Papa Dan's Pastoral Days

CITY CRUSADE WITH THE JANZ QUARTET Vernon Community Center Auditorium In 1968 I wrote to the Janz Quartet to inquire as to whether the quartet would consider coming to the Vernon Alliance Church for a week of evangelistic meetings  the next time they came home to Canada from Germany.  They responded with the question as to whether there would be interest in making it a city-wide crusade.  I took their proposal to the ministerial association.  The response was favorable and in due time the wheels were soon set in motion for the Janz Quartet to come to Vernon. Since I was still a solo pastor, with no assistant pastor or paid secretary and a church whose attendance was now double what it was when I arrived in 1963, the pastor of the Emmanuel Baptist Church agreed to be the chairman and I agreed to be the vice-chairman, which was no small task. January 12 through the 19th, 1969 a Sunday through Sunday evangelistic crusade led by the Janz Quartet became...

FACING CHANGES The last half of my ministry in Vernon saw a few changes.  Several new families came to the church during this time period.  Some of them became deeply involved in the ministry, i.e. board members and Sunday School, youth, children's, music ministries, etc.  This was all very encouraging. Another change in early 1966 involved a move for my family.  The landlord, from whom the church had rented a house for forty-five dollars a month, wanted to move into that house.  His wife had died and the house that he was living in was too big for one person.  The board decided it was time to buy a house that would serve as a parsonage.  As they began to search for a suitable house, they looked at some houses that were under construction.  I went through one of them, which I fell in love with.  It had three bedrooms, living, dining, full unfinished basement and two fireplaces, one in the living room and one in the basement.  T...

NORTH OKANAGAN CRUSADE FOR CHRIST Crusade Meeting In High School Gymnasium As a pastor I was a member of the Vernon Ministerial Association which met monthly for a time of fellowship.  I don't remember whether a letter had been received by the ministerial from Barry Moore or whether I introduced the idea of having Barry come to Vernon for a week of meetings, but it was discussed among the pastors and we formed an independent crusade committee..  By the mid 1960's  Barry Moore had become a well known evangelist.  Since I had known him from the days of Chatham Youth For Christ and also as a fellow student at Columbia Bible College in South Carolina, I was all for having him come to Vernon.     An eight day North Okanagan Crusade For Christ , Sunday through Sunday, became a reality January 9 - 16, 1966.  All of the evangelical churches from Winfield in the south to Salmon Arm in the north supported  this crusade....

FRUIT IN THE OKANAGAN VALLEY Picking apples at Davison's orchard Vernon, British Columbia is fruit country.  Growing apples was the main commercial fruit for the Vernon area, but all kinds of fruit were harvested, berries, peaches, pears, plums etc.  My work concentrated on spiritual fruit.   Sometimes I gave an invitation at the close of a service for people to come forward, but most often I would ask if people wanted to be remembered in prayer to raise their hand.   Let me share a couple of stories about spiritual fruit that was picked. One Sunday night at the conclusion of my sermon I gave an invitation.  A total stranger, a young man that I had never seen in church before, raised his hand for prayer.  As was my custom, I walked to the back of the sanctuary to greet people as they left.  When this visitor, who was with one of our regular attenders, reached me, I said to him that I noticed that  he had raised his hand for prayer...

SIX FUN-FILLED YEARS What can I say about our Vernon years?  A good number of the members were around our age which meant we had a lot of things in common.  A good example of that was the fact that our pianists would play for a period of time and then be spelled off for a time due to a pregnancy. Leona was one of those pianists.  Sharilyn was born during our time in Vernon.  We had many enjoyable times, both in our home, other homes and also with adult social times.  There were many of these socials.  One such was a strawberry social in the basement of the church.  Several ladies brought a strawberry short cake.  Just before serving, they smothered the pieces of cake with strawberries and a good heaping supply of whipped cream. We all sat in a big circle balancing the plate on our lap and digging in to this delectable spring desert.  I was having a bit of a problem cutting my cake with my fork.  So I busied myself with scooping...

ALLIANCE YOUTH FELLOWSHIP Vernon Alliance Church - 1963 When we arrived in Vernon in the fall of 1963, two single nurses were the youth sponsors leading the Alliance Youth Fellowship .  I learned that first winter that these sponsors were very discouraged.  I sought to encourage them by attending the youth meetings.  What I witnessed was a duplicate of a Sunday morning service with one young person leading the music, using hymnals and someone else reading scripture, prayer, etc.  Sometimes they had a special musical number and sometimes they had a guest speaker. Attendance dipped as low as six young people showing up. This did not strike me as a young peoples meeting.  I did the unthinkable.  Some might think it was the unpardonable sin.  In the spring of 1964 I said to these two youth sponsors, "Let's just cancel having young peoples."  In my mind was the idea that we would let it die and start afresh at a later date.  It was can...