Part 1 of a few more to come.
Last Sunday June 30th, the family at LifeWay honored Patty and me for our 40th anniversary of being here at LifeWay/Palisades. As many of you know we were The Church at Palisades for 19 years, then LifeWay for the last 21 years. We came together with Calvary Community Church in 2003 and re-formed and moved forward as LifeWay. That too is a wonderful story that needs to be told sometime. But either way, we have been here on this soil… in this place… and in our home… and in this lovely Church family for now 40 years. Sunday was a fun reminder and an honoring moment of how Patty and I felt called and moved our 6-month-old son to be Church Planting Missionaries here from our birth home of Central Texas. Mike Lindholm (our Chairman of Elders) and I spent 3 ½ hours the other day just talking through the long story of the stages of church life over the 4 decades. Lots of wonderful victories, plenty of discouraging moments, and many seasons of not totally sure what we do next. But I will tell you this: through the lows and highs of it all, it has been one of the great honors of our lives to be part of this Church family. (This is NOT a goodbye note by the way! It’s just a way for me to remember how God has worked and who He has worked through).
In this newsletter today I not only wanted to say thank you to YOU here at LifeWay in 2024, but I wanted to do a little ‘thank you’ to many people in the past who have been part of shaping this church family over the many decades. I wanted to highlight as well as a few key churches and organizations that have helped shape us. Most of these names many of you will not know, but they were so important to the past that I wanted to honor them as well. But I also want to inspire you to consider how God works through you as well. I feel that I will almost certainly miss some important names… but I wanted these names to be part our LifeWay’s history:
- Bill and Gwen Arnold: My parents who helped shape my missions spirit. My father was a pastor and was my pastor growing up. He was also Patty’s pastor during her high school days long before we decided to date! My dad was a strong evangelist Pastor and community leader, and my mom was always a missions leader as well as a musician in our church. Dad passed away many years ago, but mom was in our services in June. But their influence of course has been huge for both of us. I had such a strong role model and a positive outlook on ministry because of both Dad and Mom.
- Glyn & Myra Lee Goff: Patty’s parents… my inlaws… who blessed us enormously by encouraging us and supporting us when we took their 6 month old grandson Brian all the way across the country to plant a church. They have been here over 70 times in the last 4 decades. Glyn passed away in 2023, but Myra Lee will be here with us this month for another of her 70+ visits!
- Mamie Arnold: My paternal grandmother. She was such a powerful influence on me in missions. It was her who used to highlight a church planter in Three Forks Montana and felt that this was such a pinnacle of faithfulness to God’s plan in missions. The last check my grandmother ever wrote was to this very young Palisades Church to help us in the early days of church planting. She passed in 1987.
- Olene Holleman: My maternal grandmother… a Sunday School teacher for 70+ years of her life came and led a conference for us back in the early years. I had her speak in our early church services of what it meant to keep serving Christ through the good years but also the difficult ones. Grandma was wonderful.
- Dr Larry Nixon: Larry was the Pastor/Mentor/Encourager for both Patty and I during our college and seminary days. We served with him twice… both at Calvary Baptist Church Waco and First Baptist Church Duncanville. I have never known a more encouraging and influential pastor who stood with us, guided us, and cheered us on to the NW more than Larry. It was Larry who guided Patty and I both into an understanding of church planting in places far outside the Bible belt. For many years he had been in California, but due to heart failure God led he and his wife Sonia to central Texas which is where our paths came together. He love us and we loved him. He passed away about 25 years ago now.
- First Baptist Church New Braunfels Texas. My Father Pastored this church for 2 decades, and this was the home church for both Patty and I. Many supporting members from this congregation and even a building team that came when we put the building together we have now back in the late 1980’s.
- Elmer and Quila Whiten: When I was at Baylor as a freshman I took on a role to serve for 10 weeks of the summer of 1976 in Portland Oregon downtown. I was part of a team of 8 college students that year and Elmer was my director/supervisor. That summer in Portland is what directed both our hearts to consider the NW somewhere. Elmer and Quila remained great friends until their passing many years ago.
- Calvary Baptist Church Waco Texas. We were in Youth Ministry during our Baylor years at this Church. It was such a great experience. Some good and godly members not only dreamed with us in the early years about what Church planting would be like, but many came to give assistance in those years. David and Gayle Lintz; EK and Fiery Warren; Dennis & Gayle Linam; Kaye Aldredge; Charles Thomas; Rex and Marilyn Whitaker – son Mark and daughter Lisa; just to name some.
- First Baptist Church Duncanville Texas: Larry Nixon pastored this church for years and this church rallied both financial support for 3 years (1984-1987) but also sent building teams to help us as well as leaders to support in the earliest days. I doubt if anyone from those days is still at that Church in Duncanville, but that congregations support in our history was critical. I thank God for them.
- Charles & Dorothy Jolly and the Puget Sound Baptist Association: When Larry Nixon encouraged Patty and I to prayerfully seek where God would have us go to plant a church, we made some appointments with various church leaders in the Northwest, which included the Puget Sound Baptist Association. In 1983 Charles Jolly was the director/coordinator of missions for this organization in the region. It was Charles that put Patty and I in his car on a mid-November day in 1983 to drive all over the Puget Sound to seek where God would open the door. Federal Way… and this property… was where a church had died… but the possibility of a start over was there. Charles & Dorothy for a time actually used this young church plant as their home church. They both have gone on to the Lord.
- Larry & Gwen Breeden: In 1985 this young family with then 2 children just moved to town and joined us. They were nothing but a God-sent family who loved missions and church planting and jumped in ministry with both feet. They were moved to Chicago in the business he was in around 1991, but their impact on our lives has continued and we are all still very close friends. PLUS — Larry felt called into full-time ministry in the Chicago area from the influences he had here. He has served in that church for 35+ years now (Christ Community Church in St Charles, Illinois) and just the other retired from that role.
- Allen & Jewel Davis: In 1988 this semi-retired couple from that owned a plumbing business from Tulsa Oklahoma heard about our church from some old friends of the Arnold family (another cool and long story). But they were tugged heavily from a missions study they did in their Sunday School class to devote themselves to Church planting and they literally moved here to help us secure a building permit and build the building that we now have. Allen was a Pearl Harbor WWII survivor as well. They spent in and out of 3 years here helping our young church get through the process, but also build this facility. They went on after they finished here (their first mission project) but then repeated this same thing many times around the USA and even some overseas as well. I can’t begin to describe how critical Allen and Jewel were to history of this church. And to top it off they were absolutely charming and funny people. They loved the Lord and they loved God’s Church. And Allen was masterful at telling stories from personal experience on December 7th 1941 from Pearl Harbor as well as his years in the Korean War conflict.
- Ed & Ruth Lynn Armstrong: From a tiny town outside of Waco, Texas this couple who were true blue builders had decided that they needed to be used by God to help build church buildings for young church plants outside of the Bible belt. Their calling to missions came out of an incredibly busy season of their life following a huge hurricane that had devastated the coast of Texas. A devastating hurricane had destroyed thousands of homes on the Texas cost. They worked 18 hours a day for over a year helping rebuild torn down structures for over a year. In exhaustion they just went home to rest and raise chickens on their farm. But then God intervened through their little country church. God spoke to them and told them to be on mission and help church planters build. I honestly can’t remember how they actually found us here, but they did. They moved to Federal Way, paid for their own apartment (like the Davis’s did) and literally built this building from concrete to roofing. They helped direct some building team volunteers as well. This building has the fingerprints of Ed and Ruth Lynn all over it. They have both passed on to the Lord but God used them well here for our church and community.
For my own benefit (and hopefully you gain from it as well) I will continue this list of thanks next week… because there are some important memories and people to highlight. Again… we give thanks to God for how He uses common people, and how He is also ready to use you and I.
Love you all. See you this coming Sunday. Happy 4th everyone.
