended the combat correspondents' school at the University of Indiana. He was home for Christmas, went back for more training, and then flew to Vietnam. He had a very good career there, and signed up for extended service. We enjoyed sending recorded letters on tape back and forth. Some of his letters had live artillery firing as background accompaniment! He earned the Bronze Star for bravery on one occasion, helping remove wounded men from an aircraft on fire, while under attack!
Mary did much better in her senior year at Rogers High School. She enjoyed singing with a madrigal group, very fine singing, a capella. She was popular, sufficiently so that some boy gave her a rabbit as an Easter gift. Lacking any other good place to keep it, we confined it in a room in the basement. After a few days we found that he had other food than that we had been giving him. He had eaten the insulation from an electric cord, laid the wires bare, without causing a short or killing himself! He had to go!
Our vacation trip that summer was to Mt. Lassen, in California. We were to meet the Lowes, our Chinese friends from California, and camp with them for a few days. We took a friend of Mary's along, a girl from the church. Driving down into central Oregon the Falcon seemed a bit noisy and sluggish. We camped out in the open, without a tent, that first night.
When I started the Falcon the next morning, to go on our way, it made a fearful racket. Something was definitely wrong in the engine. We drove into John Day, Oregon, and found the little Ford garage. Fortunately the Lord had been anticipating us, and the mechanic had on hand one set of valves for a Falcon! He replaced the whole upper valve assembly while we waited, and the cost was not unreasonable, though it was high enough. That was the second time we had had that valve assembly replaced. The poorly designed engine, the Ford people admitted, did not receive enough lubrication.
We went on and found the Lowes without difficulty, and had a good trip considering everything. One day I climbed to the summit of Mt. Lassen, with the whole tribe of children, Lowe's and ours. Actually it is an easy climb, on a well-tended trail. I found the beautiful crystals of sulphur at the openings of the vents in the crater most interesting. Later, on our way back to Spokane, we explored a lava tube, a fascinating feature found near some volcanos. We really enjoyed the desert country of eastern Oregon.
Things went on as usual at the church. I tried hard, and preached and taught as best I could. I enjoyed the various meetings with the other pastors in the North Pacific Conference. The church could not afford to send me to the annual meeting of the Covenant, in Chicago, so I had to miss that. In the spring of 1966, after a particularly bad time with the steering mechanism on the Falcon (it would turn to the right, but not to the left!) we decided we must change cars. After extensive looking around I found a 1964 Plymouth Fury Sedan, with high mileage, but in fine shape otherwise. It had the "slant six" engine, and burned no oil whatever. It also had an automatic transmission, which we much appreciated.
With that "new" car, we took a trip back to Rockford. A young couple at Evergreen Church had invited me to conduct their wedding, at the church. After the wedding, Jane and Martha went by bus to Kansas to visit relatives. I left Mary in Rockford, visiting with a school friend, and went to Chicago to attend the Covenant Annual Meeting. That was good! I then went back to Rockford for Mary, and we drove to Kansas to join Jane and Martha. The car handled perfectly on the entire trip, and for some years later.
On our return to Spokane, Jane found work at Whitworth college, as secretary in the alumni office. She did well, and moved in subsequent years to the development office, and finally became secretary to the academic vice president. Jane's working at Whitworth made it possible for Mary to attend there, with her tuition paid. That was a tremendous help for us all. Mary lived at home at first, then later lived on campus. Jane's employment was the only thing that made that possible.
I've already mentioned my joining and being active in the Spokane Evangelical Ministers Association. The local association belonged to the National Association of Evangelicals. Being a part of the local group surely helped me in the years I was a pastor in Spokane. The men were a great bunch, mostly pastors or associates, from evangelical churches. We all had a common goal or aim--the winning of the lost people all around us. We had lunch together about once a month, with some business, and much time spent in prayer.
From the start I helped with various committees. In 1967 they asked me to be chairman of the committee organizing the annual Sunday School Conference. That was a good experience. Then the next year, 1968, the association elected me president!
As president of the local group, I attended the annual meeting of the National Association of Evangelicals, held in Los Angeles. The group paid all my expenses. Jane went with me, and we stayed at the Los Angeles Hilton hotel, the meeting place for the convention. There I had opportunity to listen to and talk with some of the best-known evangelicals in theUnited States at the time. It was wonderful!
Jane spent only a day or so at the hotel, then went to visit the Lowes. When the convention was over, the Lowes loaned us a car to go to Forest Home, the big Christian campground near Redlands, California. There we visited the Jim Dyers, old friends from seminary days. Jim had worked at the campground for several years, in charge of their printing and publications shop.
But I didn't stay up there in the mountains. I had applied and been accepted to spend a week at a pastor's conference at the headquarters of Campus Crusade for Christ, at Arrowhead Springs, just outside of San Bernardino. So I buzzed off down there, and checked in at the huge hotel. That was a wonderful experience--hearing a series of lectures by Bill Bright and others, fellow-shipping with pastors from all over the United States and Canada. Early in the week I came down with a horrid cold, and had to have special medication.
On Thursday, we pastors planned to go out and work at door-to-door evangelism, sharing the message of the Gospel using the "4 Spiritual Laws" booklet devised by Campus Crusade. Despite my dripping nose, I decided to go. We were to go out by twos. My assigned partner was a big, roly-poly, jovial Salvation Army man, complete with skin-tight uniform! I thought, to my shame, this will never work out! People won't want to talk to us, when they see him coming up the walk. I was much mistaken. No one slammed their doors in our faces, and in the two hours spent that afternoon, we prayed with several people who accepted Christ as Savior! It was a great afternoon, and did a lot to encourage me. The next day I drove up the canyon to the Dyers to get Jane, and we went back together to stay with the Lowes a day or two longer. Then we flew home to Spokane.
Over the past years I had been becoming more and more discouraged in pastoral work, because few new people were coming to the church. Attendance at the mid-week Bible study and prayer meeting was dwindling down to only half a dozen people. About that time I decided to expand our efforts by having Bible study meetings in private homes. We had already been having one such study, in the home of a young couple. Soon we had another study going regularly, an afternoon meeting, with only women attending. Then one church member organized a group that met at the parsonage while the regular midweek meeting was going on at the church. Soon more people began attending there than at the church! Two or three Catholic nuns were among those who came to that study!
That encouraged me! However, others in the church didn't like it at all, though I didn't realize that at first. The resentment of some grew in that last year of 1968. I kept on teaching and preaching, and working with the Confirmation class. In the fall of 1968 Campus Crusade conducted city-wide evangelism training for people in Spokane and the surrounding area, and we took part in that. A few from Minnehaha church attended. In the neighborhood visitation done following the training, Jane and I had one man receive the Lord.
Each summer our church cooperated with First Covenant Church in conducting Bible camp for our young people. That was good experience, and we had fine times. I sometimes did the speaking in the evenings, and once conducted a baptismal service in the river near the camp. That was memorable to me.
During all the years at Minnehaha church I attended the regularly scheduled meetings of the North Pacific Conference, and the special retreats held for pastors. There were good times in those meetings, but I was growing increasingly discouraged. A couple of times I lead the prayer meetings with the other pastors, and enjoyed doing that.
Sometime in 1968 a fine couple in the church decided to leave to go to another church. Bud, the husband, had worked hard starting the work at Minnehaha. That was a serious loss to us, and a bitter pill for me to swallow. However, I decided not to try to hold them. Later they served as missionaries with International Students, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. We have personally helped support them for years.
I tried to be consistent in sometimes preaching the need for a new birth--which our Lord Jesus plainly stated is necessary to receive salvation. Some old line church members resented that message, perhaps because they could not tell of any such experience in their own lives. Some accused me of saying that everyone must have an experience like that of the Apostle Paul. That wasn't true, but I wouldn't argue with them. I could only point out the words of Jesus.
My preaching, plus the home Bible study program, was arousing increasing resentment in the fall and winter of 1968-69. Unknown to me for a time, two families in the church began calling special meetings of the congregation to discuss getting rid of me! The trouble makers never told me face to face of their objections. Word came back to me, finally, through friends, that I must either "shape up, or ship out!" as put in the navy words of one person. (Years later, when that man was dying of cancer, I went to see him several times, but he never mentioned the part he had played. Neither did I!) The objectors wanted me to stop all the Bible studies outside the church building. They said that if people wanted to study the Bible, they could come to the church!
Meanwhile, David returned safely from Vietnam, and received his discharge from the Marines. As soon as possible he entered Whitworth College, where Mary was already attending. He lived on campus, for a time, and had a part- time job or two, to help with expenses. He was receiving help from the GI education bill, too. We were very glad to have him home safely from Vietnam.
Another great problem for me was the realization that none of our three children were showing any interest in the Lord or in spiritual matters. That, too, increased my discouragement and sense of failure as a pastor. Things came to a head in early summer of 1969. Vic Anderson, the man who had donated the land for the church, announced that he would no longer stay in the church while I was pastor! He was also treasurer of the church; a fine problem! After consulting with Jane and with the conference superintendent, I announced my resignation as pastor, and my decision to leave the pastoral ministry.
I hoped that my leaving would heal the troubles in the church, and avoid a church split, the last thing in the world I wanted. There was no split, though a few good people did leave and go elsewhere to worship services. I still think leaving was the right thing for me to do. I believe the objections some had to my ministry were not altogether valid, as I had not neglected my duties at the church.
So on June 16th, 1969, I announced my resignation, with my last time in the pulpit to be August 10th. The church denied me any vacation for the past year. Though the Conference Superintendent urged me to go on to another church, I stuck with my decision to leave the ministry. I felt that I had been a failure in too many ways. Also, both Mary and David were then enrolled at Whitworth College, partially supported by Jane's working at the school. If we were to leave Spokane, the children would lose their tuition benefits. Jane felt that she couldn't face going to another church. Also, Martha was ready for her senior year in high school, and I knew that to force her to change to another school at that time might be disastrous for her. Although I did receive an invitation to candidate at a church on the west side of Washington, I refused it. The whole matter made me very depressed, believe me, and I still have times when I wonder if I made the right decision.
Thus ended my poor career as a pastor. Next began a long period in my life in which I have wondered why and how I had failed. Though no longer a pastor, I have tried to find other ways of serving the Lord. But that belongs in a later chapter.