DAN'S INTRODUCTION TO PASTORAL MINISTRY
Five years had passed since that SIM director told me that I did not need any further education and that I should get with it and go to the mission field. That was August 1953. My final meeting at candidate school with the WIM directors in Homer City was either the end of July or the first day or two in August 1958. They recommended still more preparation. The mission asked that I have at least one year of pastoral ministry. The big question was what church wants to hire a pastor, an inexperienced pastor, for one year?
I quickly discovered that there were no churches available with the Christian & Missionary Alliance. I wrote to Prairie Bible Institute and learned that there were two small churches in Southern Saskatchewan. I was also offered a position with North Shore Baptist Church in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, where I had been an intern. Since I had met Leona and was deeply in love with her, I was hoping that I could get a pastoral ministry close to where she lived in Alberta. At her suggestion, I wrote to the District Superintendent of the Evangelical Free Church. He responded saying that he had two small churches, that had been served by the same pastor in Northern Alberta. They had been without a pastor for five months.
I began correspondence with the Lac La Biche, Alberta Evangelical Free Church and the Hylo EFC. There were no FAX machines, internet with email or cheap phone rates in those years. All contact was by mail. I should say though that mail in those years was as fast or even faster than mail delivery today. When I was a student at PBI, I was reading a letter from my Mom and Dad at 3:00pm on a Saturday afternoon, which was postmarked in Chatham at 5:00pm Friday. Considering the time zones, that was exactly 24 hours.
After the exchange of two or three letters, the Lac La Biche and Hylo EFC churches invited me to be their pastor. They had paid the previous pastor $90.00 a month and said that they were increasing it and would pay me $100.00 a month. Today all of my children and grandchildren make that or double and some of them more than double in one day. The District Superintendent said that the EFC District would probably give a subsidy, which I hoped would be at least another $25.00 a month. That subsidy never ever happened.
I left Chatham the day after Thanksgiving, Tuesday, October 14, 1958 arriving in Calgary Friday afternoon where Leona met me at the Greyhound Bus Depot. I spent the weekend plus a couple of days with her in Lacombe, meeting the members of her family. Lac La Biche was about 240 miles from Lacombe. I drove there later in the week, arriving the day of their mid-week prayer meeting.
My introduction to pastoral ministry was a different culture or way of life, at least different than what I had known. The first culture change was that the last 100 miles of road to Lac La Biche was entirely gravel. There was not a paved road in Lac La Biche. It was also gravel.
The prayer meeting was in a country home, seven miles south of town and in the home where I would be boarding. As I entered the driveway of this country home, I saw buildings made out of logs. My first thought was that I was going to be boarding at a camp site. Well, it turned out to be an old abandoned farm with only the house and garage being used. As I sat in the living room for prayer meeting, I glanced off to the side at one point and saw a coal oil lamp on the bedroom dresser. I wondered why they had a lamp when they had electricity. I looked up at the ceiling to see the electric light, but it was not an electric light. It was some monstrous thing hanging down from the ceiling, which I learned later was called a Coleman lamp.
That night as I was directed to my bedroom upstairs, Kathy, the lady of the house, handed me, what looked like a salad bowl and said that I might want to put this under my bed in case I needed it during the night. Here was another culture shock. There was no indoor plumbing. The next day, I discovered that their source of water was a well in the basement. Unlike many wells, it was a surface well with the water simply being scooped off the top. One day when I went down to get water, a dead mouse was floating on top of the water.
The next day the man of the house showed me to a log building, which was a garage. I never ever saw a block heater in any car in Ontario. However, when I arrived in Lacombe, realizing that I would be in for some colder winter weather, I had a block heater installed at the service station where Leona's dad worked as a mechanic. Since I would not be able to plug the car in, as this old farm had no electricity, I asked what they did when it got so cold that the car would not start. Bud, the man of the house said, "Oh, we light a fire under the motor." Fortunately, I never had to light a fire under my car. We did light fires in the house. The cook stove was a wood burning stove.
I never thought during my exchange of letters that I would face a different way of living or doing things. This was what I would have expected on the mission field, but I was still in Canada. Well, it was no big issue and I soon learned to adapt to a different way of life. I considered this all preparation for the mission field.
I quickly discovered that there were no churches available with the Christian & Missionary Alliance. I wrote to Prairie Bible Institute and learned that there were two small churches in Southern Saskatchewan. I was also offered a position with North Shore Baptist Church in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, where I had been an intern. Since I had met Leona and was deeply in love with her, I was hoping that I could get a pastoral ministry close to where she lived in Alberta. At her suggestion, I wrote to the District Superintendent of the Evangelical Free Church. He responded saying that he had two small churches, that had been served by the same pastor in Northern Alberta. They had been without a pastor for five months.
I began correspondence with the Lac La Biche, Alberta Evangelical Free Church and the Hylo EFC. There were no FAX machines, internet with email or cheap phone rates in those years. All contact was by mail. I should say though that mail in those years was as fast or even faster than mail delivery today. When I was a student at PBI, I was reading a letter from my Mom and Dad at 3:00pm on a Saturday afternoon, which was postmarked in Chatham at 5:00pm Friday. Considering the time zones, that was exactly 24 hours.
After the exchange of two or three letters, the Lac La Biche and Hylo EFC churches invited me to be their pastor. They had paid the previous pastor $90.00 a month and said that they were increasing it and would pay me $100.00 a month. Today all of my children and grandchildren make that or double and some of them more than double in one day. The District Superintendent said that the EFC District would probably give a subsidy, which I hoped would be at least another $25.00 a month. That subsidy never ever happened.
I left Chatham the day after Thanksgiving, Tuesday, October 14, 1958 arriving in Calgary Friday afternoon where Leona met me at the Greyhound Bus Depot. I spent the weekend plus a couple of days with her in Lacombe, meeting the members of her family. Lac La Biche was about 240 miles from Lacombe. I drove there later in the week, arriving the day of their mid-week prayer meeting.
My introduction to pastoral ministry was a different culture or way of life, at least different than what I had known. The first culture change was that the last 100 miles of road to Lac La Biche was entirely gravel. There was not a paved road in Lac La Biche. It was also gravel.
One of the two main roads entering Lac La Biche
The prayer meeting was in a country home, seven miles south of town and in the home where I would be boarding. As I entered the driveway of this country home, I saw buildings made out of logs. My first thought was that I was going to be boarding at a camp site. Well, it turned out to be an old abandoned farm with only the house and garage being used. As I sat in the living room for prayer meeting, I glanced off to the side at one point and saw a coal oil lamp on the bedroom dresser. I wondered why they had a lamp when they had electricity. I looked up at the ceiling to see the electric light, but it was not an electric light. It was some monstrous thing hanging down from the ceiling, which I learned later was called a Coleman lamp.
The country house where Dan boarded
That night as I was directed to my bedroom upstairs, Kathy, the lady of the house, handed me, what looked like a salad bowl and said that I might want to put this under my bed in case I needed it during the night. Here was another culture shock. There was no indoor plumbing. The next day, I discovered that their source of water was a well in the basement. Unlike many wells, it was a surface well with the water simply being scooped off the top. One day when I went down to get water, a dead mouse was floating on top of the water.
The next day the man of the house showed me to a log building, which was a garage. I never ever saw a block heater in any car in Ontario. However, when I arrived in Lacombe, realizing that I would be in for some colder winter weather, I had a block heater installed at the service station where Leona's dad worked as a mechanic. Since I would not be able to plug the car in, as this old farm had no electricity, I asked what they did when it got so cold that the car would not start. Bud, the man of the house said, "Oh, we light a fire under the motor." Fortunately, I never had to light a fire under my car. We did light fires in the house. The cook stove was a wood burning stove.
I never thought during my exchange of letters that I would face a different way of living or doing things. This was what I would have expected on the mission field, but I was still in Canada. Well, it was no big issue and I soon learned to adapt to a different way of life. I considered this all preparation for the mission field.
Wow! Dan finally a pastor
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