Last time we saw A Grand View Ahead at the Grandview St. building which we rented in 1988. It was a small church in Gig Harbor near Highway 16. We had made landfall as sailors say and the Lord put our light literally on a hill near the center of the harbor. What a blessing?
But, in 1995 the Grandview St. building suddenly sold and we had nowhere to go. Our men immediately had a prayer meeting to seek the Lord. During the first time of prayer I recalled a letter I had received months earlier offering a free portable building; I hunted it down in my stack of forgotten mail. I actually found it and saw it was sent by Harbor Covenant Church. So I checked it out. The elder I met said they also had a complete site across the street with a building too that was being listed for sale. There was not even a sale sign on it yet. We checked it out, had our regional home mission leaders inspect it, and within a week Larry Ellsworth and I had signed purchase papers. This was on our church’s 15th anniversary. We were buying our current 3.5 acre site. We soon sold the smaller site we owned nearby on Wollochet Dr. to help pay for the new larger site. Fortunately that smaller site had gone up in value substantially which helped pay down the new site. God was blessing providentially. Now we owned a more central site complete with a large house and a cute red barn. Barn? Yes a real barn!
Let me interject that back in the day most lighthouse stations had a barn due to their remote location. My station did also since it was on an island. The barn was key to survival since it housed an essential boat for transportation to the mainland and a place to keep feed for animals that it housed to produce food for the keepers. With that in mind our new church location had a barn also that would be a place for the feeding of our God’s sheep.
People were excited as we met briefly in the Fireside Room for a week or two then in the old red barn which we later painted a cream color. It originally had a dirt floor and had been used for farm equipment. When Harbor Covenant bought it they poured a concrete floor and installed carpet and sheet rock. It had a high ceiling which kept it cooler in summer.
It held about sixty people if they were packed in. Soon we had two morning services with Sunday School in between. Visitors would ask “Where is the church?” I would point out the barn and say, “Jesus was born in a barn so we don’t mind worshiping in one.” Most chuckled and got the point. It was so crowded at times there was barely room for the pulpit and piano up front against the wall. Sometimes I had to sit on the floor since every seat was full with worshipers.
The growing number of babies required us to add a small cry room on the side of the barn. Since there was no running water in this building the nearest bathroom was across the parking lot and in the house. We eventually set up a video feed to an old TV in what was formerly a butcher shop. That served as an overflow area and is where our current foyer is.
The church office was in the adjacent large tri-level house of roughly 3,000 sq. ft. It was complete with six extra rooms, a large fireside room, kitchen, and a large basement storage area; plenty of small class rooms, offices and so on. A building inspector told us it was the best built house he had seen except for the shake roof which leaked some. The original owner had milled some of the wood for it to full dimensions and from the site.
VBS was easy here with the large grass area outside. Closing program’s were on the back deck pf the house with a popular free BBQ following. But Awana was hard to do in this configuration of buildings.
Meanwhile back at the newly painted barn things were bursting. Often some of our flock had to watch the service from the two small back windows. It was sort of like early Livestream. Due to rain we eventually replaced the roof and entry awning with a much larger one.
MIssions was on our mind then also. In 1995 we sent Mary Amesbury to eastern Russian as a full time missionary with Baptist Mid-Missions. It was exciting to see her as an outreach of Discovery to that part of the world that had recently opened up. Today she continues to be an outreach of DBC to a college campus in the Cleveland, OH thru Campus Bible Fellowship.
The idea for our first Living Nativity came in 1998 after seeing what one of my friends, Mike Jennings, did in Tacoma. We wanted to proclaim the birth of Christ in a realistic and historical way where Christmas has become so commercial and mythical.
Our forested church setting was suited for such an event, so Marty Simons, put together a simple manger scene along the brushy edge of our parking area. About 26 people put up a cave-like scene and acted as the holy couple, shepherds, and magi for the evening. About 58 cars drove through plus a few walkers for a total of 243 that first winter’s night. Over the years the event grew consistently more popular. The last time we did the event in 2017 about 5,600 people came to walk through Bethlehem’s dozen or so scenes staffed by over 220 characters all related to the event of Christ’s birth. It is perhaps the largest presentation of it’s kind in the area. And, like the gospel of Christ, it is all free. We hope to continue it after our building project is complete in 2021.
Our Living Nativity in 2017 with over 5,600 attending in one weekend in December.
During our barn years Discovery graduated from Northwest Baptist Home Mission mission status to a full-fledged “New Testament Church”. That means we were self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating. Generally speaking a group of believers meeting regularly is considered a bible study until those three qualifications are met. That was now true of Discovery. So you could say we were truly, “Born in a Barn.” I love it! Having been raised on a ranch with a big red barn for our livestock, hay and equipment I felt right at home as their under shepherd.
In 2000 we sent Tim & Martia Franklin to Brazil as full time missionaries with Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE). Tim had been one of our many Seminary Interns who lived in the basement, commuted to school in Tacoma at Northwest Baptist Seminary (NBS), and learned the practical aspects of ministry at Discovery.
The Lord continued to allow us to do ministry trips to Ukraine where my Suko side of the family had immigrated from nearly a century earlier. While there I had the opportunity to visit the village they had come from and see the house and even cemetery where other relatives were buried. If my grandparents would have stayed there they and many of their children would likely have perished during Stalin’s massive manufactured famine of the 1930’s.
On one trip my daughter Rachel came along and was so struck with the need for help teaching children about the Lord. After much prayer she felt she could no longer stay in America with such needs in Ukraine. So she made the decision resign her job as Spanish teacher at Lighthouse Christian School in Gig Harbor and began to prepare for a life of missionary service in Ukraine. Unknown to her she made that decision on the same day that her great grandparent (my grandparents) Ferdinand and Maria Suko had come to America exactly 100 years earlier in 1902. It was another providential point. Later on June 6, 2004 we sent Rachel to the field of Odessa, Ukraine as full time single missionary with ABWE. Amazingly on her first day in Ukraine the Lord providentially introduced her to the man God had lined up for her, another single ABWE missionary already working there. It soon was obvious there was love in the air.
Soon we realized we would need a more suitable auditorium for Discovery. So we began to make plans to build one and remodel the old butcher shop attached to the house into a proper foyer and entry area. That project we started in the spring of 2005. I’ll tell you about it next time and the amazing and unexpected first event we had in it. You will definitely not want to miss it.
-Pastor Mark
P.S. Let me know if you have questions or memories about that time.
PRAY FOR OUR BUILDING PROJECT THIS WEEK
We have finished our 9th week since breaking ground July 5th. Project completion expected to be 2/2021.
Praise the Lord the basement wall forms were removed and are free standing. The floors for the basement and auditorium extension were poured this week. The long wood support beam was place across the length of the basement to support the future classroom area above..
Praise the Lord our one year giving commitment card have committed gifts of $75,000 over what was expected. Thanks for your gifts.
Pray all goes well for the pouring the stairs and attaching special waterproof barriers for the exterior basement walls and back filling the walls.
HELP NEEDED IN REMOVING CARPET in removing carpet off platform risers so new carpet can be installed. If you can help let me (Pastor Mark) know by Friday noon Sept. 11th and I”ll let you know what times are available to do that work that will help keep our costs down.
HELP NEEDED IN REMOVING CEDAR SIDING off the auditorium for your personal use please let me how much (Pastor Mark) know by Friday noon Sept. 11th so we can schedule times when you can remove it. This would also help us keep costs down.
And….don’t forget our first ever unique and historic Redeployment Service Sunday the 13th and at 2:30 with a food fellowship on the Green following.