DEDICATION DAY - OCTOBER 7th, 1979

One of our Sundays, near the end of our meeting in the school, we reached a new record attendance of 239.  Our first Sunday, September 30th, 1979, in our new church facilities, we exceeded that by 40 with a new record attendance of 279.   We were one excited congregation.  We never fell below that attendance of 279 until one summer Sunday a year or so later. To indicate how our attendance continued to climb, let me say that building plans were drawn in early 1978 and the day we moved, in the fall of 1979, our nursery was too small.  Men in the church, immediately put a door in the wall, making, what was designed as a library, the crib room for the nursery.


A Sunday morning service at Rockyview Alliance

Dedication Day was Sunday, October 7th, our second Sunday in the building.  That was Thanksgiving Sunday and the sixth anniversary to the day, October 7th, 1973, when Rockyview Alliance Church had its first service.  We had much for which to give thanks to God.

In the spring of 1978 I met Rev. Ord Morrow at the C&MA General Council, which met in Lincoln, Nebraska.  Rev. Morrow was one of the Bible teachers on the Back To The Bible Broadcast.  I inquired at that time as to whether he would consider coming to Calgary.  What a treat and privilege to have him as our speaker on our Dedication Day.  We made use of the man, having three services, morning, afternoon and evening.  Over 400 people filled our sanctuary for the dedication service that Sunday afternoon.

Rockyview Alliance Church was the most exciting ministry of all of the churches that I was privileged to serve as solo or senior pastor.  From the moment that we moved into the church building our attendance continued to grow to grow.  We were the first church congregation to have a church building in The Properties, which included thousands of people. It was booming with hundreds of houses being constructed.

I should say here, that our son Brian approached The Calgary Herald about having a paper route.  The area route manager told Brian that if he could find ten customers he would start dropping off the daily paper.  Brian canvassed the area and managed to get six customers.  This manager obviously saw potential in the area and also in Brian that he agreed to drop off six papers Monday through Saturday.  To indicate how rapidly the area was growing, after sixteen months as a paper delivery boy, his initial six customers had expanded to four routes, one of them being his sister Sharilyn's plus two others and Brian still had a route of over one hundred customers.  I've said that to illustrate the fact that we were in the midst of a boom town.

The Properties consisted of numerous first time buyers, young couples and young families.  In my eight years at Rockyview we saw a total of 125 baby dedications.  Baby showers got to be the social outing for numerous ladies.

One of the many baby dedication services

Well, not only did our attendance continue to increase, but we saw many conversions.  Many of those were people reached through our Evangelism Explosion ministry and the Billy Graham Calgary Crusade held in August 1981.  I'll have more to say about these two ministries in additional posts.

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