Can These Bones Live? The Story of the Revival at Elgin Assembly of God

 Chapter One: Hey! You Can’t Park There! 

Chuck stopped his car in front of the little white church to drop off his family. They were new to the area and this was their very first visit to the small Assembly of God church in Elgin, North Dakota. When he opened the car door, the elderly custodian hollered at him from the church door at the top of the steps, “Hey, you can’t park there!” Chuck motioned that he was just dropping off his family and then he went to park the car. Despite the rather gruff initial greeting, he and his wife Vicki and their children stayed and were a tremendous blessing to the congregation. I came to pastor the church about a year later and when he told me that story, I commended him for his “stick-to-it-tiveness.”

My family and I went to this small ranching and farming community directly out of Bible College in the fall of 1981. Located in southwestern North Dakota, Elgin, with a population of about 800, was an ideal place to become grounded in the ministry. Situated on the rolling plains of the Dakotas about 80 miles south and west of the capital city of Bismarck, the city of Elgin and Grant County was mostly German in ethnicity and a wonderful place to raise a young family. One of the glimpses we gained into their hard-working culture was a question that was asked at our initial board interview, “What time do you get up in the morning?” To them it was as important as what my theology was. Fortunately, I got up at 5:00 each morning to pray, so I passed. For the people of Grant County everything was connected to agriculture. The soil wasn’t as rich nor did they receive as much rain as in the Red River Valley in the eastern Dakotas. Springtime brought calving and planting, summer brought haying and hot weather, fall brought harvest and hunting (pheasants and mule deer), and then followed winter. Not quite as brutal as either Williston to the north or Fargo in the east, but tough none the less.

In the spring of my senior year in college, I sent out a number of resumes to churches in several surrounding states. We candidated at one church in Greybull, Wyoming, and then the church in Elgin.

The church building was actually a small converted barn that had been moved to Elgin in the 1950’s. The congregation had experienced revival sometime in the 1950’s but it had been many, many years since the church had grown substantially. In fact, the physical appearance of the church building seemed to mirror the spiritual condition of the congregation. When we arrived, part of the church sign was warped and bent, the carpeting on the steps to the platform had a couple of holes in it, the Venetian blinds on the windows hadn’t been changed for a couple of decades, and it needed to be painted in the worst way. The congregation was mostly elderly and the nursery hadn’t really been used for a number of years (it was actually converted to the pastor’s study). When Kay and I met with the church board for our initial interview, a couple of questions stood out (besides the “what time do you get up?” question). “Do you speak German?” was one of the questions. Not too many years prior to our coming, there were two Sunday morning services – one in English and one in German.  Many of the elderly people in the area spoke German fluently, but I did not.  They also asked my wife what type of a housekeeper she was. She had a holster for her cordless dust buster (remember those?), so she passed that one with flying colors. And they made one comment that seemed to be almost an incontrovertible truth, “Pastor, don’t expect this church to grow.” You know how I responded? Me, fresh out of Bible College, Mr. “Man-o-Faith,” replied with a resounding “…OK…” I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t really know that churches were supposed to grow. I was fresh out of Bible school, I was new to the Assemblies of God, I had never served on a church staff, I was only extroverted on the inside, and I just wanted to go somewhere to preach and feed my family.

A short time later the board called me to come and preach a sermon, and, following that, the congregation would vote on us. Sometime in the middle of October of 1981, one of the board members called to say that they had voted us in. When I answered the phone at my parent’s home outside of Moorhead, Minnesota, I remember how unemotional my response was. And to be honest, I was a little depressed. (I later learned that this mild depression was just a foretaste of the spiritual battle that we were to go through the first few years in Elgin.) So we packed up our belongings in Ellendale, North Dakota and moved to pastor the little church of about 35 people.

Our vision was not that big, but God’s vision sure was!

During our first few months at Elgin, the church custodian that greeted Chuck and his family so warmly said to me one day as I was studying in my office, “Well, pretty soon us old people are going to die and then we are just going to lock the doors.” My reaction? Well, I pretty much agreed with him! Everywhere you looked it was discouraging. My very first get-together with some of the guys of the church was to fence off a piece of property on the outskirts of town for the church cemetery. If I remember correctly, each church in Elgin had their own piece of property to lay to rest the departed saints from their congregation! 

For Elgin Assembly of God, it seemed that more money and focus was going toward people dying than to bringing babies into the kingdom of God.

And as far as how the singing went during the Sunday services, a handful of times it seemed that the crickets chirped louder than we were singing! I specifically remember stopping the song service one Sunday to challenge the people to sing louder than the crickets were chirping.

And in the first couple of years the only time the church was buzzing was when the building was attacked by a swarm of bees. It was a Saturday, I was in the church office studying and Kay and our two young daughters had gone shopping. Toward noon the phone rang and I picked it up. “Dan, its BEES!” The parsonage was located directly behind the church and when Kay and the girls got home, she could hear a buzzing sound. She said it sounded like someone driving with studded snow tires. When my wife opened the car door, she and Amber and Courtney got out into the midst of a honey bee swarm and ran inside the house and immediately called me. Just like a typical macho man, I assumed my wife was overreacting a little bit and that it was just a couple of wasps or hornets. So I went downstairs and grabbed the bee-killer spray out of the church kitchen cupboard and valiantly went outside to battle the bee-stly hoard. I lost – big-time – and ran into the parsonage. There were several thousand bees on the back of the church in a huge, black clump. A queen bee had decided to make our little barn-church her home and had brought along a zillion of her little warriors. After a couple of hours, we got in touch with a beekeeper who came and hosed them down and scooped them into his hives. I went to the church to see if any of the bees had gotten inside. They had!  I slowly opened the sanctuary doors and it honestly resembled a sound track from a horror movie. I seriously thought we were going to have to forgo church the next day. I have had to cancel church on account of snowstorms, but never because of a bee-storm.

To look at the situation in the natural, everything seemed so discouraging: an old building, a warped church sign, holes in the carpeting, a mostly older congregation, hardly any children, a cricket choir, a community that was not growing in population, and a preacher who was anything but charismatic. To put it bluntly – it was just plain hard and it was just plain discouraging. Period. When I was asked at monthly pastors’ meetings how things were going, I usually dreaded the frequently asked question, “Hey, how many did you have in attendance last Sunday?” I didn’t blame former pastors of Elgin Assembly of God for leaving after 2-3 years. Don’t get me wrong. The people were wonderful and it wasn’t the congregation’s fault by any means. It was just that Satan had a grip on that little church and wouldn’t let go.

The “Pastor-don’t-expect-this-church-to-grow” statement made at the initial board interview seemed to settle into our soul and spirit.

But God had plans for Elgin, Ephesians 3:20 type of plans: “Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us…” 

 

Chapter Two: That’s the Little Church I Saw in My Vision! 

Our very first Sunday in Elgin I got up early to pray. Wanting to be alone, I drove our old 1963 Plymouth Belvedere (affectionately known as the “Plymo-Limo”) outside of town to pray. Somewhere during that prayer time, the Holy Spirit spoke these 6 simple words to my heart, “It will be by intercessory prayer.” There was no visible angelic visitation, no heavenly choir, no thundering voice from the heavens, and no emotional experience. Just the gentle voice of the Spirit of the Lord speaking directly to my heart about prayer. And I really didn’t know what the “it” was. Years later, in the movie “Field of Dreams,” Kevin Costner wondered the same thing when he heard a voice out in the cornfield in Iowa, “If you build it, he will come.” Build WHAT? And WHO will come???

So that was my question: what was the “IT” in the promise “It will be by intercessory prayer?  What was the Lord wanting to accomplish in Elgin?

One of the first things I did in Elgin was to fix the church sign. To me, the outside of a church reflects the life of the pastor and the congregation. Driving by a church where weeds are growing tall in the parking lot, where the paint is peeling, and where the shrubbery is not trimmed doesn’t speak well of a church. I worked for a large hospital/clinic healthcare facility which has several regional clinics. A few years back I had to visit one of those regional clinics to do some training on our supply chain software system.  The clinic was about 100 miles away, and when I drove up, I honestly wondered if I was at the correct place. Lots of weeds were growing in the parking lot and in the shrubbery and I couldn’t see the sign indicating it was a healthcare facility. When I got back I told my boss about it and then I emailed the director of our regional facilities about how poorly this clinic represented our company’s name. Why go to a place of business that looks like it doesn’t care? And why attend a church that doesn’t care how the place looks?

As a rookie preacher I didn’t know much about pastoring other than what I had learned in the classroom. I didn’t grow up as a preacher’s kid, never served as an intern, and wasn’t on staff of a large church to sort of learn the ropes. But at the very beginning of my Christian life the Lord had put a passion in my heart to pray. At times my search for a place to pray became a little comical (see the post, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Secret Place”). In college I served on the GAP intercessory prayer ministry team and I was fascinated to hear missionaries and evangelists speak about the power of prayer, of waiting upon the Lord, and “praying through.” (“GAP” comes from Ezekiel 22:30 where it says, “I searched for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the GAP before Me for the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found no one.”)

So each day I got up at 5:00 AM and spent a couple of hours in prayer. Dan Rothwell, the former pastor from Fargo First Assembly of God, said something to the effect that in the morning you win the battle in prayer and the rest of the day is spent picking up the spoils of war. I realized how imperative it was to pray long and hard, especially before the Sunday services.  I could never fathom getting up in front of the people without having spent time in prayer.

Only after I have been able to look back on our time in Elgin did I realize the intense spiritual struggle we were going through in that little town. You normally don’t think of a town of about 800 people in the southwestern part of North Dakota as being a place of concentrated Satanic resistance, but it was. I had never really suffered from depression, but I seemed to be battling “something” that I could not put my finger on.  About 6 months into our time in Elgin I woke up in the middle of the night out of a deep sleep, singing in the Spirit. That had never happened before, and has never happened since. When that happened, there was a tremendous sense of peace and joy in my heart, and the Holy Spirit immediately spoke these simple words, “This is Satanic.” This mild spiritual depression that I was going through did not dissipate right away, but it helped me to know that “…our struggle was not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12).

And it wasn’t until quite a bit later that my wife told me how depressed she was the first few years that we were there. I am the one that is up and down on the moodiness scale, and she has always been the steady and cheerful one. But during that time, she seemed to be struggling with that “low lying black cloud” also.

So those first three years we prayed and preached and did the normal church stuff.

And plodded. I think my wife and I are good at “plodding.” If you want to be successful in something you have to be able to stick to it even when it’s hard.  You have to be able to keep putting one foot in front of the other, you have to keep trudging along when everything inside of you says, “QUIT!” I think both Kay and I had learned how to do the plodding and trudging thing from our upbringing and through what we had gone through in the Army (we both joined the Army together about one year after high school).

However, I want to stress a couple of things in the middle of this story. First, I absolutely agree with Paul in Romans 11:36, “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.” This revival was by the grace of God! He just used this introverted, balding and bowlegged preacher as a vessel to flow through. Secondly, I sometimes think the Lord looks down on a little church and says to the angels, “You know, these people have been so awfully faithful for so many years even when things have been so awfully dry…I think I’m going to POUR OUT SOME RAIN ON THEM!” A lot of the credit for the revival simply needs to go to the Elginites themselves. There were people in the little barn-church that had the same tenacity to remain faithful during the “dry bones” tough times. I believe God is sometimes just looking for “show-er-uppers” – people who are faithful to come to church even when things are discouraging or the weather is lousy or they’re feeling miserable. There were the Bauers, the Finks, the Seidlers, the Ehrmantrauts, the Kreps, the Meyers, the Tietzs, the Stevahns, the Siewerts, the Pigors, Molly Schaible, Violet Pidde and others. People who were simply faithful. Sure, for the most part they didn’t expect the church to grow, but you know what? Neither did I! But consider this – when God asked the prophet Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” (Ezekiel 37:3), he replied by saying, “I don’t really think so!” (The Vander Ark paraphrased edition).

But somewhere during our third year in Elgin God began speaking to my heart about revival. Three times in one year I preached from Ezekiel chapter 37 and the “Valley of Dry Bones” passage***. The third time I mentioned to the congregation that I wasn’t in the habit of doing reruns, but that the Lord had something in mind for Elgin. As a pastor I have tried to be careful about a couple of things. First, of getting up in front of a congregation and promising that if we carry out a certain spiritual formula or apply the latest program that’s making a buzz in the church world, then revival will be the result. (Please don’t get me wrong – there are many wonderful and effective programs that the Lord has given to the church. But if they are not born and energized of the Holy Spirit, they will not be effective in bringing true revival). Some pastor somewhere along the way wisely told me that a lot of congregations hear the same thing from a lot of preachers that come along, and when revival doesn’t happen, they tend to get a little skeptical. It’s not that they don’t want revival (they desperately do), it’s just that they have heard the same promises for so long and have seen preachers stay for just a couple of years and then leave. Hence, they get a little jaded. They want someone to stick it out with them and love them, even if revival doesn’t happen. Secondly, even though I felt something stirring deep in my spirit, I was hesitant to give a word of prophecy. It’s not that I don’t believe in the gift of tongues and interpretation of tongues or the gift of prophecy. I do very much so. It’s just that, again, when we stand before a congregation and say, “Thus saith the Lord, ‘Rain is coming!’” we need to give the word out of a tender spirit of love for the sheep, realizing the impact that our words are having in the kingdom of God.

But the Holy Spirit was stirring something in my heart. I remember mentioning to them somewhere in about our third year that God was wanting to do something in Elgin. I didn’t know what, but the Lord did. The Holy Spirit was beginning to blow upon the dry and dusty bones of the Elginites, and He wanted us to be prepared.

The beginning breezes of the winds of revival may not come in the fashion we have imagined. At Elgin, in the initial stages of the revival we didn’t see signs and wonders, but nevertheless God was moving by His Spirit. Evidence that revival is starting may simply be that someone begins pulling the weeds or giving the place a fresh coat of paint or just plain fixing the place up.

We took a step of faith financially and remodeled the sanctuary. If I remember correctly, we had about $10.00 in the church checking account when we began to remodel. For sure it was less than $100.00. And also in faith, we turned the nursery that became a classroom that became the pastor’s office back into the nursery. A couple of young families came into the church and became a real blessing to our congregation. One young family in particular proved to be vital in encouraging Kay and I and the congregation and holding our hands up in prayer. Dave and Tina Skjoldal became youth leaders and both of them had a real passion for Jesus.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this story, Elgin was located about 80 miles southwest of Bismarck, the capital city. We normally went there once a month for shopping, but some people drove there weekly. And a few people I knew drove to Bismarck for church on Sunday. Somewhere in our third year in Elgin (it seems like a lot of “stuff” was starting to happen in “about the third year”), a young man and his friend stopped by the parsonage to visit with us. I was not at home but Clay and his friend had something they needed to share and so they related an amazing story to my wife. They had been in Bismarck at a prayer meeting and sometime during the meeting Clay’s friend had a vision. In her vision she saw a little white church that was covered with a dark demonic cloud. But as she looked in her vision, she saw the glory of God begin to settle upon the little white church and the black Satanic cloud began to dissipate. She shared the vision with Clay (and perhaps some others). She had never seen our church before, but either later that day or within just a couple of days of that prayer meeting, Clay and his friend were driving through Elgin, and when she saw our little barn-church, she suddenly exclaimed, “That’s the church I saw in my vision!”

I still get goose bumps when I think about that story. 

 

Chapter Three: Revival! 

It was the fall of 1984. A pastor friend from Mott, North Dakota named Carl Bauman had scheduled evangelist Verlyn Nelson to come to their church. (Carl loved to say, “Mott’s the Spot that God Loves a Lot”). Carl asked if our church would be interested in having Verlyn come in the mornings (Monday through Thursday) to do some teaching about the Holy Spirit. We thought it would be a good idea – Mott and Elgin were only 25 miles apart so the travel wouldn’t be a problem.

We met in the basement of our little church those four mornings for a couple of hours and the attendance from the beginning was great. Several young couples who were not a part of the church came because they were hungry for the Holy Spirit. Verlyn had a wonderful way of teaching on the gifts of the Spirit and the people devoured his teaching.

That week of teaching set the stage for what was to come.

I can’t remember why the Nelson’s had an opening in their schedule (perhaps a church had cancelled their series of services with him), but Verlyn asked if our church would be willing to have him come back two weeks later. Again, everyone thought it would be great, so we scheduled him for a Sunday through Thursday series of meetings sometime in November of 1984.

During those services our little church was packed. People were healed (I specifically remember one elderly lady’s shoulder being healed), a few received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and everyone was encouraged! Almost overnight we had an influx of people (mostly younger families) that stayed, supported and became faithful members of Elgin Assembly of God. Not too many months after those revival services, in order to accommodate the new people, we rented a house just across the street to the south for Sunday School classrooms. When that house was no longer available, we then rented the house across the street to the west of the church.

Now the church really was buzzing, but not because of an invasion of honey bees. God had taken our little church and transformed it through the power of intercessory prayer! Hebrews 11:6 says that God is “a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him.” And someone has said that “God acts sovereignly on behalf of those who pray” – meaning that when we faithfully seek His face, He will pour out unexpected blessings! The church that had for so many years been dormant and stagnant was now filled with people of all ages. The statements, “Pastor, don’t expect this church to grow,” and, “Pretty soon us old people are gonna die and then we are just gonna lock the doors,” had been overruled in heaven. During our time there people were saved, a ten-year-old boy was delivered of demonic oppression, some received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, others had their Pentecostal experience reignited, and many were encouraged to walk closer to Jesus. Through His wonderful mercy and grace, God decided to pour out His Spirit on the little barn church on the plains of southwestern North Dakota.

In January of 1988 the Lord began speaking to my heart that we were to resign the church the following May.  We had no idea where the ministry would take us to next, and when I announced our resignation to the congregation, I quoted from Hebrews 11:8, “By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing where he was going.” I remember Marcus Bakke, our district superintendent at the time, remarking to me, “You know Dan, most guys have a church lined up before they resign!”  That was probably true, but I believe firmly that there are times when God asks us to step out in faith.

It was a very, very hard decision leaving the people we loved, but In July we packed up and moved to Duluth, Minnesota to pastor a home missions church. When I finished loading the U-Haul truck and was just getting ready to pull out, an elderly gentleman from Elgin who had never been to any of our church services during our almost 7 years there, pulled up behind the truck and got out to talk with me. I had been the chaplain for the American Legion Post and had gotten to know him there. He said this simple sentence to me as we stood behind the truck, “I just want to thank you for what you’ve done here. You did a good job.” He had always seemed to be a little hard and cold and had never really talked that much, but I was deeply moved by his unpretentious words. And after all these years, I am still moved when I think about what he said.

To the congregation’s credit, about one year after we left the flock at Elgin, they made arrangements to move in a larger church building from a community about 100 miles away. Not only had the Lord given the Elginites more people, but now they also had a larger church building as well. God is so good! 

As I look back, I realize I made many mistakes at Elgin during my rookie years of pastoring our first church.  There was at least one time when I had to apologize to the congregation for something I had said in a sermon.  But I am thankful to know a God that can take our foibles and failures and turn them around for His glory!

 

Conclusion: 

My heart is burdened for pastors of small churches and their congregations and I would like to close this story by encouraging both the shepherds and the sheep of these smaller churches.

For the sheep: the Barna Group’s research finds that almost 40 percent of US pastors have thought about quitting full-time ministry in the past year (https://www.barna.com/research/pastors-well-being). Because of this, let’s determine to be men and women who will lift up the hands of pastors in intercessory prayer.  Let’s be the Aarons and the Hurs (Exodus 17:12) of the church world – and bring encouraging words to those who watch over our souls.  

Sheep – pray for your pastor! Pray for your pastor! Don’t just talk about praying for your pastor, pray for your pastor! And send them a note of encouragement or give him or her a call and let them know that you appreciate them. Encouraging words can change the course of a life!  And when you are out and about, when you pass by a church, breathe a short word of prayer for that shepherd/shepherdess that God would bring encouragement to them.

For the shepherds: your congregation may be in the midst of a large metropolitan city or it may be in one of the smaller towns out on the plains of the Dakotas. God has a plan for you and your church! Jesus desperately loves you and the people in your congregation and the lost people out in the highways and byways of your town. I encourage you to take some time out of your schedule (perhaps an hour each day) to earnestly seek the face of God. Nothing is more important to you and the life of your church then getting alone with God! When your heart determines to do this, God will bless you in unexpected ways and give you a fresh vision.

 

***Ezekiel 37:1-14

37:1 The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones,

2 And caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry.

3 And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest.

4 Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.

5 Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live:

6 And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the Lord.

7 So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone.

8 And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them.

9 Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.

10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.

11 Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts.

12 Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel.

13 And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves,

14 And shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the Lord have spoken it, and performed it, saith the Lord.

The Power of Intercessory Prayer & the Story of Hawthorne Assembly of God

A Minnesota Viking Pastor in a Green Bay Packer Congregation 

“Pastor, where’s your faith?” Those words of Johnny Johnson stopped me in my tracks. Along with Walt Moss, we were walking the ten acre parcel of land situated next to highway 53 that would make an excellent site for a new church building. The lot, situated at a highpoint along a major thoroughfare, was elongated running north to south and sloped considerably eastward down toward the highway. As we surveyed the property we were envisioning where best we could locate the church and the parking lot. “Pastor, where’s your faith?” The words kept echoing in my heart. Where would we get the money to build? And how would we fill the new building with people? 

Our plans were to construct a sanctuary that would seat about four times as many people as we were currently averaging in attendance (40-50 people in the old church versus 170-200in the new building). We desperately needed to do something for a different facility, but what? A couple of years prior (about 1999) we had purchased three acres of land directly across the county road from the old church and had tentative plans to build there. But Johnny had done some checking around and discovered that the owner of the ten acre parcel that we were now investigating was willing to sell. So when Johnny challenged me by asking where my faith was, I wanted to say something like, “Why would we now want to purchase a ten acre piece of property along a major (and very busy) northern Wisconsin four lane highway when we had a perfectly good bought-and-paid-for three acre parcel along a county road where perhaps not more than a couple hundred cars passed by daily?” I have yet to be delivered from a spirit of sarcasm. :>) 

We bought the 10 acre tract of land in 2001 and eventually sold the three acre site. We hired an architect in 2002, in the spring of 2003 we broke ground for our new building, and on Sunday, September 11, 2005 we dedicated the new sanctuary. Even though this is the story of how the Lord encouraged myself and our little group of worshippers to step out in faith and build a new place of worship, its primary purpose is to reveal the role that intercessory prayer played in all aspects of that journey of faith. I fervently believe that the power of intercessory prayer can change the lives of individuals, the lives of congregations, and even the direction and health of cities and entire nations. But I want to strongly emphasize at the outset of this story that even though I was an intercessor, the move of God that occurred in the hearts of our congregation was the culmination of years of praying by many current and former saints at Hawthorne Assembly of God. 

During my time at Hawthorne I often remarked that it seemed that the prayer bowls were full and God had decided that “the appointed time had come” (Psalm 102:13).  My family and I had come to pastor this little rural congregation in the fall of 1996. Hawthorne is situated about 20 miles south and east of Superior, Wisconsin. There was a post office, a town hall, the township garage, an apartment building/laundromat, a few houses, our little church, and no bar! Statistics from 2008 show a population of 1056 residents, but the person who came up with that must have included the deer and the squirrels. 

I had done pulpit fill-ins at Hawthorne a number of times over the preceding couple of years, and when Pastor Ken Wheeler decided to step down, they asked us if we would be interested in pastoring this church. We immediately said, “Yes!” Even though we lived about 25 miles away in the city of Duluth, our hearts were in the country. It seemed that our ministry was more suited to pastoring rural churches than those in the city (see the story of Elgin on this same blog). But at first glance our pastoring at Hawthorne didn’t seem like a fit – they were in the country, we were in the city; they hunted deer, I used to hunt ducks, they lived in Wisconsin, I lived in Minnesota. And even more amazing in their selection of us to pastor the church was the fact that they were ardent Green Bay Packer fans, and I was a zealot for the Minnesota Vikings. More than once they asked me, “How many Super Bowls have you guys won?” whereupon I did my best Charlton Hesston/Moses imitation and cried out to God to cover their land with frogs. But over my 11 years at Hawthorne I honestly enjoyed the kidding and ribbing that went back and forth between us. In fact, if the truth be known, when our teams played each other in the great border battles, I halfway wanted the Packers to win because I knew how disappointed the kids in the church would be if they lost. But only halfway. 

“A River will Flow out of this Place!” 

My family and I never went to Hawthorne with intentions to build a new church. I just wanted to preach and love a group of people. Both my wife and I worked full-time outside the church, so with our secular employment and ministerial duties our time was pretty well taken up. When I pastored at Elgin, North Dakota we had gone through a remodeling project and I knew how much time and energy that involved. I could only imagine what it would take to construct a new facility. But God had other plans and the seeds for what He wanted to do were birthed through prayer. 

Many times the Spirit of the Lord would anoint our Sunday morning services and Wednesday night prayer meetings and begin to plant in our hearts His vision for the congregation. I vividly remember two such services – one on a Wednesday night and one on a Sunday morning – where the Lord greatly impressed upon our hearts His love for that portion of Douglas County. The Wednesday night prayer meeting took place sometime in 1997 or 1998. As we joined hands to pray together for the last few minutes of the service, the Holy Spirit gave me a great unction and I began to prophetically pray that “a river would flow out of this place!” You could strongly sense the wonderful presence of the Lord in that 30 x 40 foot little white church. 

The Sunday morning service took place sometime in the spring of 2001. As I was worshiped the Lord during the song service, I began to think back to the previous day when I had watched a program about the great Johnstown, Pennsylvania flood of 1889 and the devastation that followed and how that flood had changed the landscape and affected lives for a generation to come. So on Sunday when I went to the pulpit for a time of prayer before the sermon, God began to mightily flow through my heart again in prophetic prayer. I briefly mentioned the facts of the Johnstown flood, but then, through the unction of the Holy Spirit, I mentioned that another flood was coming and that God was going to flow in a mighty and dramatic way through this portion of Wisconsin. 

The very next day it rained buckets in the Hawthorne and Lake Nebagamon area (if I remember correctly about 9 inches in some places) and water was seen where water hadn’t been seen before! When I recently asked one of the people in the church if she remembered that, Annie said, “I shared your question with Lois and Andy. Both of them and myself were wondering if you were thinking about the time the creek flooded and went right through somebody’s house and rushed into the lake. It was the spring of 2001…lots of rain and spring melt. It was a mess everywhere. I have never seen such a thing, probably never will again...” 

I believe that the physical outpouring of rain that day was a confirmation from the Lord that He would one day be pouring out His mighty Holy Spirit in that area and that outpouring would dramatically altar the spiritual landscape for a generation to come! 

A Little R&R at Mayo 

A building committee was formed early in 2002 and after a couple months of discussion we hired an architect. Sometime in 2002 I attended a Saturday service at Central Assembly of God in Superior, Wisconsin where Reverend George Wood (now our General Superintendent) was speaking. I can’t remember what Pastor Wood spoke about (sorry George :>), but I do remember how the Holy Sprit began to quicken to my heart the plans for our new church. I sat in the back of the church and sketched out a rough drawing of the floor plan. The hymn, “Be Thou My Vision” was sung sometime during the service and I could strongly sense the presence of the Lord in that place. Even though it changed somewhat and eventually became a little smaller than my first sketch, the building that stands today closely resembles that initial draft. I still have that drawing. 

When we met with our architect, Ximena Christianson, we shared our basic desire for a building with her. On one end of the spectrum we could simply construct a quonset style building. Not much to look at, but cheap and practical. On the other end of the spectrum we could put up Douglas County’s version of the Sistine Chapel. We all agreed that we leaned toward the quonset end of the spectrum. We wanted the new church to be nice, but we also wanted it to be very practical and a building that wouldn’t bury our congregation under a mountain of debt. Our philosophy was that the church building is not the goal – it is simply a tool (albeit a very expensive tool) to reach the goal of furthering the kingdom of God. A church building is essentially a “grain bin.” When the farmer harvests the grain he needs a place to store that commodity before it is sent out to be processed and eventually feed a hungry and dying world. The physical church building is in all practicality that “divine grain bin” where souls are brought in from the harvest and then trained and built up so that they in turn can go out to feed a hungry world! Again, the building is NOT the goal; it is a tool to reach that goal. During those 12 months from the spring of 2002 to the spring of 2003 we hammered out the plans for the new building and finally settled on a 7700 square foot floor plan (a 60 x 120 foot structure with a “bump-out” on the north end where a portion of the platform would be located). We planned to break ground later that spring of 2003 and begin construction. 

But a wrench was thrown into our plans – I became very sick. I had been battling an illness for almost 20 years and in 2002 it became progressively worse. In the fall of 2002 I seemed to get better, but after the New Year things got worse again. I had to cancel my involvement in the combined Good Friday service with other churches in the Hawthorne area and on Sunday I was too sick to go to the Easter Sunday breakfast and service. I quickly scrambled to find someone to fill in for me. On Monday I asked my wife to take me to the emergency room and they immediately put me into the hospital. That Wednesday quite a few of the church members came up to the hospital for a prayer meeting. When I came down the hall to the waiting room dragging my IV pole with me, they were saddened to see their pastor looking so gaunt. But they anointed me with oil and we had a good old fashioned prayer meeting right there in the hospital. But my health continued to falter and that following weekend I was transported to St. Mary’s hospital in Rochester, Minnesota. Both my family physician and the surgeon at Mayo matter-of-factly told me how sick I was. The 3 hour operation took instead about 7 hours. When I was taken out of recovery the doctor told my wife that if I contracted any sort of infection I probably wouldn’t make it. But people were praying! And after about 3 weeks in Rochester I was able to go home. However, when I went home I was thrust right into the middle of a building project. It seemed that when I was taking a month’s worth of R&R in the hospital, the dear saints at Hawthorne just decided to forge ahead, pastor or no pastor! 

They did experience a little bit of a bumpy road during the time they were essentially shepherdless, but they just kept going. That was a great tribute to their faith and leadership abilities. When I went back for the first Sunday service after my stay in the hospital I sat on a pew in the very back of the sanctuary. As Sunday School ended the kids came up from the basement and gathered around me and just stared – they couldn’t believe how skinny their pastor had become! And when I went to the building site I couldn’t believe my eyes – the land had been cleared and thousands of yards of fill had been trucked in (all largely due to the generosity of just one family). I resolutely believe that at times the Lord arranges circumstances to bring us to our knees in earnest intercession and intense seasons of prayer. He knows our weakness in prayer and how prone we are to wander when it comes to this “praying thing.” He knows that when desperate prayer is needed something desperate needs to be done to bring people to their knees. So perhaps in His wisdom He simply arranged the circumstances of my illness during the time of this building project so that a multitude of people would be on their knees praying! 

The beginning of June I went out to the old church for a meeting about the finances, but first I stopped out to the worksite. It was beehive of activity – the footings were being poured! Jim Whelan, our worship leader, had me stand about where the pulpit would eventually be situated and he took my picture. It was an exciting time. But how were we going to pay for everything? Between what we had in our building fund and what we could borrow we had a little over half of what we needed. But where would the rest come from? We kept praying…. 

Our Capital Campaign could be summed up with one word…PRAY! 

As I now look back at the whole process I see that (from the world’s point of view) we did things a little backwards. We started building first…and then wondered, “OK, how are we gonna pay for this?” I don’t want to leave you with the impression that we didn’t plan and discuss and pray about where the money was going to come from. We took the vision that God had given us very seriously. We talked to lots of people and asked for lots of wisdom. We talked to our district superintendent, to pastors who had gone through building projects, and obviously, people in the congregation. In fact our building committee meetings were open to anyone that wanted to attend! I know it sounds a little scary, but we wanted everyone involved. It worked out well because the building project was not driven from the top down – instead everyone bought into it and everyone was excited about what God was doing! We talked to our banker and other leaders in our denomination. 

And we had one of our denomination’s capital campaign representative’s visit with our building committee. But when I met with him at the local restaurant prior to meeting with the building committee and he told me that his department's fee was approximately $8,000.00, I immediately knew we would be going another direction. Why spend thousands of dollars for someone to come in to convince people to give when our people were already sacrificing so much. It wasn’t quite the Moses/Tabernacle thing where the people were bringing more than enough and Moses actually had to ask the people to stop giving (Exodus 36:5). But it was a blessing to see how the people were giving so abundantly and willingly. We did send out about 200 very nicely printed brochures about how we wanted to build a new church and how people could contribute if they wanted to. We sent them to anyone connected with the church. As a direct result of that mailing we received not more than $2,000. I guess you could get discouraged over that, but I told our treasurer that even if very little money came in as a result of the mailing, its primary purpose was to ask people to pray…people praying was MORE IMPORTANT than people giving! 

We wanted every aspect of the building process to be saturated with prayer. From beginning to end we prayed and asked for intercessor’s to lift up our venture in prayer! We were amazed at how God provided for the new church structure. People gave of their finances, gave of their material goods, and gave of themselves. Workers just “seemed” to show up when they were needed. An individual that had never been to our church, motivated by all the activity he saw at the construction site as he drove through on highway 53, decided to send a check to help with the building project. Often during the project we prayed, “Lord release the funds that are needed.” And He did! And time and again the unexpected money came for unexpected expenses from some pretty unexpected sources. Close to the end of the building project we had a long list of items that needed to be finished before the final inspection. Lois Moss reminded me of the way that God miraculously provided. She wrote in a letter, “Do you remember when we had a list of things that needed to be finished up before the last inspection? Someone made an estimate that it would cost $5,000. Then we had a meeting, and that very night I had a check in my purse that was given to the church in honor of a former member for $5,000! Awesome! God is so good!” 

The Process is as Important as the Project 

Before the project began we had a meeting with Reverend Arden Adamson, the Superintendent for the Wisconsin/Northern Michigan District of the Assemblies of God. The primary thing that he mentioned during that meeting was this: "The process is as important as the project itself." In other words, at each step along the way, whether it was obtaining permits from the county, or putting in the driveway with the proper culvert dimensions, or following building codes, or keeping an exact accounting of all the finances, we would be a witness to people both inside and outside of the church. They would be watching how we did things! We always tried to remember those words of wisdom, and prayed earnestly over the project with that in mind. And so when the driveway and culvert were installed, the county wanted to use pictures of it to show other residences and businesses within the county how to properly install their driveway. And when we asked the county board for permission to install about 4 RV hookups on the property for one year for the MAPS workers, they gave us permission to install 8 hookups for two years. We accounted for every penny given to the project – and our treasurer (Maxine Petite) did a wonderful job of making sure bills were paid on time and that the financial ledgers were accurate. Everything was done above board and with a full accounting to the people who gave so faithfully and sacrificially. 

Angels Disguised as MAPS RVers 

Our congregation was small enough to qualify for help from our denomination’s ministry called MAPS RV Volunteers. MAPS is an acronym for Mission America Placement Service. I had initially contacted them in January of 2003 and, after filling out the proper paperwork and obtaining our building permit, our building project was approved so that RV volunteers from around the United States could come to help build our church. The RVers were men and women either retired or semi-retired who voluntarily traveled around the US to various church projects and spent anywhere from a few days to a few months helping with construction and remodeling projects. Our only financial obligation was to pay the organization $1.00 per hour worked. However we certainly wanted to be a blessing to them and show our appreciation so we took up love offerings and provided them with meals. We did not have any other construction company lined up to put up our building – we were utterly going by faith and totally dependant on the assistance of MAPS. The director of MAPS just told me to call him about a week before we poured the slab. I never asked him, but I just assumed that in the meantime he would be lining up workers so that once he got a call from me that we were ready to go, he had a list of people all set to call and send to northern Wisconsin. I called the director and said, “We are pouring the slab next weekend!” There was sort of a pause, and then I heard him say, “Ok, let me make some calls.” My heart skipped a beat. I had the sinking feeling that there wasn’t a master list of “OK you RVers head to Wisconsin.” But God certainly had a master list! He had everything under control and was lining up RVers to travel our way and help build our church. 

At the end of July in 2003 the concrete slab was cured enough for the walls to go up. So we did what came naturally – we decided to have a prayer meeting at the work site. Jim Whelan played his guitar and we sang some songs and prayed. The hymn “By My Spirit” became our theme song. And that’s when the first RVer arrived. The director of MAPS had called Jim Carson and asked him to head up the project in Hawthorne. I think there was a little trepidation on Jim’s part, but we are forever grateful that he took a step of faith to head our way. Shortly after that I received a call from Norm and Mary Brooks. I didn’t recognize the phone number when it came up on my cell phone and normally I would have just let it go to voicemail. But for some reason I decided to answer it, and was so very glad I did. They were heading west across the upper peninsula of Michigan and were just about at a juncture where they could either head south to a MAPS project in southern Wisconsin or continue heading west to our project. Not wanting to sound too selfish, I immediately replied, “KEEP GOING WEST!” 

When the time came that we needed an electrician, Ken and Linda Rock just “happened’ to be available. (If you need a good electrician that can tell some great jokes – call him!). Over those next few months of 2003 and throughout the spring, summer and fall of 2004 we were graced to have so many MAPS workers come to help build our church. Some stayed a few days, and some a few months. All stay forever in our hearts. The church at Hawthorne is forever indebted to the labor of Jim and Rose Carson, G. Thomas and Carolyn Amrozowicz, Norman and Mary Brooks, Melvin and Betty Bollinger, Lee and Sandra Cook, Bob and Bonnie Erickson, Hillard and Norma Green, Jim and Jean Hodge, Thomas and Shirley Kennedy, Fred and Helen Kranz, John and Juanita Noble, Sr., Ken and Linda Rock, Loren and Eloise Schmalz, Harold and Romelle Stefan, and Arnold and Delores Wagaman, Jr. (If I have failed to mention anyone, my deepest apologies and please let me know their names). Our church literally saved tens of thousands of dollars in constructions costs through their ministry. A plaque was placed in the entryway of the new church with each of their names on it to honor their labor of love. 

Pastor, I Have Some Bad News… 

People worked hard. Really hard. Kids, teenagers, and adults all pitched in. Even though the work at times was difficult, I enjoyed those days at the worksite. And I got to know the sheep in a much more personal way. Many people put in long hours during the week and on Saturdays to get the building done. I took some days off from work to help out and was also at the worksite most Saturdays. The building committee was fantastic to work with. We obviously had some disagreements over things; it would be unrealistic to think there wouldn’t be differences of opinions. But very rarely (if at all) did we have any major disagreements. We met weekly, prayed over our decisions, ironed out any lingering details, and just kept going. 

Toward the end of the project I was informed that the color that we had selected for the chairs wasn’t going over so well with some people. I frankly was a little miffed and asked to have a meeting with the building committee. But when we met that evening, God met us in a wonderful way. Instead of there being a nit-picking tension over chair color, people began talking about the big picture and how the Lord had led us so far. Their love for the Lord and their servant’s hearts really shone through in an amazing way. So instead of the chair-color meeting turning into something that would have soured the whole project, it proved to be a highlight of the building project. 

But nevertheless there were occasions when things did get a little stressful. It was a very windy Thursday that the crane was brought out to the worksite to install the roof trusses. Sometime that morning the project manager called me at my secular job and asked if we had builder’s risk insurance. “Yes,” I said in a shaky voice, “Was there a problem?” I immediately envisioned that the crane had toppled over. “No, no problem,” he said, “The crane operator just wanted to know…” There were a handful of times when a snap decision had to be made without consulting with the committee, but I always made sure we discussed it at the next meeting and went over my reasons as to why the decision was made. 

And a few times it did get more than a little discouraging. One of the lowest moments was a dreary, drizzly mid October day when we were going to install all seven of the exterior doors. But the manufacturer made a mistake with the frames and as a result not a single one fit properly. By the end of the day we had installed only three of the doors. And when I got in my truck to head home for the day, I was greeted by chunks of foam rubber. My dog had decided that he couldn’t wait for supper and so he commenced to chew up the truck seat. 

We sold the old church (we got more for it than I ever imagined we would) and in about October of 2003 we rented the town hall to hold church services. Our goal was to hold our first service in the fellowship hall of the new building in about mid-January of 2004. On the Friday before our very first Sunday service I received a call from Steve, our church board secretary. That morning he had met with the building inspector at the church to see if everything was ok for officially gaining occupancy to our new building. He was given a list of at least a dozen items (if I remember correctly) that HAD to be corrected before the Sunday service. Some things could be taken care of easily (like moving the stack of sheetrock away from the kitchen area), but a couple could not (the in-floor heat was working ok, but the air exchange had not been hooked up yet). 

My heart sank and that night I spent some extra time in prayer. I was halfway hoping that God would send an armada of angels to supernaturally take care of everything on that list. 

Before I Continue… 

I am a firm believer in the power of tears…and so was King David and so is King Jesus and so were the “pray-ers” at Hawthorne. There is a verse in Psalm 56:8 that says this, “Thou hast taken account of my wanderings; put my tears in Thy bottle; are {they} not in Thy book? And in Hebrews 5:7 this verse is recorded, “In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety.” The conditions were made ripe to build a new church for Hawthorne Assembly of God through untold hours of intercession and untold buckets of tears! On Saturday of dedication weekend our banker came to visit the church. She noticed that there was a box of Kleenex at the end of each row of chairs in the sanctuary and a few by the platform. Joye asked our treasurer Maxine what they were for. I can’t remember her exact reply, but it was something like “we were a crying bunch of people!” Tears are a sure sign of tenderness and revival in a person’s heart, and boxes of Kleenex in the church sanctuary are an indication that God has been moving in the hearts of the people! Perhaps George Barna, in his surveys of American church health, should use the “Kleenex-Factor” to determine a congregation’s spiritual temperature. In other words, a church’s spirituality would be measured by the amount of money spent per member on boxes of Kleenex throughout the year. 

Back to the Story… 

Saturday morning I got to the worksite long before anyone else. There was a mountain of work that needed to be done – and it didn’t look like the angels had done anything that night – they hadn’t even moved one piece of sheetrock. But I needed more desperately to spend some time in prayer. After about an hour I could sense the presence of the Lord and I felt like I had broken through into the heavenlies. A few verses from the story of the faith of Abraham came to my mind. That day was an amazing day. And in fact angels did show up – but they were all disguised as Hawthornites! 

We worked long and hard, but a LOT of people just “happened” to show up to help. Brady and Austin Lind, a couple of pretty strong teenagers (hold it, change that to "really strong teenagers"), stopped by for awhile and moved those 4x12 foot pieces of sheetrock in no time. The electrician and I were the last to leave. He had to get the air exchange working before we could go and when I heard it kick in, I was overjoyed! Before each service in the partially completed fellowship hall we had to clean the sheetrock dust off the chairs. But we had some wonderful services and each Sunday people witnessed the progress first hand. 

Dedication Weekend 

At one point during the construction of the building someone mentioned to me that they were wondering what it would take for revival to come to Hawthorne. I gently asked her to look around. "You ARE in the midst of revival!" I replied. We decided to dedicate the new building on the weekend of September 10-11, 2005. There were a few items that still needed to be finished (for instance the floor coverings in the fellowship hall and classrooms) but the building was for the most part done. We had a breakfast at the church that Saturday morning and a concert and time of testimony that Saturday night. Being a logging area, instead of having a ribbon-cutting ceremony we had a “log-cutting ceremony” on the Saturday evening before the concert. On Sunday morning the place was packed. Two of the former pastors, Ken Wheeler and Paul Curtis, spoke briefly and greeted the congregation. There was a skit with “RVer the Robot” played by Gerry Petite (who was inside the robot) and Emily Collins (who was the voice of the robot). Several of the MAPS RVers were in attendance and we made it a point to publicly thank them for their sacrifice. There was special music by several people in the congregation. Arden Adamson, our district superintendent, gave the message. And finally Johnny Johnson and Grant Gonyo led the congregation in a prayer of dedication. Even though it was unseasonably hot that weekend, it was a wonderful time. 

Farewell 

After the dedication of the new facilities we had a season of “growing pains.” But what church doesn’t that wants to move forward with the Lord? Even the first century church had their growing pains (as is recorded in the Book of Acts – read especially chapter 6). At the very outset of the building project new people came in and people were saved and filled with the Holy Spirit and healed and encouraged. At the end of April in 2007 my wife and I resigned the church at Hawthorne. It was a very difficult and heart-wrenching decision, but it seemed that the Lord was leading us on to some other avenue of ministry. Perhaps some will disagree, but it seems as though at times the Lord leads pastors to a congregation for just a season. My primary ministry is in the area of intercessory prayer. It is what the Lord has called me to do. And so it seems as though the Lord took this balding, city dwelling Viking fan and planted he and his wife at Hawthorne Assembly of God for a decade long season to help the congregation through a building project and to help them grow in the realm of prayer. I don’t in anyway want to discount the labor and sacrifice that the people at Hawthorne showed in putting up their new facility. But what was accomplished on that hilltop at 6366 South County Road E was a direct result of intercessory prayer. 

Before God’s kingdom can be advanced, the kingdom of Satan has to be destroyed! And that destruction takes place when we get on our knees and begin interceding. God has not called us to practice “détente.” He has called His church to be a place of prayer for all the nations where the power of Satan can be thwarted and the presence of the Jesus can bring healing to hurting and dying people. The congregation at Hawthorne is now pastored by Gary and Cheryl Bell, a wonderful couple that will lead the church into the next phase. May the Lord richly bless them and the congregation, and may a mighty torrent of God’s blessings flow out of that church to touch hurting people in their portion of Douglas County. 

I close with the lyrics from the song “No Higher Calling” by Lenny LeBlanc & Greg Gulley: 

 Down at Your feet, oh Lord, is the most high place, 

 In Your presence, Lord, I seek Your face, 

 I seek Your face, 

 

 Chorus:

 There is no higher calling, no greater honor 

 Than to bow and kneel before Your throne,

 I’m amazed at Your glory, embraced by Your mercy, 

 Oh Lord, I live to worship You 

 Down at your feet, oh Lord, is the most high place, 

 In Your presence, Lord, we seek Your face, We seek Your face

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Secret Place

 A preacher I once heard said this, “A Christian needs three things for a successful prayer life: a quiet heart, a quiet hour and a quiet place.” And sometimes in the busy affairs of everyday life it’s hard to find a “secret place” where it’s just you and God.

And sometimes that search can even get a little comical.

When I was at Fort Carson, Colorado and a fairly new Christian, I wanted to find a place to pray during some down time in my military police academy training.  I thought, well, what better place than the post chapel.  I stopped in and asked if they had a place that I could spend some time in prayer.  By the look on their faces, I could tell that they had never had that question before and they pointed to a place on the other side of a folding dividing wall.  I found a chair to kneel at and commenced to quietly communicate with my heavenly Father.  At one point I could hear one of the chapel staff say to another soldier in hushed tones, “There’s a guy over there…and HE’S PRAYING!!! Can you believe that???”  (I added the last “Can you believe that?” phrase…but that’s how it seems it should have ended.)

After our first daughter was born, we attended a small Bible College in Ellendale, North Dakota. Raising a family and renting a small house meant that there wasn’t much opportunity at home to find a place to pray, so at times I would take the car out into the country to seek the Lord. Sometimes I spent the hour walking and praying in a cemetery (only during the day of course – and not in the winter). Sometimes I walked down a railroad track next to the cemetery about a quarter of a mile and spent the time seeking the Lord under the train trestle. One time while doing this I turned around and there was a little old lady standing directly behind me! Scared me half to death! She said she was looking for wild asparagus. I wanted to blurt out that I was looking for wild broccoli (she’d never believe I was “praying”). I never saw her walking to my railroad bridge secret place, and come to think of it, I never saw her leave. So I figured she must have been some sort of asparagus angel.

After I became an official pastor, I obviously had to become more professional in my approach to finding a secret place. We lived right behind the church (a converted barn) in a small town in southwestern North Dakota. I usually went to the church at 5:00 am to pray for a couple of hours. And it was always just me and the Lord. But one morning when it was really quiet and really dark, suddenly I saw the image of a hand slowly reach between the two sanctuary doors. I was paralyzed with fear – my knees were almost knocking together. Was this Daniel chapter 5 all over again??? (“Suddenly the fingers of a human hand emerged…then the king’s face became pale and his thoughts alarmed him, and his hip joints loosened and his knees began knocking together.” Daniel 5:5-6). Fortunately for me, it turned out to be one of the church members who decided to join me for prayer (and scare me half to death).

When I attended church conferences in the city of Bismarck, I would sometimes leave the motel quite early and go to the cemetery just down the highway to pray. On one occasion, after praying for an hour or so, when I went to start the car, the battery was dead (go figure). Now what? Fortunately for me, someone had recently passed from this world into the next and a couple of workers were preparing for a funeral, so I asked them if they could provide a jump. They brought over the cables, hooked it up, and hollered, “CLEAR!” (Not really, but that would have been funny. Or I could have hollered in my best Dr. Frankenstein imitation, “He’s ALIVE!).

Another time the battery died after I had been praying for a while in a park in Fargo, North Dakota (I must not have been able to find a cemetery). We were visiting my wife’s parents for the holidays. It was 7:00 on Christmas morning and it was zero degrees outside. I saw lights come on in a house not too far away so I knocked on the door. I wanted to say, “Ho Ho Ho – do you have any jumper cables?” The man of the house kept looking over my shoulder as though he was expecting Rudolph to jump out of the bushes and take all of their Christmas gifts.

When my wife and I and two daughters visited my family, it also proved difficult finding a place to pray. It says in Matthew 6:6 that you should “enter your closet and pray.” So on this occasion, I went into a real closet – an upstairs linen closet outside of the bedroom that our daughters slept in. It was just big enough for me to squeeze into. I can’t remember how long I had been praying…it probably wasn’t too long as my claustrophobia was kicking in. I heard my sister come up the stairs and ask my wife, “Where’s Danny?” My wife pointed to the linen closet. The door opened slowly and I almost fell out. My sister looked down at me with a disdainful look that said, “This is my college educated brother?”

And one other highlight on this journey to finding a secret place. It was the summer of 1988 and my family and I were going to candidate for a church in Florence, Colorado. We spent the night in Cheyenne, Wyoming. In the morning I left the motel early and drove our Plymouth Horizon to what I thought was going to be a pretty secluded spot in the country.

It wasn’t.  It was the intersection of a couple of highways where the morning going-to-work traffic streamed into Cheyenne.

I reclined the driver’s seat and was praying pretty fervently (if I remember correctly, I was praying somewhat loudly in my “heavenly prayer language”). Suddenly there was a tap-tap on the window. It was the Sheriff! I rolled the window down and said, “Hello Officer.”

She asked what I was doing.

I said I was praying. I didn’t tell her that I was praying in a language that I had never learned and that may not be known on earth but that the Holy Spirit had supernaturally given it to me as a gift to communicate with my unseen Heavenly Father in an unfettered way. 

If I had, I might still be in jail.

“Riiiiiiiiigggggghhhhhtttttttttt. Can I see your driver’s license?”

I gave it to her and she went back to her patrol car. She and her partner were in there for quite a while. I figured they were asking headquarters to check their wanted posters for anyone matching my description.

They let me go. Good thing. If they had arrested me and taken me to jail, how would I explain that to my wife?

“Honey, you’ll never guess where my secret place is today…no, not a cemetery…IT’S A JAIL!”