THE NEW JOB chapter 234

The district office was located in a small converted house on Knights Bridge Road just west of the Mollala River. The main grounds of the district owned Canby Grove Conference Center was located across the street. The office was sitting on camp owned property. You could look out east of the office and see the camps swimming pool. In my opinion is was a strange place for the pool since all the camp buildings were across Knights Bridge Road.

Three offices and a storage room was on the main floor. There was the receptionist, superintendent, District Pastor of Church Growth and the bookkeeper on the main floor with a cupboard in the back for supplies gathered for returning missionaries. My office was located upstairs in one of three bedrooms. A large room on that floor was used for meetings.

I met with the District Christian Education Committee a day or so before my first district conference. It was held annually at the camp. It was mostly a time to get acquainted for me and to find out what they had planned and what they do. Daryl Dale, my predecessor, had laid out all their activities. He had not scheduled his normal routine of training waiting for me to set that schedule. All that was scheduled were the next summer’s camp dates. There were two youth and two children’s camps plus the annual family camp where the west side youth camp was held.

The district is large and geographically divided. The Cascade Mountains split between the east from west, Oregon was disconnected from Washington over the size of churches. Every church south of Salem was very small. Alaska was a completely separate world having nothing to do with the rest of the district. Eventually I called the district “The I-5 churches.” Most of our churches were located along the I-5 corridor. The next string ran from Portland to Spokane. The two largest churches were Salem Alliance and North Seattle Alliance. As is typical of large churches, they did their own thing. My charge was to bring all this together. Yeah, right!

The biggest task given to me by DEXCOM was to make the annual Family Camp pay for itself. Since the district owned the camp there was a strange financial arrangement between the two. About three hundred people would come for a week each July and donate what they wanted to pay to the camp for their food and lodging. Every penny the camp was taking in from other rentals throughout the year was needed to cover the cost of Family Camp. There was never money left over for capital improvements or even maintenance. If the pattern continued the district would drive the camp into financial ruin. The task seemed simple — charge for cabins, food and programs like every other camp I knew anything about. Great idea, but it was not the history and history can rule the day. The camp belonged to the district, why should they also pay to use it. That was a hard concept to grasp.

I now had a subject to broach with the pastors as I traveled to the churches. I gathered what information I could locally and from my first meeting with the District Christian Education committee. The task assigned was not going to be easy. In fact, it had the possibility of blowing up in my face.

Main meeting are at the conference,

I managed to get out and meet a few pastors before District Conference near the end of September, but that is where I met most for the first time. I was mostly able to observe and I had very little actual responsibility. I was interviewed but not no report or presentation to make. An announcement was made about my new task for the annual family camp and that sent a boatload of people my way expressing their opinions. It didn’t take long to realize this job could lead to my crucifixion.

“Get rid of the camp orchestra” I didn’t even know we had one. It was a volunteer group led by a now retired former pastor who had been doing it almost from the beginning. The other constant comment was, “We loved it when A. W. Tozer was the speaker. Make it like that again.” Getting Tozer was going to be a challenge. He was dead.

The distant areas of the district did not care what we did with family camp. The rest either loved it or hated it. All I had to do was make everyone love it. No big deal. I was their newest superman.