The first time I heard this phrase was at an American School of Business class in New York City over 30 years ago. I don't remember hearing it again until listening to a John Maxwell church leadership training video maybe 14 years ago. I knew what it meant the first time, but I KNEW that I KNEW what it meant the second. That's because our church, Hope UMC in Douglassville, had just signed on to one: Sell the best 2 of our 10 acres of land for as much as we could get, pay off the $400,000.00 land loan and take out a new loan for almost twice that amount to build our first worship center. For the 70 or so of us at Hope that was as big and hairy a goal as we could imagine.
I haven't spoken of this goal concept for a while because the timing did not feel right for me or Hope Church. Maybe I should have. But now it seems once again to be God's time at Hope, and today I learned that it may be God's time in another place with a name that begins with H. Not Hope, but Hygiene.
Today Mona and I had the privilege of worshiping with the loving people of HUMC in Hygiene, Colorado. We heard the heart of their pastor, Rev. Dawnmarie Fiechtner, as she brought God's Word today. And we got to sit down casually with Dawnmarie and several of her Holy Spirit led leaders and husband Doug after the comfortable post-worship coffee hour. That was when the BHAG came up.
Dawnmaire has been pastoring as a Licensed Lay Pastor (as I did for several years when I first came to Hope Church) for about 9 years now, and Hygiene is her third church. She and husband Doug are powerfully excited about the present, and future, of their 50-60 attender church. And so is the community.Doug grew up on a local farm and has owned and operated a successful large equipment repair facility. Now he enjoys reconditioning classic and other vehicles for himself and others.
They are shown posed here in front of a painting of the land near the church. This rural, but fast developing, area on Colorado's Northern Front Range is ripe for the word of Jesus. Much as it was when the fiorst farmers arrived over 150 years ago.
Hygiene UMC was built in 1901 just down the road from the founder of Hygiene, Rev. Flory's, Church of the Brethren, and just around the corner from the site of his tuberculosis sanitarium where cold mineral water was piped for miles under ground from Rabbit Mountain to fill his baths and bottles. This has been a place of healing ever since.
Go ahead Hope folks... open theirs up. I already shared yours with them this afternoon! And I passed on Tony Choudhry's (Hope Church's Tech Team Leader) email address so Hygiene's leaders might ask him some technical questions themselves.
Who knows what God has in store?
It's been a month now since we drove out of Hope church's parking lot. We are still feeling the effects of the awesome farewell our church family gave us. We are still awed by our current life on the road. We are awed by the many people God has led us to.
When we began sharing our retirement plan with others many told us we would probably get tired of being 'rootless' and need to settle down sometime sooner or later. At supper tonight we each expressed aloud separate but equal thoughts we had had yesterday and today. If we had been living on the road for a while already, and if we could forgo a nearby ocean beach and Mona could put up with snow storms on the plains....
....Hygiene would call us toward her like the sirens called Ulysses. This small town and her loving church would make good soil for anyone's roots. But the missing beach, and the promise of snow, has to trump even the kindness of this crowd for us.
God bless you Doug and Dawnmarie! And Bruce, and JR, and Norma, and Andy, and Linda, and Denny, and, and, and, and....... We shall all meet again some day.
-Ken
Home is where the heart is.
ReplyDeleteIt's still a novelty to think of, but we are truly home wherever we are! Tell Mom I miss her cake, your families love, and the kids MANY different names!
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