Thanks for the Memories

I’ve been reflecting upon my 37 years here and some of the high points that stand out for me. I thought I’d share a few of those in a mini “trip down memory lane.” I wonder if YOUR favorites are in this list? I’d love to hear from you if I missed one.

Here they are, in no particular order:

My installation as your new Senior Pastor in 1987. All the most important persons in my life were there. Many of them are now gone. I wonder how many gathered that Sunday afternoon would have believed I’d be hanging around 37 years later?
Our decision to build a gymnasium first. We desperately needed a larger Sanctuary, but the community needed something more than that. At a time before the YMCA, the Boys and Girls Club, and many workout facilities existed, there was nothing like it in Gig Harbor. WE became the Community Center. “Codger” basketball, women’s aerobics, Boy Scouts, Wednesday night dinners with kids running crazy, “Chill” on Friday nights when as many as 600 teens showed up, Christmas dinner theaters. And of course, the Gym became our worship center for three years. Every Sunday, a crew showed up early, setting up 600 squeaky chairs, rolling out the organ, the piano, setting up choir risers and stage… and then tearing it all down so that our “Chapel Hill Community Center” would be available again.
November 23, 1997, when we opened our new Sanctuary. Again, we built that space to serve the entire community. Concerts, musicals and plays, community memorial services, baccalaureates and graduations, school recitals. And of course, it has served as our sacred space for worshipping God. A personal highlight was the performance of “Moses,” one of the musicals I wrote, that was produced by our own theater program. My daughter was in the cast. How cool was that.
The 28 pastors we raised up, trained, ordained and sent out. It will always be a source of great joy to me. And the fact that one of those was my own daughter, Rachel…I will never forget her ordination and the pride I felt.
The Nisqually earthquake in 2001. Bible Study Fellowship was meeting in the Sanctuary and recording the teaching. I would give anything to find that recording, now lost. You could hear the chimes from the organ starting to clang and suddenly, you heard the screams as women realized what was happening. One woman, in her furious determination to get to her children in the nursery, tore the end off of one of our oak pews as she dashed out. Never get in front of a Mama bear.
Harbor baptisms. What a wonderful witness it was to our community as we baptized scores and scores of people over the years.
Mexico mission trips, both with the kids and with the men. I lost track of how many I made and how many houses we built, but they were life-changing events for missionaries of all ages.
Men’s Life. Hundreds and hundreds of men learned what the biblical definition of manhood was…and began to live it out.
June 3, 2012, when we were received into our new denomination, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. I never thought such a perfect home existed for our church and consider it one of the most important, long-term, strategic decisions we ever made.
COVID! I loved how our church responded. My nightly blogs called “Sleep On This,” “virtual church” with pastors preaching to an empty Sanctuary, a Good Friday prayer marathon, calling every member of the church twice to make sure that they were OK. I also like the fact that our session stood up to the governor when he told us we could not sing. In an open letter, your elders declared that the Lord called us to sing in worship and we would obey him rather than man.
The day we burned our mortgage following our Beyond These Walls campaign, the most successful campaign we had ever run. I’m so proud of our commitment to give away the equivalent of our $600,000 mortgage payments every year in perpetuity.
Meeting Ellis White in Oxford, England, 13 years ago. Need I say more?

I said at the beginning of this blog that these were in no particular order or importance. I retract that. Because the most important memory of my time here was meeting my wife, Cyndi, and the wedding we shared with our entire church family. We had to do it at University Place Presbyterian church because we didn’t a sanctuary large enough at the time. Epic!

And one more thing: the baptism of our kids! Rachel in the Memorial Chapel, Cooper in the Gym, and our granddaughter, Cici in the Sanctuary. And, of course, the ministries that guided those children to a place of personal faith. Forever grateful!

Forever grateful for so many things. Thanks for the memories.

Pastor Mark