What is missing in the pastoral scene above? The artist has a cool running mountain stream, and the lofty mountains as well. The soft green pasture with the deer just arriving to lie down, or maybe partake of their evening meal. And the international symbol of peace, a small, neat, country church. What could possibly be missing from this scene?
There it is! Trying to hide behind the chapel in the woods. A full time RV'er has parked his family for the evening at the back of the little church hoping for a quiet evening with the deer, and maybe a nice conversation with a church-goer, the pastor, or a trustee. I place the emphasis on the word nice when I mention conversation, because the camper won't know for sure till the next morning whether or not he's welcome. But that's our plan, if we can make it work. We hope to go to church almost every evening we're on the road.
Here's the deal. I'll be a retired United Methodist pastor with a full record of my service on the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference website for anyone to find. I also have a pretty full personal Facebook page, as well as FB pages for our blogs and the www.Freedom-Now.net business we hope to make profitable once we are on the road. I think we might find mostly positive responses to our request for a place to park for the night if we make it of other pastors. Especially of other United Methodist Church pastors. After all, we have over 40,000 of them scattered over the US alone.
We hope to be able to drive each day without definite plans of where we will spend the night till the late afternoon or early evening. Then, when the time is right to either stop for supper or bedtime we'll search Google Maps for small country churches in our neighborhood. When we find one the Google link will connect us to at least a phone number and we can call that number to ask if we may spend the night.
We expect to get answering machines most of the time, and if we do we'll let the receiver of the message know who we are and that we'll be leaving a $10.00 check in an envelope in their mailbox or doorway to cover our use of their parking space for the night. That's about what any primitive (no hookups) RV site would cost anywhere but the highest end tourist destinations. And if we get a call to move, or a county police person drives in and tells us to move, well, we will. It's not that hard to punch two slide-out buttons closed and head to the next county. Even at 2:00 am. I guess I will have to put some clothes on though to answer the door. But Mona may stay fast asleep in bed till I pull over again.
Now all of this may sound fanciful to some, and we may discover that indeed it is. But I'm thinking that a retired pastor and his wife, taking up no more than a parking space for the night, will be very welcome by another pastor or church family, of any denomination. And $10.00 can't hurt any small congregation for the space to put down 10 tires for the night.
Well, we'll see. Our first destination the very day I retire is Shanksville, Pa. Site of the Flight 93, 9/11/2001 memorial. There's a cute little United Methodist Church just on the edge of town. We looked down on it with Google Earth. An ideal pull through for 50' of RV and toad. Now don't whisper a word of this to those folks! This will be our first experiment to see whether this idea works at all. And if you see online that a retired pastor and his wife were arrested in mid June in Central Pa for trespassing, well, would you say a little prayer for the both of us?
-Ken
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