I left the family dairy farm in Trout Lake, Washington and began pastoring Jefferson Baptist Church in Jefferson, Oregon the first Sunday of October in 1976 when I was 28 years old. I had very little knowledge, understanding, or skill in what I was supposed to do as a pastor. I had two years of college at Western Baptist Bible College majoring in Bible, but nothing in being a pastor. The church was small enough, about 20 people, and they were gracious enough that anything I did seemed to be OK. JBC actually grew and we bought land and built a small chapel that would seat about 150 people. We even built it with special offerings and with all in-house donated labor so that when we moved into it in October of 1979 it was all paid for. The next year went pretty good, but then in 1980 conflict began to happen. It was a lot of little things mostly that I did that people reacted to and got upset about. I worked hard to try and fix things, but it seemed like the harder I worked the worse it got. It seemed at times that I could do absolutely nothing without it causing some kind of reaction and complaining. More and more people left the church, and I got more and more depressed and frustrated with my failure and inability to lead and pastor in a way that created unity.

At the beginning of 1989 I had made up my mind that I had somehow missed it when I thought God was calling me to be a pastor and I needed to quit and go back to dairy farming, however I could make that happen. I was pursuing a number of options in that direction when I recieved in the mail an invitation from Dr Joe Alldrich, President of Multnomah Bible College in Portland Oregon to go away for 4 days to Cannon Beach Conference Center with a group of about 60 other Pastors from the greater Salem area and pray for God to bring revival to the State of Oregon.  Very reluctantly I went, and while I was there the first week of February, 1989 God worked in my life in a very powerful way.  While there I made a commitment that I would  remain a pastor and I would stay at JBC until I died unless they kicked me out which seemed a very real possibility.   I also made a major commitment to prayer as a way of life, not just something I did along with dozens of other things, but that prayer would be the number one activity of my life. I would devote myself to being a man of prayer. I wrote 7 specific goals in regards to the discipline and activity of prayer and have been pursuing those goals ever since.

The last 26 years since that water-shed event in my life have been characterized by God blessing my life and ministry well beyond what I was actually capable of accomplishing in my own skill level. These years have been very much an adventure with God building His church.  I have been back to the “Pastors Prayer Summit” at Cannon Beach every year since 1989 and I am here now as I write this blog. This is my 26th year and I always come expecting for God to meet me and work in my life. It is the end of the first half day and that is already true. I can’t wait for the next couple of days and see what is going to happen to me.