Leonard’s Books, God’s Business

 

My personal Bible

“God wants to bless your business.” 

     ~A pastor at Calvary Chapel Senior Pastors Conference, 2005.

The Prophecy

In 2005, we were struggling to make ends meet – we really were. But we trusted God for the funds to fly Eric to California to attend the Calvary Chapel Senior Pastors Conference in Costa Mesa with Pastor Joe. We knew it was important for him to go there and keep in touch with other pastors, so we put the amount on the credit card and prayed, and he was on his way. 

Without Eric at home, I would heroically try to hold down the fort with his bookselling business, continue to homeschool our six kids and run the household, and talk with him on the phone every evening to touch base. One such evening, we were talking about our experiences of the day and I told him ecstatically about my find at the grocery store. I had just bought five ten-pound bags of chicken parts at $1.98 cents per bag. And while I babbled on about God’s provision for our family and what I could do with 50 pounds of chicken for Chris’s graduation open house, Eric listened and understood my excitement. 

When he got off the phone, he noticed someone standing nearby who had heard part of the conversation.  Eric explained how God had blessed us with the cheap chicken. That fellow attendee was excited to hear it – so excited that he reached into his wallet and added $200 to the blessing. He said God had told him to give this to somebody. Then after Eric got home, there was another check for $500 from his sister, who also had received instructions from God to bless us. That combination covered all our conference expenses, with an excess of about fifty cents. 

But unlike the conferences and annual get-togethers of many denominations, Calvary Chapel pastors did not gather to vote on the issues of the day or issues of church polity. Rather, they gathered for a booster shot of The Word of God, encouragement from other pastors, workshops and worship, and time alone with The Father, away from the hubbub and the daily responsibilities of running a church.

During the conference, Eric got to counsel with another pastor about our newish church, that was pretty small but we hoped it would grow. Then he explained that our business wasn’t really paying enough to make ends meet, but we were thinking about closing down the book sales and perhaps doing bookbinding instead. The other pastor looked thoughtful for a bit and told Eric about his own struggles during the early part of his ministry, feeling like a failure as his wife and family sat in the car to keep warm in the winter because the gas had been shut off in his house. Then he stopped abruptly and said he believed he had a word from the Lord. 

Eric waited to hear what the Lord wanted to say, expecting it to be about our church, since this was a pastors conference of course. Instead, the pastor said, “I believe the Lord is going to bless your business.” A few days after Eric returned from the conference, there was a check in the mail from this pastor, for $1000, for us to invest in our business. That was rather like “putting his money where his mouth is.”

How We Got Started

Back in 1999, our antiques business went online, one of the first businesses in Lafayette to do so. A good friend who was a web developer convinced me that the future belonged to businesses who had websites. She gave me some simple instruction and taught me how to do it myself. You can see how it looked here. I can tell you we never once sold any antiques that way, but we had some people who read our “Antiquer’s Apprentice” posts.

As I related in a previous post, it wasn’t long before Eric had turned his dad’s store into mostly a bookstore along with a whole slew of consignments, and then during 2001, we moved all the books to our new garage (the old Burrows fire station) and sold them out of our home. Shortly after 9/11, in 2001, we announced we had transitioned to all books. But we never had quite enough income. I tried this job and that job, trying to boost our income, but nothing ever worked quite enough to feed the family and keep us afloat. By 2003, we had an online bookstore with categories, built by Chrislands, but still linked from our main website.

Eric had a little side interest in fixing books that had been growing over the years, originally born in 1982, from an attempt on my part to rescue a very ratty old copy of The Prince and the Pauper that was found in a basement. I think it belonged to a relative, but I couldn’t tell you who that might have been. The paper was weak and the pages were pink and purple with mildew and half-eaten by worms. The cover was nonexistent. But I thought it was neat because it was SO OLD! So I had put a wood grain contact paper on it to keep it together. Eric tried doing something with it, based on his discoveries of how a book must be put together, after he’d taken one apart. It looked better, but in the end, he was able to locate another copy of it to replace mine.

As he learned more about book repair and restoration and located some tools and materials, he did some jobs for others, especially two people who bartered with him. He gave them bookbinding credit when they located books on the used market for him that he could sell. The more he did those jobs, the nicer the books looked. I thought, this looks like it could be a good money-maker! 

But Eric didn’t think so yet. By the time of the pastors conference in 2005, we were describing “Leonard’s Book Restoration'' on our website, and advertising that we had over 7,000 books for sale at our other website. But we were still only doing only about two bookbinding projects a week. At least, earned income credit always gave us a sizable tax refund, so we looked forward to tax season.

He did do about a million sets of Grant’s Memoirs in full leather for a regular customer and sometimes he also fixed people’s Bibles. It just wasn’t very easy to do Bibles, because people wanted their Bibles to be flexible, and they required something different.

In 2006, we had a call from Liz and Jason, long-time homeschooling friends who needed a place to stay. They had recently been married but were homeless, Jason was ill, Liz was pregnant, and it was winter. Well, we had all our rooms full, but we found space for them on two feather ticks in a sunroom that had been built between our house and the old summer kitchen, which had been remodeled by Liz’s older brothers.

This was tough because by that time, we were on food stamps. We weren’t supposed to be sharing our food stamps with someone else, so Liz and Jason had to also file for food stamps.

And then the letter came. Twice a year, we had to be re-evaluated for food stamps, and we didn’t think anything of it, but this time, things were different. Because we had bought the fire station when Eric’s mom died, we actually owned it. It housed all our books, and it was how we made our living. But now we were told that because we outright owned the $6,000 property, we no longer qualified for food stamps. This was serious. So now what?

We had an emergency family meeting, along with Liz and Jason, who needed to know the situation. And we lifted the need to the Lord in prayer. Then, we sprang into action.

First, I picked up some new WYSIWYG software (What You See Is What You Get – pronounced “wizzy-wig”) and updated our website to something more modern (and busy!). And then I spent every night working on that website, and after that, promoting it. I built links everywhere. I found out where we had competitors and how they advertised, and then I did it too. I joined web directories, web rings, and bulletin boards. I got spots on publishers’ websites and databases of bookbinders in practice. When I say every night, I mean that I was up all night long, surfing the web and building our business. My goal was to get ten quote requests per day for Eric, and I found a free counter to put at the bottom of the home page to show how popular our site was.

We tackled the problem of Bible flexibility, as we realized how profitable that market could be. And when we understood that the combination of the right leather, the right glue, and the right inner lining worked for flexibility, we knew we had a good product – flexible, durable, and good looking.

Meanwhile, the others had jobs. Chris, Susie, Robyn, and Valerie all were recruited to be apprentices in the shop. Even David was able to put away the type after we used it for imprinting.

Hmmmm ... I wonder what this one is!

I grabbed Vivian, who was on track to being 9 years old that year, and gave her the job of cooking dinner for all of us every night. I didn’t do much homeschooling, but it was a crash course in Work Experience for a month. 

Liz and Jason were watching how trusting the Lord in a time of crisis worked, and I got to bring them to doctor appointments, where Jason was being evaluated to find out why he was fainting and hallucinating. They moved out before Micah was born, but that was good. We didn’t really have a good setup for a baby at that time. 

Eric was running the shop out in the garage next to the for-sale books, and also running the church. We did start to get lots of inquiries, and finally I realized that this was actually what I should have been doing all along. This was no longer a case of “Eric’s business.” It was “our business,” and when we were doing things together as a couple, or as a family, things worked out far better.

I did try to keep up with the website and improve upon it from time to time, but what I needed to do first was “move in.” Eric had taken the remodeled summer kitchen from me when he moved home in 2001, so I needed to reclaim it. He had a small rope edge desk with a desktop computer perched precariously on it, along with lots of papers and things that looked like they were going to fall off and often did.

We took a trip to Staples and I told him we had to have that computer desk – that one right there! Sure it was just particle board, but it was a good start. After a little organizing and rearranging, and a real office chair, I chased Eric out and became his office worker, answering all his emails and keeping things organized. I did away with his scribbled, barely decipherable sales books and bought Quickbooks for the computer.

The kids, as family employees, benefitted from both an increase in family income, and having some spending money of their own. We settled down into a “working after school” routine, which worked for a good long time, as long as we still had homeschool students in the house. After a while it was clear we’d need to hire some non-family employees too. We even thought about building a new bookbinding facility in the backyard, but we ended up buying the trailer on an adjoining property that we used as an annex, and a house a block and a half away where we consolidated our shop.

Today, Leonard’s Book Restoration is very well-known, and the prophecy from the Pastors Conference was right. Our website is very visible since it’s been there so long. We’ve had up to 16 or so employees at one time, including some grandkids, though now we can’t really do that with social distancing.  Jason’s health is much better now, he and Liz have three kids, they both returned as faithful employees of Leonard’s, and Micah is also a homeschooled apprentice.

Our shipping department sends out around 200 books and Bibles a month. It seems a little strange to have such a booming business in Burrows, as Eric and I work out of the back of our house and the rest of our employees work in another house a block and a half away, zoned for business. We are the only employer here in the town besides the post office, and we’re surrounded by corn and beanfields in a county that has 75 hogs to each human being. 

It’s truly the Lord’s business. We have been able to bless many, many missionaries, pastors, and teachers over the years. Some of their stories have been downright inspiring. Eric kept a map in the hallway and put a red dot where our customers were from. He stopped last year when we were having unusual situations because of Covid and could no longer have school tour groups coming through nor meet with customers indoors. But by that time, most of North America was already red anyway.

The Lord’s Business

But what does it mean, when I say this is the Lord’s business? Here are some possibilities. 

Is it because it was prophesied that the Lord would bless our business?

Is it because it is owned and operated by a Christian family?

Is it because we just do Bibles and never do Books of Mormon or Harry Potter or Stephen King?

Is it because we force our employees to attend company sponsored Bible studies or attend our church?

Is it because we keep our prices low so common people can afford to keep their Bible intact?

Is it because we tithe on our income or close on Sundays to go to church?

Is it because we do our best to be kind to our customers and not call down fire from Heaven on them when they are difficult?

Most of these things are actually true about our company and our policy. The one about the Bible studies isn’t true. Actually, our employees all do go to church, but they are a diverse lot! We do have to turn down work from time to time because it is objectionable material, like a disgusting lewd book somebody wrote about sex and the Bible, or a book someone’s white supremacist ancestor wrote about how the Negro race was only a half-step up from the apes – you could tell by the shape of their heads!

But there are business owners who happen to be Christians, and businesses that cater to Christians but whose owners aren’t even saved. And then there are Christian business owners who have dedicated their businesses to the Lord. That’s where we fit in. We’re more like the Apostle Paul who made tents with Aquila and Priscilla, or like Mike Lindell and My Pillow. 

 In fact, when the sledge hammer that was Obergefell fell upon America, and suddenly, it was decreed by a few people in black robes in Washington D.C. that for all of America, it was legal and proper to marry someone who was the same sex as yourself, we put a statement on our Facebook page to clarify that because of that ruling, we would no longer put two names on a Bible. There were … some heated discussions on our Facebook page, one of our previous customers told the world that they threw away a leather Bible we had rebound for them because they could no longer stand to look at it, and as a result, our business increased so much that we couldn’t keep up very well.

America is looking for businesses run by people with courage and conviction to patronize. If you are selling food, it would be silly to chase off customers and say that because of their lifestyle, you can’t sell them food. In fact, the more you can minister to lost souls, the better.

But as Christians who run a business that is the Lord’s, we realize that He is ultimately the Boss, not we ourselves, not the Government, and not even the Customer. And if He is the Boss, then, we are His servants.  We need to treat both our customers and our employees right.  Decision making needs to be by The Book. The spirit of the business is Wisdom from above. 

Will we rebind Bibles that belong to homosexuals? Absolutely! Will we rebind a Bible in Joseph Smith’s “Inspired Version,” putting “HOLY BIBLE” at the top of the spine? Absolutely not! 

Will we refuse to pay withholding taxes to the government? No. Will we hire unbelievers who regularly blaspheme God’s name? Nope.

Do we rebind books other than Bibles? Yes, if we are okay with the content. Do we also see our business as a mission field! You bet! That’s why we put tracts in every shipment.

Sometimes we have an opportunity to pray with a customer. One time, before Covid, Chris had the rest of the shop workers gather with him around someone who had been diagnosed with cancer. Maybe a year later, that customer came back, specifically to tell us that he had been healed.

And sometimes, one of our customers will pray for us, sometimes when we least expect it. We keep the communication lines open with God at Leonard’s. That is critical. 

Do you own a business? Are you wondering how you can practically use these principles in a different type of business model? How can you make your business, the Lord’s business? That, my friend, must be settled in your heart, by the leading and guidance of the Holy Spirit. And then, when you pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” you can be sure that He is listening.

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.”

~James 1:5

“Lord, I pray for those who may be reading this post and wondering how they can have a business that is Yours. I join with them now in asking for inspiration, wisdom, and guidance. Because they are looking to You in faith, reward them openly with the answers they need.  In the Name of Jesus we pray, Amen.” 

The Need for Correction: In The Body, and In The Body of Christ

The need for correction is a fact of life.  If you’ve ever seen Fozzie Bear steering a car back and forth to the rhythm of a song and wondered how he ever got a driver’s license with the extent of his over-correction, keep in mind, Fozzie is a puppet. The rest of us need to stay in our lane and try to navigate life without the need for bumpers on either side of us.  It still doesn’t always happen.  That’s why there are rumble strips.

Me and Rennie.  I have no idea where this was,

but I was steering like my life depended upon it.

In the Body ...

When I was four, my mother had already taught me how to read, and then I entered kindergarten. It was a good thing I knew how to read because if I had been waiting to learn that in school, I would have lagged behind the others. I couldn’t see the chalkboard. When Mrs. Kilker noticed me squinting and not paying any attention to the chalkboard, she mentioned that to my mom and soon I got my first pair of glasses.

Me in Kindergarten with my new glasses.

This was a day of great joy! What I remember is a real live “I once was blind but now I see” moment. All the way home from the optometrist’s, I read the road signs aloud to my mom. I hadn’t noticed that there even were signs with words till then. And I marveled when my new eyes showed me that trees had individual leaves, not just a green blob at the top. With my vision corrected, the world suddenly had detail, and I reveled in it.

In my sophomore year of high school I tried contact lenses, the old hard kind. My optometrist told my mom that I would do better with them than with glasses, which had already progressed to bifocals. For the most part, the contacts did well, but there were a few problems with them. One was that we lived in Arizona at the time, and if you’ve ever been in a dust storm, you may know what it’s like to get that dust in your eyes. If it gets in your eyes while you’re wearing contacts, it’s excruciating.

Another problem was that sometimes I just didn’t follow the rules. After awhile, I started cleaning them by putting them in my mouth. Fortunately, I didn’t swallow them or end up with an infection in my eyes from that. But I did have a few times that I lost one – once in the long, tough grass outside my drama classroom in Arizona; once in the bellows of my accordion while I was playing a song at the base chapel at Lackland AFB during Basic Training; and once at the bottom of a swimming pool. (Can you believe someone actually found the one at the bottom of the swimming pool?)

I broke one in half the day before Eric came to pick me up from Sheppard AFB after tech school to take me to California for our wedding, when I was showing my classmates how flexible they were. The good thing is, I was able to get new ones made extra fast by contacting my optometrist, and I had new contacts just before the wedding. My new government issue Air Force glasses were black plastic and pretty ugly, so they wouldn’t have been very nice with my wedding dress!

And I fell asleep with my contacts still in, a couple of days after Lisa was born at Chanute AFB in Illinois, and woke up with corneal abrasions in both eyes. That was solved with eye pads made from cut-up sanitary napkins taped to my face until my eyes healed. It was pretty interesting having a newborn baby and at the same time being blind and transported everywhere in a wheelchair! And the pain? I can’t remember deciding whether childbirth or corneal abrasions were more painful, but they were pretty close.

In fifth grade, another part of my body needed correction – my buck teeth. A couple of my baby teeth were pulled early and then when the adult teeth came in, they were pulled too. That made more room in my mouth, and a face bow I wore at night pushed my top incisors back in and closer together. My mouth throbbed with the pain, I couldn’t sleep well at night with the pressure on the wire from sleeping on my side pushing even more on my teeth, and my teeth felt all wobbly, but eventually the pain subsided as the teeth moved. Then the dentist would tighten things up all over again.

A few years later, a new dentist asked why I had metal rings around my back teeth and I told him about my face bow. He took them off. Mission accomplished! He wanted to talk about my bottom teeth, to which suggestion my mom blanched and related that we had already spent quite enough on my teeth.

But those bottom teeth were overcrowded too, and flossing was difficult, so I just didn’t always do it. A few years ago, my bottom incisors started loosening up, and that was actually cause for concern. When you’re in your 60s, you don’t just lose teeth and donate them to the Tooth Fairy. I didn’t want to look like Duane! I asked my dentist what causes that, and he said, rather sternly for my good-natured dentist: “Well, neglect!” 

My dentist referred me to a periodontist, and the perio recommended a four-step plan for my mouth, which included some oral surgery, where he would peel off some skin from the roof of my mouth and sew it into place around my bottom incisors where the gums had receded. That would mature and take the place of my gum loss and help me not to lose my bottom teeth.

This was indeed what I needed, but unfortunately, he wasn’t licensed to be able to put me to sleep. I had to have this surgery with just a local anesthesia to numb the pain. Foolishly, I watched the whole thing from the chair, wide-eyed, from the dental assistant looking into my mouth from various angles to see if it was time to suck up my blood, to the doctor with the scalpel and the needle and thread. The thread seemed really long, and as it was pulled up past my line of vision, it was bright red with blood. Oral surgery with your eyes open is not for the faint-hearted. And nobody wanted me to post “after” pics on Facebook, either, so all that experience and money spent seemed to be for nothing. Nobody wanted to hear about it!

The instructions were to go home and eat nothing solid for a certain number of days. I went home. But of all days to be tempted with mini-wheats, it was that day. I thought I would just hold one in my mouth until it was soggy, and then it would be soft … The suture snapped, and my new skin graft sagged. I thought I could just hold the skin in place for a month or something, and it would stick, but that didn’t happen. For the most part, the operation was a success, but I didn’t follow the instructions, and there were consequences. You can still see too much of the roots of my incisors. But I haven’t lost them.

I have three takeaways from these body correction experiences: One, correction usually hurts. Two, there are rules. There are always rules. Don’t break them! And three, it’s worth the trouble.

Even Eric has related that his hearing aids (new in 2020) have helped him to hear sounds he hasn’t heard in decades – like birds singing and a creek gurgling, not to mention the fact that he can hear me better! But they amplify the train honking through Burrows if we happen to be walking close to the tracks at that time and the pain is excruciating. And sometimes his ears feel sore from the rubbing. 

Sometimes the correction hurts, but it’s worth it.

… And in the Body of Christ

If you read a biography of Pastor Chuck Smith, founder of the Calvary Chapel movement, you find that he was “supposed” to be a doctor. He was already headed in that direction. But God changed his mind when he realized that you could save a man’s life as a doctor, but eventually he would still die. If you were a pastor, you could preach the Gospel, which would save a man’s soul for all of eternity.

But salvation is not all there is to the Christian life, else, as I’ve heard it said, you could simply baptize a new convert and leave them under for a little longer so they could go straight to Heaven. Instead, we all have a journey ahead of us, and we sometimes need correction.

Vivian and Andrew got me a shirt for Christmas this year, that says, “Church Raised, Full of Praise.”

Yes, that is true on both counts. Some of my Sunday School experiences were better than others. It depended on the church. Some teachings were a little watered down, and others were right on target. But there’s a description of the Good Shepherd (the Lord) in Psalm 23 that speaks of His rod and His staff. The rod is for prodding us (the sheep) in the right direction – for getting us back on track. The staff, with the hook at the end, is for dragging the sheep back from danger, and he also takes a whack at a wolf with the other end now and then. Jesus must correct us when we get off track. Going to church and hearing the Word of God are good for two things we don’t like to think about: reproof and correction.

Have you ever thought of church as a correctional facility? Or does it seem more like entertainment? I believe we in the U.S. have come to view church as a commodity or a product that we can choose over another similar one according to our individual tastes. But what if the church was meant to correct us, to lead us back to the straight and narrow?

During the days of Calvary Chapel Carroll County, we held parenting classes called “Parenting is Heart Work.” The course dealt with proactively training a child away from his or her rebellious tendencies and setting them back on the straight path, along with teaching the parents how to Biblically connect with their children. There are some basic behaviors that need to be instilled in a child, and without them, parenting is chaos. The very first one was the “come when called” rule. That one literally saves lives, as the commanding voice of the parent stops a child in his tracks at the very edge of the cliff. 

Another good one was “three questions and a statement.” That one was about the parent inquiring after the facts of the case in a conflict, and then encouraging better behavior. It gave the child the tools with which he could actually mull over a situation and learn to apologize – a skill in short supply these days.

The Three Questions:

1. What did you do wrong?

2. Why was it wrong?

3. What could you do better?

The Statement:

1. Go and do better now. (Very close to Jesus’ “Go and sin no more.”)

I can tell you that I have used a form of that technique with people I’ve counseled. It often comes in handy, in recounting the facts of the case and seeing where the problem is. If “Why was it wrong?” has an answer clearly spelled out in the Scriptures, then the Scriptures themselves are doing the correcting.

“But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 

 ~2 Tim: 3:14-17

We might wish for our Bible reading time or our church services to just be about doctrine, nothing personal. When it comes down to correction, well, that hurts! It means I need to follow the rules. It means I might get yelled at like the Basic Training Instructor did at Lackland. It means the Good Shepherd may need to yank me back in line. It also means I may need to modify my behavior, and I may even need to apologize.

Here’s what I mean. In the early days of Calvary Chapel Lafayette, back in the early 90s, our church met at the YMCA. That was handy when we needed a swimming pool for baptisms, but it was awfully hot in the summer where we met, especially for the Sunday evening service. One very hot summer day, I was very sweaty and wanted to wear as little as possible. So I put on my shorts and we went to church. I think Eric had questioned whether that was a good idea, but hey, I always had good ideas! 

Well, our pastor thought there should have been more material used in the making of my shorts and he came up from behind me, strongly recommending that I go home and change. Through my furious tears, I ranted to Eric about how humiliated I was and we sat in the car while I fumed for a while. We threatened to leave the church and shot a few rounds of “Who does he think he is!?” Finally, we pulled out of the parking lot and went home, knowing the service would be over by the time we got back. Yes, my attitude was quite bad, which was far worse than my clothing. I don’t think I ever apologized, or if I did it was twenty years later or something. But I did come around, we didn’t leave the church, and I didn’t wear those shorts much anymore. Yeah, they had too little material.

This had been a problem with me for a while. I have a picture of myself with Jack, a clarinet player in California Calvary Youth Band. He must have been twice as tall as I was, or at least he weighed twice as much, and we went to a Valentine Dance together. They were holding pretend “weddings” with the drum instructor “marrying” members of the band. Jack paid the fee, picked me up rather unceremoniously, and kissed the bride. I was mortified because he had exposed what was under my short dress, and I immediately demanded a “divorce.”

Fast forward to The Well. One night, there was a grandma of one of the young ladies, who approached me and said, “I just had a talk with that girl over there. My! The clothes they wear are so indecent these days! I know you’re busy ministering, but if you don’t mind, I’m going to watch for indecent clothing and send some girls back to their homes to change.” I admired her spunk and appreciated the offer. Yes, modesty was a problem, but I had been too timid to say anything until the grandma pointed it out. 

How can I get the truth across to young ladies who are oblivious as to why the guys are grinning at them? Girls, most of those guys are not thinking about how pretty your eyes or your hair or your fingernails are. And they are not thinking about how much they would like to marry you and love you as Christ loved the Church. Unfortunately, most of them are undressing you in their mind’s eye, and if you give them a head start, it’s easier to do.

So why do we parents and grandparents wait to say something? It’s likely the fear that they will take it wrong – like I did. It’s fear that they will hate us for saying it. Yes, of course they won’t like it, but like glasses and braces, correction is worth it!

Jesus said: 

“Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him.” 

     ~Luke 17:3

That is followed by the famous seventy-times-seven passage. Yes, we are supposed to forgive, but we are also supposed to rebuke (reprove) if we see someone in sin.

“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession… Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Church discipline is something that usually happens in the background and most church members are oblivious about what is happening.  God meant for most of the correction to happen by approaching an individual one-on-one, talking lovingly and warning them about the danger.  Gradually, as the one in sin refuses correction and hardens his heart, the correction becomes more public, and then excommunication is the last straw.  Always, future repentance can lead to restoration.

Here are three cases of people engaged in the sin of living with their girlfriend before marriage that I know about – only three out of many, actually. One had a leadership role in the church. He had to be confronted according to church discipline rules. When he was, he did the right thing: he married his girlfriend.

The second was confronted and was angry for a while, and then he did the right thing and the girlfriend moved out. Then they went through premarital counseling and got married in the church.  They now have a beautiful, committed marriage and several kids.

The third, being confronted, was angry and left the church, getting married within a week by the Justice of the Peace instead of going through counseling and having a church wedding. It wasn’t long before this marriage ended in divorce. Now, he’s remarried, finally having done it right, and he and his new wife have a committed marriage and several kids (mostly from previous unions).

Once, near the end of the ministry of The Well, we confronted a teenage girl who was still hanging around when it was time to close. She wanted us to go ahead and lock up, and she said she would wait at the well-lighted corner at the stoplight till her mom would come pick her up. I … noticed her clothing.

“Do you know that you will look like you are selling yourself if you wait here on the corner, especially the way you’re dressed?” She got very angry that I would say such a thing, but it was a fair warning.

A couple of years later, I saw a picture of three single moms, sitting together on a bench, showing off their babies, and one was the same girl. Those were the same ones I’d been counseling – wear decent clothes, and don’t sell yourself. This greatly saddened me, but I had to tell myself that but for the grace of God, that could have been me.

As Pastor Don McClure counseled us when Eric and I were married, you can be a “secondary virgin,” if you’ve been involved in sexual sin. How do I know this? Think about The Woman at the Well. Think about Rahab. God cares about women who’ve been used by others and then thrown away.  Maybe you believe it was all your fault.  I can’t judge that, but God knows all of it already anyway.

And if you have felt the Lord speaking to you about any of these issues, especially sexual sin, now’s the time to confess the sin to the Lord and seek forgiveness. There’s nothing like having a clean slate, a clear conscience, and a new beginning.  Rahab, for instance, was a prostitute, a Canaanite slated for slaughter with the other residents of Jericho, for their idolatry.  But she had faith in the God of Israel, acted in faith to do something heroic, and ended up being King David’s grandmother and in the ancestry of Jesus Himself.

Confess your sin, turn away from it, and receive God’s forgiveness by faith. This correction may seem hard, and it may hurt, but it is so very much worth it! 

“Lord Jesus, I pray for those who may be reading this and understand for the first time that sexual activity before marriage is wrong and something that needs to be corrected.  I was there and I understand.  Hear their prayer, and forgive them.   Rescue them, Jesus, by Your atoning sacrifice on the cross.

For it is in Your Name we pray, Amen.”

A New Church: Calvary Chapel Carroll County and The Well

The next fifteen years after the commissioning ceremony were not what we expected, but they were what we needed. The word “minister” literally means “slave,” and Calvary Chapel pastors often joke around about calling their schools of ministry “Calvary Chapel School of Slavery.” There are aspects of ministry that seem very hard, and a pastor must spend many hours in prayer in order to not lose focus. 

When viewing a congregation, whose sheep are they, anyway? They are not the pastor’s sheep – they are the Lord’s. A pastor is a slave, and his job is to feed the Master’s sheep. That may not seem to be a glamorous lifestyle, but when you embrace it, it is life-changing.

The first thing we did in terms of active outreach was to schedule a community memorial service in Burrows for the people who died on 9/11. That was the Sunday afternoon after the tragedy – September 16. We figured people would be home from church by then if they already had a church home, and if they didn’t, they would at least be awake.

We rented the new fire station, which had become the new community center, and we had a full house. We sang some songs and Eric spoke about the brave first responders and how sad it was for all of us that so many lives had been lost in the attack. He preached the Gospel of Christ and the need for forgiveness of sins, and we prayed. Then it was over, and we put all the chairs back in place. And we mentioned to anyone who cared, that we were a new church and would be there next Sunday in the same place.

It was a simple service, and our kids all helped one way or another. A fellow named Duane followed us home and knocked on the door. He was a crusty old Vietnam veteran with his two bottom incisors missing, but he liked our family a lot and he wanted to find out where we lived. So we invited him in.

I don’t remember where Duane lived at the time, but shortly after that, he moved in across the street from us in the little apartment in the back of the General Store. He was a lonely guy, and loved being around all the kids, so sometimes he just came over unannounced, just to talk. We kept an eye on him just in case it turned out he was secretly a pedophile or something, but he was safe. The most valuable thing he owned was a Marilyn Monroe pool cue, but he had great experience at sourcing dependable but inexpensive used vehicles for our family.

Sometimes Joanne joined us. She was an older mentally-challenged single adult who also loved kids and lived in a trailer behind our house with her older sister Betty. She had a bicycle and would follow the kids around Burrows wanting them to play with her. And they didn’t mind because everybody loved Joanne! We gave her coloring pages and word searches from the Sunday School classes.

Sometimes we had a couple of local kids come to our church, but it appeared that even if they really wanted to go to church with us, and sometimes they did, though their parents didn’t fully trust a church that met at a fire station. Sometimes we just had a service out in the yard and sang as loudly as we could. But we continued to rent that fire station so we could have services outside our home.  At least we did until the inability of the furnace there to keep up with the cold meant that we had a rather chilly Christmas pageant, especially those who were dressed as angels. (The angels wore coats that year.)

So later (since the fire station was so cold) we met in our living room. The parents of the kids’ friends must have thought that a real church was a large structure with stained glass windows. At least that was the impression we got, and we were pretty self-conscious that it was mostly just our family, meeting in our living room. 

We brought 14-year-old Chris to Calvary Chapel Lafayette on Saturday mornings, where Steve Goodrich, the main worship leader at the time, held a band practice each week. Chris would sit in the front row and watch, and try to mimic what he was seeing the band do, using his dad’s guitar. He learned some basic technique pretty quickly and kept copies of the songs he was learning. Steve helped him and answered his questions after the practice. And eventually, Duane bought him his first guitar.

But Chris was impatient for our little church to grow. On Sundays, he stood by the front door and the rest of us occupied every chair we had, in a circle around the room. Sometimes the kids groaned at being told they were supposed to stand to sing because “it’s just our house, not really church.” And once, Chris broke down in the middle of the worship time and told us that when he was 18, if our church didn’t grow, he was going to Calvary Lafayette. It was a challenge. We knew the kids missed their friends and so did we.  But we were there for a reason, and we needed to see this through.

Still, once a month, we would take our little congregation and visit another church, usually Calvary Lafayette, so that we could connect with the Body of Christ more, as we waited for God to grow our church. Once, we visited the Horizon church in Kokomo. This is a mostly biker church that was an offshoot of Horizon Fellowship in Indianapolis, which was a church plant from the San Diego Horizon, which was an affiliate of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. (That process, by the way, is how we ended up with so many Calvary Chapel churches in so short a time.) 

The Kokomo church’s pastor, Will Mills, had a long shaggy beard and worked in a factory during the week. He had to work there most Sundays, so he took his “lunch hour” to preach the sermon and then went back to work. His church was meeting in what used to be a bar where someone had been murdered, next door to a strip club (okay, a "Gentlemen's Club"). Some Sundays, half of that church would be missing, because they would all go on a ride with a non-Christian biker club, for the express purpose of meeting its members and being a witness. I’d never been to church with so much black leather and studs! But... they had people!

So it was hard for me not to be jealous when we saw people filing into church buildings on Sunday mornings. Even Burrows Presbyterian Church had several cars parked around it. And while we were still holding services in our home, another church sprang up in Burrows, which also started at the Fire Station, but quickly grew to the point where the pastor had a small building constructed in his backyard. We looked up Whirlwind International on the internet and found out they specialized in interpretive worship dancing with fancy flags. So… it was more exciting than our church, I guess. People who had turned us down were seen frequenting the new church, and I remember fighting back Envy, a very real temptation. 

Eric would tell people who asked, that we had a little church with nine members. That was the eight of us plus Duane. Calvary Chapel Outreach Ministries emailed back when I sent them a discouraged letter one time, and told us that “it takes time to prepare the fallow ground.”

Then *Philip found out about us (*not his real name). Philip had a girlfriend named Heidi and another friend named Sheila. Heidi was a gifted violinist, and Sheila was a young Methodist youth pastor. The three of them, plus Eric and me and our older kids, met together, earnestly prayed in the Spirit, and believed God for the new Calvary Chapel church in Carroll County to grow. 

We developed a strategy that involved Philip buying a particular rather rundown historical building located at one of the two stop lights in Delphi, on the courthouse square. In early 2003, Sheila’s youth group decided to come and lay hands on this three-story building and anoint it. So we believed it would eventually house our church on Sunday mornings, a coffeehouse ministry on Friday nights, a Calvary Radio station at the top, and Philip’s living quarters in the middle.

Philip set about making money, working for a Purdue professor we knew, as he developed a world-renowned computer model to measure the odor plume of hog farms. Yes, that was a smelly job! But he didn’t mind very much – he was sacrificing for the vision. Then, when one of our relatives died, we contributed a sizable chunk of money towards the purchase of the building, with the understanding that we could hold services and run the coffeehouse for about two years there without making any additional payments. That gave Philip enough cash to buy the building.

Val and Davy outside The Well

Heidi’s job was to schedule the bands, and Eric was the pastor in charge. The kids and I always came to sell snacks, talk with the customers, share the Gospel if it came up, and supervise things in general. It wasn’t till we actually had the ministry up and running that realized none of us could make coffee. But no matter – who actually needed coffee?

Chris and Susie at The Well

We began by meeting with area churches, to establish relationships with them, and to assure them that sending their youth to The Well on Friday nights would be a safe place for them. Even though this ministry met in what was our storefront church building, we told other pastors that if they sent workers into the field, too, they could share the Gospel with the teens who would come there to hear the bands, and then they could invite them to their church. Sheila’s Methodist youth group showed up pretty often to that end.

We heard that every time a Calvary Radio station began broadcasting in a community, people would hear teachings on the radio, become comfortable with the Calvary Chapel doctrine, and flock to the local church to hear more. We were convinced that if we were able to start a radio station, we would have a megachurch, and a real salary to go with it. Add that to all the young converts from The Well, and we were on our way!

We opened in August of 2003. And, our church did grow and expand some at this location. We had a Calvary Chapel neon dove logo made and put it in the window. 

The original neon dove still hangs in Eric’s office.

We had mostly teen girls after a while, and Duane was in seventh heaven. Many of those girls also came to our church because they had a crush on Chris, who was getting pretty good on the guitar. Chris and his sisters formed a band that played pretty often at The Well, that we named The Neon Dove.

Neon Dove promotional pic

There was real ministry happening on Friday nights, nobody doubted that. We stayed until everyone went home, but sometimes they didn’t go home. Sometimes people needed to talk. And we stayed and ministered, and people got saved. Some were hardened atheists and others had been into serious stuff like paganism – yes, there was a good sized pagan influence at Delphi High School. Sometimes the people who walked in for a soft drink and a band concert weren’t even teenagers! Those who were, usually graduated from high school and moved away, but some stuck with us. 

During that time, we applied for affiliation with Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, became a corporation and obtained our 501c3 non-profit status, and were running about 30-40 people on Sunday mornings. We had Passover Seders, Vacation Bible School during the summer, water bottle evangelistic outreaches during the Old Settler’s Festival in Delphi, a small choir, and Christmas programs. Our family sang for special occasions as Chris got better on guitar, Valerie played the djembe, and Heidi taught Susie how to play the violin. 

We were glad Eric had another job on the side so that we didn’t “have to” have older people with good jobs at our church, tithing. But it would have been nice! The books we sold in our business were never quite enough. We just kept praying God would multiply our church so we could live off that income. We did have some people who loved us who went to our church (when they weren’t being difficult) but we began to suffer from burnout. We never could understand why some people who lived in Delphi actually drove the distance to Calvary Chapel Lafayette rather than going to our church just down the street from their house.

Eric became more confident as a pastor-teacher and was soon ordained by Calvary Lafayette. And we went to the CC Pastors Conferences in October and felt more at home all the time. The Lord was growing us in ministry and in numbers, but not to the point where we could pay the pastor, and never enough to run a radio station.

After a couple years of non-stop ministry, we found that the Haley’s were the only ones who were coming to The Well to do that work. 

This is Eric and me, taking a break from the work.

Even Sheila and Heidi dropped off, and Philip was being difficult. Some locals were using our building to meet their contacts and deal in drugs. Some kids were telling their parents they were going to The Well, and then after they were dropped off, they would hang out on the street and get in trouble. We decided it was probably time to move on to another facility and disciple those we had won to the Lord more fully.

The last straw was when Philip got mad at us because our church, as his tenants, wrote stuff in sidewalk chalk around the building when we had a rummage sale, and then he told us we were not allowed to put a nativity set in the window because that was idolatry. It was time to go. God was moving us on to Phase II.

Looking back, we can see what could have appeared to be failure. We quit running The Well after only two years, and the police weren’t happy with us because we attracted certain elements of society that caused problems for them. But it was during this phase that we met dear people we never would have known otherwise. One was our granddaughter Rori’s mother, whom we met because she had dragged her sister in so we could talk her out of being a pagan. We are very good friends with this wayward sister now, and Rori is a huge blessing! Another was a young couple who really wanted to be involved in ministry, so we helped them get started in being trained in the Scriptures, ordained the husband, and sent them to Germany as missionaries.

“Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers through whom you believed, as the Lord gave to each one? I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.

“Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field...”

~1 Cor. 3:5-9

Do you believe in Divine Appointments? I do! Sometimes, when someone crosses our path, we are able to share the Gospel, lead them in the Sinner’s Prayer, and know they are truly saved. But usually, we are just called to plant a seed, or to water a seed someone else planted. The Lord gives the increase in His good time. We have had several occasions where someone, years later, told us that they were first introduced to the Gospel message at the Well, and now they were in ministry in another state, still serving the Lord. Or better yet, we would hear the news that a hardened atheist such as Ransom was, who harassed us each time he came to The Well, never could get the Gospel out of his mind, and finally received Christ later, as did his parents.

Me? I had to really understand passages in the Scripture that dealt with fellow leaders and churches, and realize we were not in competition – we were working towards the same end, the salvation of the World. I think I’m getting better at that. 

And I had to understand how much God loves people. People are not the problem. People are the mission.

Lord God, you have placed us on earth, planted us where we are, moved us from place to place as needed according to your Divine plan, and introduced us to people and circumstances that challenge us, grow us, and give us opportunities to serve. Let us never take that service lightly, for you are our Master, and Your will and Your plan are perfect, even if we are not. Use us as You will. Let us learn to say with conviction, “Here I am; send me!”

In Jesus’ Name, Amen