Up from the Ashes

The Redemption of a Fallen Saint

Kenneth Walls

H.R. Schorr

This book is a true story, though some names have been falsified.

A publication of:

Engage Faith Press

PO Box 2222

Poulsbo, WA 98370

© 2012 by Kenneth R. Walls and Henry R. Schorr

All rights reserved. Published 2012

Printed in the United States of America

16 15 14 13 12 1 2 3 4

ISBN (paperback): 978-1-936672-31-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012944688

Books distributed to the trade by:

Seattle Book Company

http://seattlebookcompany.com

Cover by Sheila Cowley, Creative Fuel Studios

Scripture taken from:

The King James Version of the Holy Bible.

The NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

The New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

To our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, for His tender mercy and grace.

To my beautiful wife, Kim. You have stood by me through the toughest of times, and I have seen you grow in the Lord and truly become a Proverbs 31 woman. I love you!

FOREWORD

UP FROM THE ASHES is a story of restoration and redemption. It is not a script for Reality TV, nor is it a fictional yarn hatched in an imaginative mind. Rather, it is the drama of real life. The author, Ken Walls, knows it is a true story, because he lived it.

We often say that experience is a great teacher, but what it teaches us has two sides. On one side, good experiences tell us what we want to repeat—behaviors worth continuing, conduct that adds value, and relationships that need to be perpetuated. But on the other side, bad experiences also provide lessons, hard lessons. They tell us where we do not want to go again. Every life has both good and bad.

So why, when we have experienced the best, would we choose the worst? How could we fall hard and fast to the bottom after having been at the top?

In this stark account, Ken gives us answers by tracing his fall from successful pastoral ministry to unfaithfulness and adultery. His account bleeds authenticity. He is painfully honest. Every reader can learn from his tragic experience: heed the words of the Apostle Paul, “So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12 NIV).

Redemption is not designed for “good” people but for sinners, and that includes you and me. None of us can point fingers at Ken Walls and ask, “How could you,” because we also have fallen—perhaps not as noticeably and dramatically as Ken, but fallen nonetheless.

As a stumbling pilgrim, I am always encouraged when I read these words to a prophet who was disobedient and angry and had a bad attitude: “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time” (Jonah 3:1 NIV). When we fail God, as Ken did and as we all do, our faithful God comes a second and third and fourth time—as many times as needed—and offers us a redemptive, restorative word. He is indeed the God of a second chance. From the ashes of our fallen lives, He rekindles the flame of passion for Him.

I am happy to recommend Ken’s story to you, because it is intertwined with the story of Jesus. Without Jesus, the story would end badly. But Jesus made the difference for Ken, and He will for you too.

Warren D. Bullock

Executive Presbyter,

Northwest Region,

General Council of the Assemblies of God

PREFACE

“Hello, Rubber. I’m Road.”

HOW MANY TIMES have you heard the “Come to Jesus, and all your problems will go away” message? Far too many, I’d guess. Frankly, I’m sick of hearing it. If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, you know it rarely happens that way. This story is not that message.

Ken Walls’ story is one of real Christianity, experienced by a real man in the dirty, grimy real world. It doesn’t take long talking with Ken to discover that he’s an authentic, straightforward guy. He is, as my Grandaddy used to say, “more real than Coca-cola.” Ken’s life is an open book. (You’re holding it!) There is sin, and there is redemption. There are epic failures, and there are epic victories. There are the best of times, and there are the worst of times.

As J.R.R. Tolkien said, “All stories are ultimately about the Fall.” This story is no exception. But the Fall doesn’t have to be the end. The Bible doesn’t end in Genesis. Ken’s story doesn’t end with adultery. God does redeem us, even when we feel we are unredeemable, because all stories are part of God’s story, and God’s story ultimately has a happy ending.

When a mutual friend first proposed the project, I wasn’t sure this co-authoring thing would work out. Journalistic interviews have never really been my style. I’m very introverted and far more comfortable on Tattooine or Middle-Earth than Planet Earth. Besides which, I’m a “make-it-up-on-the-fly” kind of writer. My wife (another English major) and I sometimes joke that our degrees could be labeled, “BA in BS.” So I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of hundreds of hours interviewing, reviewing tapes, transcribing, rewriting, rearranging, reinterviewing, and rewriting again.

Then I met Ken Walls, and I heard his passion for healing broken lives. Then I knew that I wanted to be a part of this project. When I read Ken’s first book, Falling off the Mountain, I found the core of a powerful story about God’s amazing grace, but I felt more needed to be told. Context is key to understanding Scripture; how much more when seeking to understand a man’s choices. How did Ken’s first marriage start? What kind of baggage did they bring into it? What were the Lord’s promises and the miracles Ken alluded to?

As important as they were, though, questions about the past weren’t nearly as important as those about the present. Ken’s second marriage began with an adulterous affair, yet it has been going strong for over a decade! Relationship experts will tell you that just doesn’t happen. And Ken will be the first to tell you that they’re absolutely correct: without Christ, it doesn’t. Ken’s life proves God’s claim that with Christ, all things—even a return to ministry after falling into sin—are possible.

But how did he get right with Christ? Some of the most helpful feedback Ken received about the first book was the desire to learn more about repentance. To that end, we’ve included an Appendix where Ken has expounded on that process. Though the details will look different in each case of repentance, Ken’s experience provides a pattern for how the rest of us can return to Christ and stay there. To paraphrase Paul, we can follow Ken as he follows Christ

(1 Corinthians 11:1).

As I said before, this isn’t about Jesus providing a trouble-free existence. This is the story of a lifelong Christian with real struggles, a man who didn’t always win his battles. Jesus promised that we would have trouble in this world, that the world would hate us, and that the devil would try to destroy us. Ken’s experience testifies to all of that. But more than any of it, Ken’s experience testifies that God is love and His arm is never too short to save us.

With God’s salvation comes a promise never to leave us, even in the hardest times. Ken Walls can confirm that promise. God called Ken early in life and proved His faithfulness by confirming that call even after Ken thought all was lost. The Lord stayed with Ken through the fire and lifted him up from the ashes.

H.R. Schorr

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Kenneth would like to thank:

My mother and stepfather, Judy and Alan Hunt, for your unconditional love, support and willingness to listen to these stories over and over again as I relive them for this project.

Rev. Bob Smith, for being willing to be my mentor, friend, and spiritual adviser and for believing with me for the full restoration of Jesus Christ in my life and ministry.

Rev. Scott Fontenot, for believing that the call of God had not been taken from me and for giving me the opportunity to operate in that call.

My father, the late Carrol G. Walls, for standing by me no matter what until Jesus took you home in 2007. I have the assurance that you are walking with Jesus in heavenly places.

The late Rev. Dale E. Smith, for walking with me through many parts of my story. Thank you for allowing the Lord to instrumentally use you to help me and Kim get to where we are in the Lord today. We will see you again someday soon.

H.R. would like to thank:

Elizabeth, who exceeds every woman as much in beauty as the first of May doth the last of December. SHMILLY!

John Gallardo and Dave Hatheway, two real men who tried to teach me wisdom. I may have learned some in spite of myself.

Mike Forney, who believed in me enough to start this ball rolling.

INTRODUCTION

“It is finished!”

THESE THREE SIMPLE WORDS spoken over two thousand years ago still echo throughout the heavens. They form a phrase that set into motion a grace and mercy that man had never fully known before, and whose depth and width we still grapple to understand today.

For nearly eleven years, I have journeyed back up a mountain that I had stepped off of by following my own desires. A “fall from grace” we call it, but though I had fallen shrouded in blackness, I did not land in a black hole, alone and forgotten. Rather, I fell into the arms of grace. I didn’t fall from it; I fell into it. But where did it come from, and why? I didn’t deserve it, and I didn’t expect it; but there it was, warm and inviting.

Grace wasn’t alone. Mercy accompanied her, a bright light of love, surrounding her like the rings of Saturn.

Encapsulated in a love I had never realized, I took that first step upward, joined by my two new friends. Each took a hand and guided me over rock and crevice. As I slipped they would steady me, and we would continue on. Though we often had to repeat that process, grace and mercy never left my side.

The climb has not been without pain or discomfort. Loose rocks and boulders are everywhere, and hidden in the caves along the path are winged tormentors, who threaten to end the ascent. But with each slip and fall, the balm of Gilead is poured out upon the wound, soothing each scrape and bruise.

As I pen these words, “it is finished” continues to flash through my mind: the finality, the completed work, all for me. In my spiritual eyes, I can see Christ as the nails pierce through His hands and feet. Writhing in pain, He presses His head against the splintered timber, yelling into the darkness, “Father, forgive him!” Then, “It is finished.” What an amazing truth.

That is what this book is all about: the amazing truth of God’s amazing grace. A truth not deserved, but delivered anyway. A story of redemption so remarkable, I would not have believed it if I had not lived it. In fact, I am still living it.

The daily reality is, I have not reached the top of the mountain, as I thought I had before the day I stepped off. I will not reach the top until the day I enter into that great city “whose Builder and Maker is God” (Hebrews 11:10 KJV).

Until that great day, I need to live as the Apostle Paul stated in Philippians 3:12–14.

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (NKJV)

I pray that through the pages of this book, you will discover that when God restores, He fully restores. I pray that God fills you afresh with His Spirit each day. Thank you for reading my story. God is so good!

Chapter 1:

THE FIREPLACE

WHEN I WAS BORN, my mother presented me to the Lord. Like Hannah, the mother of Samuel, she dedicated me to God’s service. From the start, God had a claim on my life. My dedication took a little longer to enact than Samuel’s did, though. Samuel had just been weaned when Hannah gave him to Eli the priest to be trained in serving at the Tabernacle. His call came at a very early age. Mine took a few years longer.

I grew up wanting to be an actor, or maybe a stuntman—those were cool jobs! I had considered becoming a doctor, until I found out that I’d need to do more math to get there. But did I think of being a pastor? Not seriously. As I grew, I thought it might be an option. I enjoyed the church’s Youth group, I liked the Bible, and I didn’t have a problem talking in front of people. Plus, several members of my extended family had gone into the ministry. But those were surface reasons. I knew they weren’t good reasons to accept a pastor’s mantle of responsibility.

In 1979, I was 18 years old. My Youth group attended a revival preached by a man we called Brother K. It was there that the Lord called me. As is typical at revival meetings, Brother K. held an altar call at the end of the service. People flocked to the front of the church to accept Christ as Lord and Savior, to rededicate their lives to Him, or simply to pray. I went forward with them, and as I prayed, the Lord gave me two things: the gift of speaking in tongues and the call to pastoral ministry. At that moment, I knew I was supposed to be a pastor, and I no longer wanted to do anything else. My life after that moment became a movement toward fulfilling that call.

Two years later, in the summer of 1981, I met Theresa at a Youth summer camp in Fort Flagler, Washington, where I was working as a medic. She came to the nursing station with something stuck in her foot, I took care of her, and that was that. Camp ended, and we went back to our lives. But then we met again at a camp in Leavenworth, Washington, that winter. I had driven up to enjoy the snow with some friends, and Theresa was there with her church. This time, we started talking and getting to know each other. We found that we both lived on the Kitsap peninsula in western Washington, and we quickly grew to like each other. Soon I asked her to go out with me.

The night before our first date, I was goofing off with some of my friends. I demonstrated to them how to do a double jump-kick. Apparently my ninja skills weren’t quite up to par, though; when I came down, I landed badly on my toes and tore a tendon in my foot. As a result, I was on crutches for our first date, and I had to have a friend come along to drive me. If that weren’t bad enough, instead of actually going out anywhere, we just had spaghetti at Theresa’s mom’s house—the worst meal to have on a first date, by the way; it’s impossible to keep tomato sauce off your shirt.

When we finished eating, we sat around the table chatting. I tried to charm the family with my magical personality, sporting a huge cast on my foot from the previous night’s stupidity. I thought things were going pretty well anyway, but then the front door opened. In walked Theresa’s brother Jack with a scruffy-looking grease monkey, who I soon found out was Theresa’s ex-boyfriend. Talk about awkward! They came in and greeted me with phony politeness. It felt like they were checking me out, plotting what they were going to do to me.

And this was the kind of guy she had dated before. Wow, I thought, I look nothing like these people. What am I doing here? How am I going to fit in here? I wasn’t a tough guy; I didn’t have grease under my fingernails. It felt like I came from a different world. My talents were music and… well, music was about it at that point. I had dropped out of Northwest Bible College to hold onto a previous relationship (obviously, that didn’t work) and had taken a few classes at Olympic College. I had no steady job and no prospects for one. I felt like I was nothing.

Fortunately, the guys didn’t hang around very long. They left, and the rest of the family seemed fairly cordial. After awhile, Theresa’s dad retired to his chair in the living room. I saw my opportunity. The rule was, in order to take Theresa out on a real date, I had to ask her dad for permission. As a father, I now think it’s a fine rule. As a potential boyfriend, I was suitably terrified. Like any young man would be, I was intimidated, not because he was a particularly large or imposing man, but simply because he was The Dad. I knew I would have to do this sometime, though, so now was my chance.

I hobbled into the living room past an empty chair and knelt in front of him.

“You can sit in the chair, you know,” he said.

In my head, I started kicking myself. What had I been thinking? What kind of moron gets in the Will you marry me pose to ask a girl’s father if he can date her? Idiot!

So I sat in the chair. Oh, this is going really well, I thought. Completely deflated, I asked, “W-wou-would it be okay… Would it be alright if I took your d-daughter out on a… on a date?”

He graciously assented. But that wasn’t the end. It wasn’t a one-time, now-you’re-part-of-the-family kind of thing. Every time I wanted to ask her out, I had to ask his permission. I had to go through the whole thing, all the intimidation, all the nerves, every time. Since Theresa was the only daughter, I didn’t get to see if this was a consistent policy, but I have a feeling they created the rule just for me.

We dated steadily for about a year. I’d say our relationship itself was fairly smooth, but there was plenty of strife in her family, which was par for the course there. I remember sitting in her dad’s office once, preparing to ask him if I could take her out again, and I heard a racket in the other room. It was her brother and mother getting into an argument. So her dad got up and walked into the other room.

Theresa’s dad always wore a huge ring of keys on his belt, and soon after he walked out, I heard those keys start jingling. I had a bad feeling about what I was going to see, but I looked into the other room anyway. Sure enough, the dad and brother were going at it, dancing around like they were going to come to blows. Neither one actually threw a punch, but it was a near thing.

I didn’t know how to handle this family. I hadn’t been raised in that sort of environment; in fact, some of my friends called me Beaver because my mom seemed just like June Cleaver from the Leave It to Beaver series. Even though my parents had gotten divorced when I was a teenager, my home life was pretty calm, so even this threat of violence in the family unnerved me. But the “fight” soon ended, the dad came back into his office, and I got permission to take Theresa out once more.

Toward the end of our dating period, Theresa began having more and more trouble with her parents. Once, she had gotten into an argument with her parents while I was at her house. Because of my foot, I still wasn’t driving, so my mom and stepdad had come to pick me up. I remember Theresa sitting up in a tree in her yard as I begged my parents, with tears in my eyes, to let her come home and stay with us. My stepdad said no. Of course, she wasn’t eighteen yet, so taking her without her parents’ permission could have been labeled kidnapping, but what young man thinks about such things when his girl is hurting? As we drove off, I watched out the back windshield as she cried in that tree, and my heart broke for her.

Not long after that, Theresa decided to move to Alaska. She planned to stay with her former Youth pastor, Larry, who had moved up to Ketchikan some time before. So, of course, I wanted to go with her. After she left, I quickly raised the money for my trip, intending to find a job when I got up there. I was nervous: it was my first time in a passenger jet, I was alone, and I had no idea what the future held. But Theresa met me in Ketchikan, and then it became a grand adventure. Everything would work out fine. I knew I would soon find a job, we could get married, there would be a house with a white picket fence, and life would be great.

Ketchikan was a pretty small town. We could walk from one end to the other in eight minutes; we timed it. But the funny thing about the town was that it was filled mostly with people from Washington and Oregon. And those people were very suspicious of strangers. Once, the two of us decided to get some pizza, so we walked down to the pizza joint. As soon as we opened the door, all conversation stopped. Everyone in the place was staring at us. Their eyes stayed on us from the time we walked in until we had placed our order and sat down at a table. When we sat down, people started talking again. It felt like the Old West: we were strangers in the town, and the sheriff was eyeballing us.

Even so, I found myself liking the place. We attended the church where Theresa’s old Youth pastor was on staff. We made some friends, we got into some pre-marital classes, and I even wrote a song and had the opportunity to sing it as a special in one of the services! Everything seemed to be going right.

But the longer we were there, the more tension grew between us. We were both staying with Larry and his wife, Connie; Theresa had the spare bedroom, and I had the living room sofa bed. Late one night, we got into an argument in the living room after Larry and Connie had gone to bed. I got so mad that I grabbed her and threw her onto the sofa bed. I had never done anything like that before, and she ran out of the room, crying and fearful. I knew this was a problem, so I tried to talk to Pastor Larry immediately. But he didn’t want to deal with anything at that time of night. By the time he talked to me the next morning, though, everything had cooled off. Theresa and I had already talked out the issue, and things seemed fine.

I had been in Ketchikan for a few weeks when we attended a party. At that party, the Lord convicted me. He placed in my spirit a desire to go home. I knew it was Him, too, because that wasn’t what I wanted to do. At that time of my life—and I’m not proud to say it—I always put my girlfriends ahead of my relationship with Christ. But this was a new attitude. Here we were planning to get married, with things seemingly going smoothly, but God planted this new thought in me. I somehow knew that if I wanted this relationship to last to marriage, I would have to leave. It wasn’t where I was supposed to be.

That night, I told Theresa. “I believe that the Lord wants me to go home. If we’re going to even consider getting married, I need to go home, and you need to stay here awhile and figure out what you want in life. Meanwhile, I have to go prepare for what I’m supposed to be doing.”

It was a very solemn moment when we said goodbye in the airport. I knew I was doing right, but it was still hard. I also knew I had made mistakes here, and I wasn’t sure how anything would turn out.

The very night I arrived home, my best friend, John, came over, obviously upset. He needed to talk to me. He and his girlfriend, Tracy, were having trouble. What a humbling moment: to realize that in the midst of my pain and uncertainty, leaving my girlfriend and knowing only that I was following God, I had the opportunity to minister to my best friend and encourage him in his relationship with the woman he would later marry.

Theresa decided to come back to Bremerton soon after I did. She wanted to be with me again, but she did not want to live with her parents. They wouldn’t even pay for her to come back. Instead, I worked some odd jobs to earn the money for her trip. We made an arrangement with my Youth pastor, Bill Shaw, and she moved in with his family. Our dating life resumed, and we both knew that marriage was on the horizon.

Pastor Bill soon began pre-marital counseling sessions with us, and he made them a lot of fun. Theresa and I loved to joke around with him, just like we did with all our friends. One week the two of us started joking with a friend of mine about eloping. Of course, we didn’t exactly let on that it was a joke. And the jokes were about doing it on the coming Friday!

Bill heard about it and called us into his office. “Listen,” he said, “if you guys will not run off—if you’ll get married the right way—I’ll do the marriage this weekend. If you let me work with you, we’ll do it right.”

Well, that sounded great to us. We didn’t bother telling him it had been a joke. We were aiming for marriage anyway. I was 21, and she was 18; sure, we were even ready for it. I didn’t have a steady job, but so what? The pastor had just offered to speed up our plan and officially sanction everything. Who were we to argue? So we threw plans together at lightning speed. My dad said we could live with him and his girlfriend in Tacoma until I had a job and could afford a place. My mom and the Senior pastor, Ray Jennings, agreed to help with the service, and we set the rehearsal for Friday night and the wedding for Saturday. We made the guest list tiny; her family didn’t even want to attend. My friend John was my Best Man, and Tracy was the Maid of Honor.

Friday, we walked into the church to get ready for the rehearsal, and we were called into the Senior pastor’s office. He was there with my mom and Pastor Bill. They closed the door behind us, and Pastor Jennings opened the conversation with, “We do not feel it is good for you two to be getting married at this time.”

I’m generally a respectful guy, willing to submit to authority. Here was the pastor telling me it was not the right time for me to get married, and my mom was agreeing with him. Okay, I thought, I’ll respect their wisdom here. Sure, this was a bit rushed, and we’ll take a little more time to plan.

Theresa had a different attitude. She freaked out. She wanted to get married, and get married now. She had a terrible situation at home, and I was going to save her. She ran out of the office, and what could I do but run after her?

When I caught up, she said, “Listen, I want to get married.”

I was overwhelmed with the situation, but I had no time to deliberate; I felt her ultimatum. It’s now or never. I didn’t want never. I had to save her. “Okay,” I said, “we’ll elope. We’ll work it out.”

I went back to the pastor’s office while Theresa waited outside, and I pretended everything was fine. I acted like we would comply with their wishes. But as we left the church, after the pastors had gone, I talked to my mom and told her that we were eloping.

“Well, you’re an adult; you’re both adults. I’ll support whatever decision you make,” she said. My mom was like that. She may not have agreed, but she let me make my own decisions as an adult and committed to love me and support me no matter what.

So I started calling around, trying to find a pastor we knew to marry us. No one would do it on the spur of the moment like that. In fact, the ones we knew personally didn’t believe we should get married either. I finally looked for a pastor in the phone book and found a female minister in Belfair who agreed to perform a service. One problem solved.

One problem remained: we had left the marriage license locked up in the Senior pastor’s office at church. I quickly cooked up a plan. That night, while Pastor Bill was out, Theresa sneaked out of his house, and I picked her up in my car. I had called one of the church deacons and asked him to let me in. I was very involved at church, so there were all kinds of plausible reasons I could make up to need to get in.

“I left some Sunday School curriculum in the pastor’s office,” I lied. He didn’t know any of the wedding issues, so he had no reason not to trust me. The deacon showed up on his motorcycle and let me in. I grabbed the license in its manila envelope. Easy as pie.

The next day, we got ready at my mom’s house, where I lived. Theresa had a lovely white dress, and I wore a suit with a new white smoking jacket. Then we met up with John and Tracy and hit the road.

The directions led us to a cabin, and if we thought that was odd, we didn’t know what to think when we walked up and saw the “minister” making out with some guy on the front porch. We awkwardly introduced ourselves, and she welcomed us inside. We walked into the room where the woman would perform the ceremony, and she placed us where she wanted us—right in front of a life-sized picture of a nude woman.

From the moment we had walked up, I had grown more and more uncomfortable. Since Pastor Jennings’ pronouncement the evening before, I hadn’t been able to process my emotions; I had simply been reacting and following my urge to save Theresa. At the moment we were standing there, in that bizarre place, about to be married by this woman, I began to understand my own feelings. And it hit me like a brick to the face that I didn’t want to go through with this.

I can’t do this, I thought. This is not the right thing to do.

I wish I could say it was because the act wasn’t glorifying Christ, but it was a lot less spiritual than that; I simply felt a lot of guilt. I’m not used to going against my pastors, and this was big. That being the case, I didn’t want to go through with it. I thought that through the entire ceremony and only said, “I do.”

I thought I was doing it for Theresa. Once again, I put a woman before my Lord. The funny thing was, I later found out that Theresa hadn’t wanted to go through with it either. She had been just as uncomfortable as I had, thinking the exact same thoughts. Relationships often work this way; a woman wants a man who will stand up for what’s right, a man who will make God-honoring decisions. And I failed that time. Yes, getting married was the right thing to do in our relationship, but we should have obeyed the pastor’s spiritual authority and waited to do it the right way.

But we went through with it, and aside from the nude portrait behind us, the ceremony itself was pretty standard. The woman didn’t add any strange rituals or leave out any words dedicating our marriage to God. At the end of the day, April 2, 1983, we were married.

My mom had paid for us to spend the wedding night in the Hearthstone Motel in Bremerton, but that was about as much honeymoon as we could afford. The next morning, Sunday, I called Pastor Bill and told him what we had done. Naturally, he felt betrayed and very upset. But I wasn’t at all repentant at that point. I was sorry that I had hurt him, but I didn’t regret what we had done.

We moved in with my dad in Tacoma after that. He was a great guy and a good friend to me, but he was never much of a father figure. He had never set boundaries for me, or even a good example, but he had at least brought me up in the church until he and my mother divorced, at which point he had stepped out of my life for several years. But he and his girlfriend—yes, they lived together—had space for us, and our financial situation wouldn’t allow us to get a place of our own. Relationally, the biggest downside of living with them was that they would often fight. Their relationship was never very good, and I frequently had to intervene when they went at it.

The rest of our time in that house wasn’t much better. Aside from the fighting, we couldn’t rest because Theresa kept having strange, disturbing dreams. And on top of that, I couldn’t find a job to save my life. The economy wasn’t bad then; there were jobs available, but I was at a loss to get one. We struggled to make ends meet, and the constant unrest in the house put a strain on our delicate new marriage. We tried to get some assistance from a local church, but they denied us. Doors kept closing.

After a month and a half, we couldn’t take any more. We moved into a trailer on Theresa’s parents’ property, back in Poulsbo. It didn’t help. Theresa and I were constantly fighting, rest stayed far from us, and I still tried in vain to find a job. Deep down, my spirit knew the problem: we had rebelled against the spiritual authority God had placed in our lives. Our marriage had begun in a spirit of rebellion, and that spirit would continue to plague us until we repented and sought the pardon of the Lord and our pastors.

Well, as soon as I became convinced that we needed to do that, I did it. I went to the Lord, I went to Pastor Jennings, and I went to Pastor Bill. To each, I confessed and repented of our rebellion. I asked for their forgiveness, and they willingly gave it. And after those relationships were restored, it seemed our marriage relationship smoothed as well. Soon after, Theresa also repented and asked forgiveness. Once she did, our marriage blossomed, and God began to bless us.

The blessing came with a change of scenery. I felt there was nothing for me in Kitsap County, so after discussing it with Theresa, I moved to my sister Carolyn’s house in Kirkland to look for work there. Within two weeks, I had a job as a bill collector—not an exciting job, but it paid. I found a great little apartment in the Juanita area, just across from the water, and Theresa joined me there and soon had a job as well, working at a local pet store. As if that weren’t enough, I landed an additional job, cleaning at the YMCA. With just a family of two, those three jobs made us feel very secure. But then God blessed us with a pregnancy, and after a few months, Theresa had to quit her job.

At this point, I need to mention a weird and seemingly isolated incident that became significant later on. During our time in Juanita, Theresa and I would occasionally babysit for a woman we knew. One night while we were babysitting, we started channel surfing, and we came across something unexpected—the Playboy channel. For some reason, I locked onto that channel, and we started watching. I suppose it was curiosity; that’s at least what it felt like at the time. I had struggled with a pornography addiction in my late teens, but I felt sure I had overcome it. Besides, wasn’t marriage supposed to eliminate sexual temptation? The fact that I felt merely a curiosity rather than an overwhelming desire, seemed a confirmation of my victory.

As if to demonstrate her trust in me, Theresa actually fell asleep while I was watching that. Though seemingly unconcerned at the time, she later brought up her discomfort. We talked a bit about my past struggles and about how this incident hadn’t taken root. I had no desire to view more, so we quickly moved on. The incident had been awkward, but it was over.

Overall, those months in Juanita were a time of transition for us. I wasn’t any good at bill collecting (my boss kept telling me I was too nice), so I moved through a few odd jobs until I landed a solid one with a security company. One downside of working security was that I had to work nights. In addition, I was assigned to Todd Shipyard in Seattle, and the commute kept me away from home even longer. This made it difficult for Theresa, so we decided to move back to Bremerton. I would still have to commute, but the move would allow her to be near her family (who had finally accepted our marriage) during the pregnancy. I found a small duplex apartment for us in West Bremerton and commuted from there to Seattle five nights a week.

In Bremerton, we reconnected with Hillcrest Assembly of God, where Bill Shaw was still the Youth pastor. When he found we were back in town, he asked the two of us to help out as Youth leaders. So we began working with the Youth, and we also got to know Dan, the Youth intern. Dan and his wife, Lisa, quickly became our friends, and we enjoyed spending time with them, particularly relishing the joy they had in their young daughter and newborn son, as we were looking forward to being parents soon ourselves.

One night, while on duty in my guard shack, Theresa called me, and she was bawling. Through tears, she related the story. Dan and Lisa had been driving in Port Orchard, with their infant and their nephew in the backseat. Dan’s sister-in-law had been several cars behind, with his daughter in her car. As Dan drove up a hill, a drunk driver came over the crest toward them at 80 miles per hour—in their lane! The cars crumpled like soda cans. All five people died on impact. Dan’s sister-in-law and daughter saw the whole thing, not more than 100 yards away.

I desperately wanted to leave so I could go comfort Theresa, but my boss wouldn’t allow it. I thought about quitting that job right then and there, but having been unemployed so recently, I knew I couldn’t do that to my family. Furious, I bit my tongue and sat in my shack, performing my duties through the uneventful night. I would have dared anyone to try doing anything suspicious that night.

The funeral for Dan’s family was the largest there had ever been in Bremerton up to that point. Over 1,000 people attended that service at Hillcrest. It was literally standing room only; the church couldn’t seat that many people. We had people packing the lower level, crowding the balcony, and pressing in from the front doors as they stood outside. As funerals go, it was an awesome one. There is nothing good I can say about a tragedy like that; it’s always a sad event, but the sadness is mitigated a little when we’re reminded that death is not the end. Yes, we mourn at the passing of a loved one, but like the Newsboys sing, “This morning, we don’t mourn like those who have no hope.” I know I will see Dan again.

Chapter 2:

A CANDLE EXTINGUISHED

JANUARY 19, 1984, eight and a half months into Theresa’s pregnancy, I got to go with her to one of her final doctor visits. I didn’t usually get to go because of my work schedule, but this time the schedules lined up well enough for me to accompany her. As the doctor performed all of his checks, I watched his face grow from confident to confused to concerned. Something wasn’t right.

“What’s wrong,” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, “but it’s not palpable.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t hear a heartbeat. I don’t know why—the baby might have turned or something—I just can’t get a good reading. I’m going to schedule you for an ultrasound to find out what’s going on.”

Theresa had not grown as large as women normally do when pregnant, but she was pretty small to begin with. We, along with the doctor, had just assumed the baby was small too. None of us wanted to find out that there was some horrible deformity. But we went through with the ultrasound, hoping for the best, and we went back to the doctor’s office to wait for the results.

“Mr. and Mrs. Walls,” he said, “I’m sorry. The fetus has expired.”

Worse than all our fears, reality crashed in. Our baby had died. We had lost our Jennifer Ann without ever knowing her. The story of her life was over; the end had come before the beginning. The comfort God had given us at Dan’s funeral, such a short time before, now remained the farthest thought from our minds.

We scheduled an induction for the next day in order to remove the fetus.

That night, we went over to my mom’s house, trying to find support to deal with our grief. Then the unexpected happened. Theresa started going into labor. We didn’t really know that was what it was; this was our first child, and we didn’t know what to expect. But we called the doctor and explained the symptoms to him, and he confirmed it. Theresa was beginning labor, and we needed to get her to the hospital quickly. He called the hospital, and they were ready for us when we arrived.

They wheeled Theresa into the birthing room and set her up as if it were a normal birth. Then she started getting sick.

No! I thought. This can’t be happening! This is all wrong! Lord, where is your miracle? I had fully expected a miracle. Everything had been perfect: this was our first child, our marriage was strong, I had a steady job, and we were serving the Lord at our church. Life could not have been better. And then the morning’s news had come. Yet I knew that it couldn’t have been accurate—God wouldn’t do that to me! The doctor had simply forgotten to clean the wax out of his ears that morning. Maybe the ultrasound machine had been on the fritz. Or perhaps the baby was dead; my God can raise the dead! Only, that wasn’t happening. God wasn’t showing up as a Savior. He wasn’t bringing a miraculous healing. He had taken my firstborn. Was He going to take my wife as well?

Theresa had started vomiting, all of the monitors were erratic, and nobody would tell me what was going on. I’m a person who likes to fix people. I have a passion for helping people put their lives back together, for working through tough emotions with them, for healing relationships. It crushed me to be so helpless! I stood by, watching things fall apart, unable to do anything. We had family showing up at the hospital. Pastor Jennings was there. All kinds of people were here to encourage and support us, and I had no idea what to tell them.

I remember walking out of that room before the delivery, when I couldn’t stand the thought that Theresa might see me crying. I walked through a fog, passing Pastor Jennings without even seeing him. I walked into the bathroom, grabbed the sink to hold myself up, and stared into the mirror. I can still see that image in my mind: my face, red and swollen with grief, tears streaming down my cheeks. Nothing made sense. Why was this happening?

After it was all said and done, the doctor filled me in on exactly what had happened during the delivery. It turned out that the dead fetus had caused a reaction in Theresa’s body. She had lost all the amniotic fluid, and the little body had been resting in her dry womb. This contact with the dead flesh had actually poisoned her bloodstream. She had been dying in that hospital room, but thankfully, the doctors had been able to stabilize her. There was my miracle, though I hadn’t seen it at the time.

In the bathroom, I splashed some water on my face and dried it. Then I walked back to the delivery room. Theresa had been stabilized, and the doctor informed me that the baby was coming out now.

When the baby came out, she only weighed one pound. I saw the obvious birth defects: clubbed hands and feet, a cleft palate, and skin that looked odd, sort of unfinished. Had she lived, the doctor said, it would have been a miserable, short existence.

The one miracle that we did experience right away had to do with vision. I saw all these defects. Theresa didn’t, nor did my mom, who came into the room soon after. The two of them saw the baby fully formed and perfect, even though they held her tiny body and looked closely. They saw no defects, and I think God granted them that small comfort: they saw her the way He did.

The doctor, who had been with us from near the beginning of the pregnancy, had left the room. One of the nurses soon reported that he was outside, face pressed against the wall, pounding his fist in anguish. And he did this for a living! I respected him all the more when I learned how he shared our grief.

The labor and delivery had taken us quite a few hours into January 20, and the doctors wanted to keep Theresa in the hospital for several days to make sure she recovered from the ordeal. In order to spare her any more grief than she already had, though, the hospital staff put her in a solitary room away from the maternity ward. But it wasn’t quite far enough. In the middle of the night, she could still hear the babies being wheeled in the Isolettes to their mothers for feeding.

I stayed with Theresa almost the entire time she was in the hospital. On the twenty-first I left briefly to pick up some personal effects and to get Theresa some flowers to help cheer her up. At the same time, I was trying to deal with my own emotions. Jennifer was supposed to have been my first child, but she had never even gotten a chance at life. I couldn’t express the grief that threatened to consume me. My head swam, and I became disoriented. Fortunately, I was able to distance myself enough from my emotions to remain focused enough to drive, but it wasn’t easy.

Then, about halfway back to the hospital, God showed up. I reached down to turn on the radio to focus my mind on something other than the pain of loss. Immediately, a new song began. I had never heard it before. The song, “After the Rain,” had just been released by the Bill Gaither Trio, and the chorus hit me like a warm blanket:

After the rain, there’ll be singing,

After the clouds are gone.

Sunshine will break its way through darkness.

Night only lasts so long.

As difficult as this journey was, I suddenly knew that God would faithfully lead us through it. He had been there with us the whole way, and He would not leave. We would have to go through the darkness, but it would be temporary—day would come again!

And then God spoke directly to me, not in an audible voice, but with these words that filled my mind with a certainty that could not have come from me: “I will never take another child of yours in that way again.”

I can’t say that instantly took all the pain away or put a spring back into my step, but it gave me hope. Yes, we would have to carry the pain for awhile, we would have to deal with it, but we would come through it. Somehow, God would bring good out of this situation. And He would not take us through this again. When I returned to the hospital, I shared God’s message with Theresa, and it brought comfort in the midst of her grief.

While Theresa recuperated in the hospital, I began to put things in order for our return to “normal” life. At one point soon after the delivery, a nurse had come in to ask us, “Do you want to bury your child, or would you like us to get rid of her for you?”

“Of course we’re going to bury our child!” I snapped. I was enraged, though I held most of it inside. What a thing to ask! How dare she imply that our child was no more than a piece of garbage! Was she going to simply drop the body down a chute to the furnace? What was this, The Giver? “Get rid of her”? How can you ask something like that to a grieving couple, whose dream of being parents has just been smashed in this tragedy?

Once I had calmed down, I had to make arrangements for the funeral. I had the task—one I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy—of going into the funeral home and picking out an eighteen-inch casket and an outfit of clothing. I picked a pretty wooden casket colored to look like marble and a tiny pink dress and bonnet.

As I made arrangements with the funeral director, a compassionate man, I asked, “Could I see Jennifer?”

He replied, “Mr. Walls, I don’t think it’s a good idea. She has had an autopsy, and she doesn’t look the same.”

But I insisted, and the director acquiesced. So he left to prepare the body for viewing and returned when he had finished. Pastor Jennings had come along to support me, which was a real bonding experience for the two of us, and he walked with me into the viewing room.

We hadn’t taken any pictures of Jennifer at the delivery, so I had brought my camera along in the hope of having something to remember her by. As the pastor and I walked in, I began taking pictures of the casket, the body, and the whole setup. Suddenly, I really looked through the viewfinder. The sight I saw horrified me. The camera slowly lowered. I looked into the casket.

Panic gripped me. “Where’s her face?! I can’t find her face!”

The pastor, confused, ran out of the room to get the funeral director. When the director arrived, he calmed me down, determined the cause of my panic, and compassionately explained, “Mr. Walls, I did try to tell you that she has had an autopsy. During that procedure, the face was essentially destroyed.”

Of course, I was upset, but I let the emotions bleed off. I knew there was nothing to be done. It wasn’t the director’s fault that my child had died. It wasn’t his fault that she had needed the autopsy. All he had done was show me compassion and treat me with respect. I thanked him, and since the arrangements had all been made, I returned to the hospital. I did not show Theresa those photos for years. I did not want to spoil the miraculous vision God had given her in that hospital: the vision of Jennifer, whole and complete.

The funeral took place soon after Theresa got out of the hospital. We began at the funeral home and then held the committal service at the graveside. Theresa’s brother Jack had agreed to be our sole pallbearer. He carried the casket out of the funeral home to the limo for the short ride to the cemetery.

The scene at the grave site could have come straight out of a movie. The overcast sky poured rain on us as if the angels themselves were crying. Many people from the church, holding black umbrellas, surrounded us, mourning with us as we mourned. The wind whipped our plastic chairs into the backs of our legs as we sang a hymn. Pastor Jennings delivered a wonderful, encouraging message. But then, when it was over, one by one, the people filed away. We were left alone. We looked at each other, and that’s when the sobbing really began. We stood for many minutes, holding each other, and finally we walked to our car and drove to my mother’s house, where she was holding a reception.

The reception was very difficult for Theresa. She was very much an introvert and didn’t want to deal with people in the midst of dealing with her grief. For much of the reception, she sat away from the crowd and talked with one other person. I reacted very differently. As an extrovert, I found it comforting to surround myself with people. Their company helped me to escape from my grief and to normalize it. By gathering friends around me, I could assure myself that life did indeed go on.

Our different personalities produced a strain in our relationship in the days to come. Personality conflicts can be a struggle in any marriage, but they can be deadly after such a tragedy. I would go to church and sit up front, talking and laughing with those around me. Theresa would go to church and sit in the balcony with one friend. She would look down at me and despise me in her heart. After church, I would want to go out with friends. She would want to go home. I would go out anyway.

The strain got so bad that our marriage might have ended if things hadn’t changed. It took me some time to figure out what was really going on, but at last I did see it. The solution wasn’t something that happened overnight. It took several weeks for me to realize how much she needed me and how I had abandoned her. As I realized that, I also came to realize that I needed her just as much. I had isolated myself as much as she had. Instead of connecting with the one person who was going through the same thing I was, I busied myself in a crowd. And let me tell you, you can be very alone in the midst of a crowd. I don’t think our friends realized what was going on, or they would have called us out—they knew how important a strong marriage was to your Christian testimony; divorce rates were on the rise even then.

But by surrounding myself with people, not even letting my emotions show, I wasn’t truly dealing with my emotions. Theresa, on the other hand, by keeping people out, was simply wallowing in hers. She didn’t really want to keep me out, but I had turned my back on her. Running from my emotions had kept me from seeing that she needed my help to deal with hers. I had put myself before my wife. The Lord had to remind me: while I had lost a little girl, I still had a wife to care for. She was still my responsibility. Once I realized this, I began to change my behavior. Even though communication wasn’t our strongest suit, Theresa and I needed to rely on each other; the only two people who could understand our grief were the two of us. In time, we were able to work things out.

I don’t know that we ever really got over it, though. To be honest, we just started to exist with it. Even though it looked like we were moving forward, I don’t think I truly dealt with the loss of my daughter for years. Her twenty-seventh birthday was—would have been—just a few months ago. Do you ever really get through the pain? Do you ever fully deal with it? We existed with it for years and found new ways to fill the void, but even though the screaming pain was gone, muffled by other things, we still felt a quiet, dull pain.

It still hurts.

Theresa had been unable to return to our apartment after she left the hospital; everything there reminded her of our lost child. It fell to me to clean the place out, including emptying the little nursery we had made, and get the place ready for new tenants. The two of us then moved into her parents’ house for a short time. Now, Theresa’s parents had been foster parents for many years, and Theresa had grown up having foster brothers and sisters. At this time, her parents were fostering two young boys who became very close to us.

The doctor had advised us not to wait too long before trying again to have children, but with such a short time since Jennifer’s passing, we didn’t feel we were ready quite yet. One thing we thought might help fill the void left by Jennifer was to become foster parents ourselves. And what better kids to start with than two boys who already liked us? So we went through the licensing process after moving into a new apartment in East Bremerton, and we worked it out with her parents and with the foster care system that these two boys would come to live with us.

We went from being a couple expecting their first newborn to being a couple with a toddler and a five-year-old. It was quite a transition, but it really helped. Those boys brought such joy to our lives for the time they were with us. They called us “Mom” and “Dad,” and hearing that brightened our day every time.

I still worked night security at the shipyard, commuting back to Bremerton every day. One day after getting home from work, I had to take the boys to visit their birth mother. So they hopped into my 1970 banana-yellow Mustang (I loved that car!), and we hit the road. After dropping them off in Poulsbo, about fifteen miles away, I drove home along the water through Tracyton, which is normally a lovely scenic drive on a winding rural road. Houses and fields turn to forested ravines that soon open up to a spectacular cliffside view of Dyes Inlet. That day, though, I couldn’t enjoy the scenery. My eyelids were heavy, but I needed to get home because we were hosting a youth group leadership meeting with Pastor Jennings and Pastor Bill. Then I saw a police cruiser coming toward me, and by instinct, I looked down at the speedometer. When I looked up again, drowsiness overwhelmed me. Though still awake, I didn’t realize the road was curving. The road went left, and my car went straight.

The car flipped onto its side and came to rest in a ditch. Jolted awake by adrenaline, I crawled out of the car, not thinking I might be hurt. I made my way up to a nearby house (this was long before cell phones), and I called a tow truck and Pastor Bill. Both said they would come help, so I went back out to the car. A man with a truck and tow rope saw me there as he drove by, and he stopped to pull the car out of the ditch and onto the side of the road. Then I noticed the miracle that had saved my life. Where my car had stopped, a low stump stuck out of the ground. It was this stump that had stopped my car. Beyond the stump, the ditch became a deep ravine, and I could only imagine what would have happened to me, had the car gone down there.

The tow truck brought the car to our place, and I figured now that everyone was here and I was safe, we might as well have our meeting. But during the meeting, I became ill. As I sat, I began getting chills and nausea. I let everyone know I wasn’t feeling well, but no one realized how bad the situation was. We all dismissed it as shakiness after the crash. But it kept getting worse. After the meeting, I found I couldn’t even stand up without vomiting. Theresa took me straight to the hospital. After a few tests in the ER, they admitted me right away. I had an enlarged spleen. Apparently, I had hit the steering wheel or something, and it had caused my spleen to react by expanding in size, resulting in all sorts of problems.

They weren’t quite sure what to do, but it would probably require surgery. So they kept me in the hospital overnight, while everyone I knew was praying. The next morning, the doctors checked again one last time before determining a course of action. Miraculously, my spleen had shrunk to normal size! I felt fine. After double-checking everything (again), they found I was perfectly healthy. It still amazes me to think that the car’s body took more to fix than my own.

While in the hospital, Theresa had called my boss to tell him about the accident and that I needed some time off. He seemed upset that I wanted to take time off to recuperate. That was the last straw. The commute was killing me, the hours didn’t let me sleep, I had gotten in an accident, and now he was getting mad that I needed to recover from what had looked to be a serious injury. I went to an employment agency to find a new job.

The agency connected me with R&K Market in the nearby town of Silverdale, a small retailer, not much more than a convenience store, that needed a cashier. I had done retail work before, so I had no problem running the till and taking care of the store. It appeared that the job would work out well, and we eventually moved to Silverdale so I wouldn’t have as far to go to get home. In the beginning, everything seemed right. I quickly took to my responsibilities as a cashier and stocker. At church, I served with Hillcrest Assembly’s music team as prepararation for my jump into ministry, to fulfill the call that the Lord had given me several years prior. What could go wrong? Little did I know, the enemy had a plan to sideline me.

For some reason, I hadn’t paid close attention to R&K’s magazine rack during the application process. Hidden there was a demon from my past, waiting to attack me again. While stocking one night, I received a shock: R&K sold pornographic magazines. This was a dilemma. Years earlier, long before my relationship with Theresa, I had developed a porn addiction. But I thought I had overcome it. I had thought this stronghold in my life was long gone, but as I unwrapped the packaging on these periodicals, they pulled at me. I was sure I had beaten this enemy, but all of a sudden, it was staring me in the face.

It began with a curiosity. One little peek surely wouldn’t hurt. Then I started to briefly skim the contents. It wasn’t long before reading these magazines became a nightly routine. Sure, the guilt was there, especially when I would go home to Theresa. It was like I walked into the house in a daze. I had all these images in my mind that I didn’t want there. I had this hidden sin that I could not even get up the courage to confess. But the desire to look seemed even stronger than my guilt. It was certainly stronger than my willpower.

Why me? I wondered. Why do I deal with this? Was it something wrong inside me? Was I somehow defective? Was God using this as a thorn in my flesh, to prove the sufficiency of His grace, or was this something He wanted me to break free from? Could He still work in my life, even while I had this problem? If no one born of God continues to sin (1 John 5:18), was I even truly saved? Did my intentions count for anything? Even from the start, I wanted to break this habit, but I could not resist.

Addictions are like that. I don’t pretend to be an expert on spiritual warfare, but I don’t use the word demon lightly. Whether it is truly a literal demon or merely some twisted aspect of our broken human nature, there is undeniably a spiritual component to many addictions (porn, alcohol, drugs, or whatever). There comes a point when that temptation is sitting there in front of you, and you don’t even want to give in. You know there will be consequences, you know the guilt you’ll carry, you know it has been so long since giving in has brought you any joy whatsoever, and you even know that Jesus Christ died so that you could be free from the addiction. But you give in anyway. If you’ve ever been there, you know there’s more than just your own will at work. You know what I mean when I talk about a demon.

Theresa was no fool, of course. She recognized that something had changed in me, especially in my attitude toward her. The time came when I couldn’t bear it anymore: I confessed to my wife. At first, it seemed like she was in a daze too. She was justifiably upset, of course; it was like I had been cheating on her every day for weeks. But she didn’t quite know how to react. She had thought that my porn problem had been a phase of adolescence (we had briefly talked about it before, after the Playboy incident in Juanita), but now she discovered there was more to it. She really struggled with the tension between her righteous anger and the need to forgive and encourage me in the battle.

On the other hand, I struggled between a desire not to hurt her and a desire to be open with her. I would not do it again, I promised. Surely now that the sin was in the open, my willpower would be stronger. But my willpower would never be strong enough. It might work for awhile, but eventually a new temptation would overwhelm it. But confession was hard, and her reactions would escalate, growing more and more volatile as the betrayals mounted. “Why would you let this happen? Why can’t you just say no? Why would you even open the cover?”

Finally, I told her I would get help. After all, my own willpower hadn’t been working. So I sought counsel from Pastor Bill and Pastor Jennings. If anyone could help me fight this darkness, surely my pastors could. But even then, I don’t believe any of us understood this sin and the hold it can have on a person. They basically gave me a slap on the wrist and told me not to do it anymore. We were all naïve.

As I look back, I believe we didn’t take the sin seriously enough. The church today seems to understand the devastating effect pornography can have on a person’s life, but back then it was not understood. We did not treat my sin as if I had committed adultery, but in retrospect that is exactly what I had done. Jesus tells us that to look at a woman lustfully is to commit adultery (Matthew 5:28), and if He views it that way, why should we take it any less seriously? The mental state is exactly the same: I want what I want—the gratification provided to me by that woman—and nothing else matters right now.

The pastors did provide accountability, though, and that helped. At the same time, I took encouragement from a new friend. A man named Brian walked into R&K one evening. As we chatted, we discovered that we were both Christians. Brian was involved in street ministry—ministering to the homeless, the addicted, and the downtrodden—and he soon began to minister to me. I quickly grew to trust him, and in that very first conversation, I found myself confessing to him about my pornography addiction. We prayed together, and I felt renewed.

The encouragement and accountability from Brian and my pastors gave me new strength to resist the temptations. More and more, I followed their counsel to refrain. I still struggled daily, but the battle seemed easier.

Soon, God began to open doors for me to answer His call into ministry, and that renewed vision helped more than anything. As Proverbs 29:18 says, “where there is no vision, the people perish” (KJV). God worked in me, and the bondage seemed to lift. The more I delved into His Word, the more easily self-control came. But I never did completely escape that demon while I worked at R&K, and it came back to haunt me later. Sometimes, fleeing from temptation is all it takes to escape, but this bondage would not be so easily broken.

Chapter 3:

A NEW CANDLE LIGHTS

MANY BLESSINGS entered our lives while I worked at R&K, even while I was caught up in sin. For one, we still had the joy of being foster parents. Another blessing came when Pastor Bill approached me one day and told me about the correspondence courses at Berean School of the Bible (now Berean University).

“I know you never finished Bible school,” he said. “Here’s an opportunity to finish your studies and get credentialed.”

Pastor Bill had just pointed me toward my heart’s desire. I truly wanted to be a pastor; I found no greater joy than those times when God used me to minister to others. And here was my opportunity to finish what I had begun, to really get back on the track that I knew God had planned for me.

But the biggest blessing God gave us at that time was the news that Theresa was pregnant again. We rejoiced that He would be so gracious as to give us our own child. We loved those boys that we were fostering, but we all knew it was only a temporary situation. In fact, soon after Cassandra was born, we decided it was best to pull out of the foster care system entirely.

The pregnancy was great. Only once did we get scared. Theresa began having excessive bleeding early in the pregnancy; this happened before we had moved to Silverdale. Pastor Bill and I went to the apartment and prayed over Theresa. The bleeding soon stopped, and the rest of the pregnancy passed without a hitch.

Before we knew it, eight and a half months had passed. It was now February 1985, and we were faced with one of the worst snowstorms we could remember. Everywhere we looked, we saw white, and it was still coming down with a fury. Even though I didn’t want to leave Theresa home alone, I still had to go to work. So I decided to take her to her mother’s house. We drove along the new highway in Bremerton, Waaga Way. The road was built to handle rain well, with a parabolic shape to make the water run off both sides. That worked fine with normal Washington rain, but not with snow and ice.

My 1970 Mustang didn’t have tire chains or studs or anything. I was a young guy, and I felt invincible. Suddenly, I hit a patch of ice as we drove around a curve on a hill. We slid off the road completely, spun around, and came to a stop. No big deal. It had startled us, but no damage had been done. But then our car filled with light. We turned our heads just in time to see a VW Rabbit hit the same patch of ice and barrel toward us.

I reached for Theresa, and she jumped into my lap. The Rabbit slammed into us, smashing the passenger door. When we came to rest again, I looked at Theresa. Aside from some shallow cuts from the spray of glass, she appeared uninjured. We climbed out of the car, to talk to the Rabbit’s driver. Then a truck pulled to a stop near us. A lady got out and offered Theresa a ride into town, which we accepted. Theresa soon made it safely to her parents’ house (though I didn’t know that at the time).

Meanwhile, the Rabbit’s driver and I stood on the side of the road, watching my car get hit four or five more times as other cars flew around the icy curve. Most of those who hit my car recovered and kept going. Several didn’t regain control, though. We were joined at the roadside by other drivers, including one older gentleman who had managed to stop before hitting anything.

Forty-five minutes after the original accident, a police officer arrived. He quickly took in the situation—the icy road, the speeding cars, and the fading daylight—and instructed me to move my car far off the road so we could go somewhere safe and talk. I gladly complied.

I jumped into my car and started pulling off. Then the officer yelled, “Look out!”

I braced against the steering wheel. Once again, my car flooded with light. A car slammed into my trunk so hard that the back of my car collapsed like an accordion. My car slid and hit the officer as he ran, throwing him fifteen feet through the air. When I came to rest in the ditch, I managed to shove the door open. I fell out onto the ground, unable to walk. I turned my head to the side and saw the policeman lying far from me, facedown in the snow.

The paramedics arrived soon after, but it had grown fully dark by that time. Of course, their vehicle wound up in the ditch as well. The paramedic team rushed to the downed officer, the only casualty they could see. They hovered over him. I could see them there, but I could not cry out. Then, seemingly from nowhere, the older man who had stopped earlier ran over to me, stretched out on top of me to keep me warm, and yelled, “Hey, we have a man down over here!”

The paramedics looked up, shocked that they had missed someone, and half of them ran over to me. They treated my injured leg and then moved me into the police car, since their vehicle was in the ditch and an ambulance hadn’t arrived.

I was so scared. I kept repeating, “Don’t let them hit me again!”

The paramedics just looked at each other in confusion. They didn’t know until later how many accidents had happened there that night; they had no idea what I meant. It turned out that 40 percent of the accidents that night happened on that hill. They just kept piling up in a chain reaction.

Finally, the ambulance arrived. They transferred me into the ambulance, and I remember seeing the older gentleman standing at the ambulance door. I will never forget his smiling face or the way he said, “You take care now.” He was so comforting. It seemed almost as if he were an angel sent by God that night to watch over me. I don’t know that he was, but I don’t know that he wasn’t. Anyway, that’s what I thought when I received such comfort from his smile and his words.

At the hospital, the doctors took care of my injured leg and put me on crutches. But I was still uneasy; I didn’t know if Theresa had made it safely home, and she didn’t know where I was.

Meanwhile, Theresa’s dad ventured out to the scene of the accident to find out what was going on. When he arrived, he saw my poor, mangled Mustang (it was banana-yellow; how could he miss it?) in the ditch and asked the bystanders where I was.

“There was another accident. He’s been taken to the hospital.”

With such limited information, he figured the hospital was the best place for me. And he had seen firsthand how bad things were out there, so he simply went home. Theresa, on hearing her dad’s story, began having what appeared to be contractions. Her dad didn’t want to risk her and the baby by taking them out in the storm, so he called for an ambulance.

The same ambulance crew that had taken me came for Theresa. When they checked her out, though, the paramedics were frightened because they couldn’t find a fetal heart tone. They rushed her to the hospital, where the doctors soon found that the baby was simply turned the wrong way. Everything was fine. Of course, I didn’t find out about any of this until later. When Theresa arrived at the hospital, I had already been released, and my mom and stepdad had taken me to their place. What a night!

The next couple of weeks were uneventful by comparison. Actually, they were uneventful by normal standards. They passed quickly, and the time soon came for our baby to be born. My banana-yellow Mustang was no more. Fortunately, our neighbors in the apartment complex had agreed to let us use their car to get to the hospital when Theresa went into labor.

On the morning Theresa began labor, I was sleeping in because I had worked late the night before. She thought it would be pretty easy for awhile and she could let me sleep, but when her mucous plug dropped, she realized this was the real deal and it was time to get me up. She quietly walked into the room, gently put her hand on my shoulder, and said, “Hun, I lost my mucous plug.”

It was as if someone had fired a gun. I bounced out of bed, jumped into the shower, jumped out of the shower, flew into my clothes, and bolted out of the door to the car. Meanwhile, our neighbor had come over to help Theresa get ready. They could hear outside Rawrawrawrawrawraw as I tried to start the car. I was so nervous that I was flooding the engine. Our neighbor walked Theresa to the car, and I finally managed to get it started.

From our East Bremerton apartment, we had to drive nearly 20 miles to the doctor’s office in Poulsbo so that he could confirm that Theresa was in labor. Don’t ask me why the hospital couldn’t have done that; it was just his usual practice. Once he had confirmed that, we drove back to Harrison Hospital in East Bremerton, close to where we’d started. In that hour of driving, I expected every minute that Theresa would tell me to pull over and help because the baby was coming now. Fortunately, we made it to the hospital without that occurrence.

Labor took forever—hours and hours—it lasted all through the night. I almost wished she had told me to pull over. At last, they determined they would have to perform an emergency C-section. Theresa was not dilating properly; she kept closing up again. So the doctors performed the C-section, and I had the opportunity to watch on March 14, 1985, as my daughter, Cassandra Lynn Walls, came into the world.

Chapter 4:

LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE

AS I NEARED THE END of my credentialing courses, I knew I needed to leave my job at R&K Market because I couldn’t handle full-time studies on top of a full-time job. I had such a passion to move in the direction God had called me that I knew I had to put aside everything that detracted from that goal. But I still had to provide for my family somehow, so I looked into unemployment security. The unemployment office had a program to provide financial assistance to students in the form of a monthly stipend. I knew they had helped finance plenty of students enrolled in their accredited schools, but they hadn’t yet financed anyone taking correspondence courses. Nevertheless, I walked into their offices full of confidence because I had a solid plan. It was March 1986. I would have my credentials in October, when I would have the opportunity to interview for several pastoral positions. I would only need assistance for seven months, after which I would have a job. Because I laid out that plan, they approved me for full assistance. I could now afford to leave R&K and study full-time.

Theresa was very supportive of me during this process. She sought to help me answer God’s call in any way she could. In fact, there was one time when she was a little too helpful. One day while I was out, she thought to ease some of my stress by taking one of my tests for me. When I got home, she told me what she had done, and I was flabbergasted—totally speechless. I appreciated her desire to help me, but I couldn’t comprehend how taking one of my tests was supposed to be a good idea. Needless to say, this only increased my stress level. I waited for the results with trepidation. Since I was studying full-time, I had been able to keep my grades up. Theresa, who had not been studying my materials, did less well. The test came back with a big F, and I immediately ordered the materials to retake it.

When I had finished the Christian Workers coursework (part one of three in the program) and begun the Licensing process (part two, followed by Ordination), I sent out résumés to twelve churches that I knew were looking to fill Youth pastor positions. To my amazement, I received nine responses! As I thought about it, I realized that so many responses had come because I had said on my résumé that I had no financial requirements. I had no expectations of a salary; of course they wanted to hire me!

The first church we visited was the Assembly of God in Montesano, Washington, about an hour and a half southwest of Bremerton. We arrived at our motel, and as we unpacked the car there, I realized I had left my suit at home. I couldn’t interview without it; I didn’t have any other professional clothes with me. So we jumped back into the car and drove as fast as we could back to Bremerton. We arrived safely, and I ran into the house, grabbed the suit, and got into the car again. We flew down the road. I would not be late for this interview! But then I found myself behind another car. As soon as I could, I passed him, speeding for all my car was worth. But as I passed that car, I glanced down a side street to see a police cruiser sitting there! It was too late to slow down, so I just kept going, nervously glancing in my rearview mirror. After a minute, I realized he wasn’t coming after me.

“Thank you, Lord,” I said, “for blinding that cop.”

We finally arrived in Montesano again, and I pulled into the church, suit on, just in time for my interview, which went pretty well. The pastor, Lloyd, had scheduled me to lead worship that evening, so I could get a feel for the church and they could get a feel for me. As I led, I felt a peace about that place. I felt that God might be confirming that this was where I was supposed to be; it was a good feeling. But no decisions were made yet. The pastor had another candidate to check out, and we had another church to visit.

A few days later, Theresa and I drove to a church in the little town of Onalaska, Washington, and met the pastor of the church and his wife. We were supposed to stay the night, but Theresa became violently ill. We thought it best to drive home. Strangely, though, as soon as we passed the border of the town, she started feeling much better. Was this a sign from God? Were we not supposed to be there? That was certainly how it seemed to us.

That night, we decided to head back to Montesano to check out their Wednesday night service, so I called Pastor Lloyd to see if that would be okay. He said that was fine, but he wanted to let me know that he would have the other Youth pastor candidate helping to lead that service. He also offered to let us stay the night at his house, and we accepted. So we drove down. The other candidate, Les, did really well leading the service. Though his style made it obvious that he’d previously been a Children’s pastor, he also obviously had talent and flexibility to take on new roles. After the service, we went back to the pastor’s house while he interviewed and talked with Les.

Later, as we were getting ready for bed, the pastor cracked open the door to his downstairs guest room and called to us, “Are my kids awake?” Just in case I hadn’t gotten the hint when he referred to us as his kids, Pastor Lloyd confirmed the message when he came downstairs and, holding out his hand, said, “Welcome aboard.” He hired me on the spot, since Theresa and I also felt that this was where we were supposed to be.

The Youth pastor position was full-time, which was a pleasant surprise for us. It provided a salary of $800 per month—not bad in 1986, especially with a parsonage next to the church and no utility costs. For a first-time pastor, this was a cushy job! We headed back to Bremerton the next day to get our affairs in order and prepare to move.

The job started pretty well. It seemed I was a hit with the congregation, and I certainly enjoyed being a pastor. I felt like I was actually fulfilling my calling. The pastor did have some pretty rigid requirements for me, though. My work week went from Tuesday through Saturday; Pastor Lloyd considered Sunday to be a day off for me. I thought that didn’t make a lot of sense for any pastor—Sundays are usually pretty busy—but that wasn’t a huge deal. A bigger issue was the requirement that I wear a full suit, with jacket and tie, every work day. I had no problem wearing a suit to the office, but when I had to wear it to all the Youth group functions, I felt it was a hindrance to the ministry. How was I supposed to relate to these kids when I looked like a stuffy, old businessman?

Pastor Lloyd was in his sixties, which probably contributed to his ideas of proper attire, but I was still in my early twenties. As a young pastor, I was expecting to be motivated and inspired by my Senior pastor: a spiritual champion whose example I would be challenged to live up to. Such was not the case here. Pastor Lloyd had been worn down by his years of service, and to top it off, he also suffered from depression. Every Sunday, in our pre-service ritual, I would hold his hands and jump up and down, praying for God’s Spirit, trying to pump him up, trying to motivate him. At times, we could not overcome the heaviness on him, and it seemed there was little spiritual freedom in those services.

At other times, though, we did see the Spirit move. I remember one time in particular, when I was leading worship, I could just feel the Spirit falling on us, and I heard a crash behind me. I turned around to see that the pastor had just fallen to his knees. I knew God had just gotten a hold of him, and I rejoiced because I knew he would be changed from then on. But I was wrong. It didn’t last. For that moment, he had been full of the Spirit, but soon he fell back on the same old, worn-out mentality.

We did see some good things during our time at Montesano, and God opened some pretty impressive doors for the Word. Once a week, I had the opportunity to hold a Bible study in the city jail, which was an awesome ministry. The maximum-security guys couldn’t attend, but I was allowed to go meet with them one-on-one. I remember having some amazing conversations with this one guy who had murdered his girlfriend but had come to Christ while in prison. He had a lot of fear, and I got to help him work through that.

I also became very close to one of the police officers who attended the church. I used to ride along with him to get to know the community and the people who lived there. One day, he came into my office with a lady who was crying. As he explained what had happened, my heart broke for her. The lady’s husband was a Sheriff’s Deputy, and he had anger issues. He had been verbally abusive in the past, and this time, he had actually choked her—I could see the marks on her neck. My friend had brought her to me in the hopes that I could talk her through the situation. So I talked with her, and I ultimately was able to talk to her husband and schedule a time for him to come see me.

When the Deputy walked in for his appointment, I was suitably intimidated, though I tried not to show it. He was a very large man, tall and strong, and as we talked, he would half-jokingly make little comments to try to keep me intimidated.

“You know,” he said, “if I wanted to, I could throw you out that window.”

Sure, he probably could. But I knew he was living in sin, and it was my responsibility to call him out of it, no matter what he said or did. And the highlight of my ministry in Montesano was when I saw that man commit his heart to the Lord. I saw such a transformation in him, the likes of which I’d never seen before. He made a 180-degree turnaround. He went from a hardened, angry, abusive man to a gentle, loving, and compassionate one. He began serving in the church, and he became a great husband to his wife.

That man’s changed life was the one really bright spot of my ministry in Montesano; most of the rest left me feeling like a failure. Some of that was my fault. I had a dark place in my spirit where the devil could get to me. One night, Theresa was out of town on a Women’s retreat, and Cassandra was at Grandma’s. I had the house to myself, and with nothing to do, I watched TV. It was not wise for me to watch TV by myself. When we are alone, we are often more vulnerable to the devil’s attacks. Any man who has struggled with pornography knows how dangerous it is to watch TV alone. Sometimes, it can be dangerous to watch TV at all.

That night, I began watching something inappropriate. It wasn’t hard-core pornography, but it was nowhere near wholesome. It started my mind on the road to lustful fantasy. When I finally caught my thoughts to take them captive, I became so enraged at my sin that I threw a hammer through the TV! I ran out of my house, into the church, and straight up to the altar, where I fell to my knees, crying and praying.

Pastor Lloyd’s parsonage lay on the other side of the church from ours, and when he saw that someone was in the church, he came to see who it was. When he found me there, he naturally asked what was wrong. We sat down in the front pew, and I confessed about the immorality I’d watched and the evil thoughts I’d had.

Then came a response I didn’t expect: “Don’t worry about it.”

The pastor began justifying my sin! He started telling me personal stories of his life, stories that I thought were a bit too personal. They were actually pretty disturbing. I suppose he was trying to say that I was young and would grow out of it. If so, he had no idea what he was talking about. Of course, most of us ministers in the eighties didn’t understand the addiction that grows from pornography and fantasizing. It’s a very dangerous sin, with very real consequences on earth, not to mention the consequences on Judgment Day!

I left that discussion feeling very uncomfortable. I had needed the pastor to lead me, to call my sin a sin and help me pray through it. I had needed him to be strong and to come through for me, but I left in disappointment. I walked back to my house and wondered, How am I going to explain this to Theresa? When she returned, I told her the truth, and she took it better than I’d expected. The issue faded as our life went on, but the sin would come back to haunt me because I hadn’t dealt with it.

Of course, there were other problems during our time there that were not of my making. A big problem was the attitude that Pastor Lloyd’s wife had toward us. We were never good enough, it seemed. One expression of her attitude really got under my skin, and I will never forget it because it happened every Sunday. Polyester pants were in style in those days, so those were the kind of pants I wore. I’ve been a heavyset guy for most of my adult life, and as other big men know, pants tend to bunch up over a man’s thigh when he sits. Polyester shows creases very well, so when I stood up, my pants would have lines over the thighs. Every Sunday without fail, the pastor’s wife would turn to me in front of a group of women and ask, “Did you forget to iron your pants today?”

That kind of snide remark really hurt me. It brought back memories of school days, when I would be the butt of a joke and laugh along because I didn’t want to show how much it hurt. One day, I got tired of it, and I asked Pastor Lloyd to come to my office after the service.

I was already seated behind my desk when he entered with his usual, “Am I being called on the carpet?”

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“Well, what’s going on?” he asked.

Stone-faced, I replied, “I was just curious. I’ve got a question for you: would you prefer me to come to church tonight in just my underwear?”

His jaw hit the floor. “What?”

“Do you want me to come to church tonight in my underwear?”

“Why?” he asked, dumbfounded.

“Because your wife doesn’t like any of the clothes I wear.” And my eyes grew watery as I explained how his wife had been criticizing me for this fashion issue I couldn’t control.

“Don’t worry about my wife,” he said.

“But she’s your wife; she’s your partner in ministry!”

And then he said something that floored me: “No, it’s my ministry, not hers.”

I can’t walk under this kind of authority, I thought. Even if my wife were in the wrong, I’d still defend her honor. The pastor had simply dismissed his wife, as if she were nothing! When he said that, I knew we wouldn’t be a part of that church much longer.

I fundamentally disagree with his view, by the way. I believe when a man is called into ministry, his wife is called with him. Otherwise, how could she be a “help meet” (Genesis 2:18)? They are one flesh; therefore, they are in ministry together. I don’t mean that she’s giving sermons from the pulpit if he’s called to be a Senior pastor. I mean that she affects his ministry as he affects hers. She should always be present for support and encouragement, building up the church with him. It looks similar in reverse: if she were called to lead a Women’s ministry, he would support her (in addition to fulfilling his own calling). Neither spouse should tear down the other’s ministry—they are both seeking to win souls for Christ. They are a team. They cannot go in separate directions. Jesus said a house divided against itself will not stand (Matthew 12:25). As I’ve recently told my wife, “If God calls you to go in a certain direction, I’ll go along and carry your bags.” And she constantly demonstrates the same attitude toward me.

Even as I knew we wouldn’t be there much longer, I saw signs that the church was decaying. Divisions were cropping up, even though I did all I could to cut them down. People would approach me and try to ridicule the pastor, telling me about all the things they saw him doing incorrectly (in their humble opinions). Every time this happened, the Lord brought to my mind a friend who had been an Associate pastor during a church split. My friend had engaged in these types of conversations, and as a result, the church divided between him and the Senior pastor.

So each time, I would look at these people and say, “That’s my pastor. If you have a problem with him, you need to go talk to him about it.” It didn’t matter if he was going against their opinion, even if it was a majority opinion—even if I shared it. As long as he wasn’t being unbiblical, I wasn’t going to tear him down. He was my pastor, and I was going to support him. I thanked the Lord for the wisdom to handle those situations in that manner, but I still felt things weren’t right at that church anymore.

As if I needed more confirmation that this house was divided, the pastor’s wife treated Theresa horribly. The woman had been unkind to me, but apparently her comments had been just a small taste of her noisome attitude. Around Christmastime of 1986, Theresa discovered that she was once again pregnant. Naturally, everyone rejoiced with us, but the spirit of goodwill did not last long. Just a few months later, Theresa went on our church’s Women’s retreat, which was held about forty-five minutes away. While there, Theresa began to have severe cramps. Then she began hemorrhaging. Several of the ladies left the worship service and gathered around her for support and care, but then Pastor Lloyd’s wife came in. She berated the other women for leaving the service and forced them to return, leaving Theresa lying in her room in misery.

If that weren’t bad enough, the woman would not allow anyone to call me. Hours later, one of them finally rebelled and called the church office. And then after a while, the pastor came to my office to tell me what had happened. I was furious! She needed medical attention, and the more people who could have prayed for her, the better! He consented to drive me to the retreat facility to pick her up—I was in no condition to drive. When we had Theresa, the pastor drove us to the nearest hospital, dropped us off at the door, and left. It is not pleasant to be left alone at an unfamiliar hospital when you are panicking because your wife has needed medical attention for half a day and has been unable even to talk to you.

Well, when we finally got in to see a doctor, his conclusion came quickly: Theresa had miscarried, and we would have to remove the fetus. The conclusion did not sit well with me. I remembered God’s promise: “I will not take a child from you in that way again.” So I was glad when the doctor performed an ultrasound to get a better understanding.

After the test, the doctor returned, confusion plain on his face. “I’m just not sure what happened,” he said. “I mean, I’m glad: you have a healthy, normal baby. But I don’t know why she was hemorrhaging. Maybe there were twins, and one miscarried? I just don’t know.”

But I knew what had happened: God had kept His promise.

We left with instructions for Theresa to remain in bed for several weeks. The trauma to the uterus from the hemorrhaging had made this a high-risk pregnancy, and the doctor cautioned us not to take any chances.

Then came Sunday. When I showed up at church, the first question was of course, “Where is Theresa?”

“Well,” I said, “the doctor gave us orders to keep her in bed. We don’t want to risk the baby.”

My answer did not satisfy the pastor’s wife. She stormed to our parsonage, right into our bedroom, and demanded that Theresa get up and come to church.

“When I had a miscarriage,” she said, “I didn’t lie around in bed. Company came over, and I got up to wait on them. You’re getting up, too!”

Theresa did not comply. She responded by reminding the woman that this had not been a miscarriage, and in fact, by staying in bed she was trying to prevent a miscarriage. The pastor’s wife left in a huff.

Not long after that, Pastor Lloyd and I were having a midweek meeting in his office. As we talked about the church and our relationship in it, we concluded that things just weren’t clicking between us. So I excused myself and went home for lunch to talk to Theresa. She agreed with my conclusion: I needed to resign; it was time for us to leave. I brought this news back to the pastor, and he agreed that it was probably best for us to simply part ways. But I wasn’t prepared for the bomb he dropped next: that Sunday, just a few days away, I would have to publicly present my resignation to the church, and I would have to be out of the office and the parsonage Monday. I had thought I would at least have a couple weeks to get my affairs in order, but apparently the pastor had other ideas.

Where are we going to go, I wondered. There was only one option, of course. We had no place to go except back home, back to Bremerton. So we frantically prepared to go, and soon the day came.

It was a bittersweet parting. On the one hand, I had really started to love Montesano; I enjoyed the small-town atmosphere, where everybody knows each other. I’d grown to love the congregation and made some good connections with the community. On the other hand, I felt like my ministry had been a flop. It had been my first pastoral position, and I felt like I had failed. I had battled the fear of failure for years; I had always felt like I could never measure up. The feeling persisted through school, work, and relationships. (Remember how I felt when Theresa’s ex walked in on our first date?) Now, I felt justified in feeling the same way about ministry.

But I still knew God had called me to ministry, so I wouldn’t give up.

Chapter 5:

ANOTHER CANDLE

ONCE I HAD THERESA AND CASSANDRA settled in Bremerton, I went to Kirkland to meet with the Assistant Superintendent for the Northwest District of the Assemblies of God.

He said, “Ken, we’re wanting to open a new church in Chimacum, Washington, just across Hood Canal. Would you consider starting and pastoring the church there?”

“Sure, I’ll consider it,” I said.

I took some time to pray about this, and I talked with Theresa and several others about it. One person I talked with was my friend Scott Fontenot. We had both attended Hillcrest Assembly for several years, and he and I had been credentialed the same day in 1986, just a year earlier. I trusted and respected him. When he heard about the possibility of starting a new church, his eyes brightened. He had a clear and contagious passion for the idea.

“Why don’t we do a co-pastorate?” he asked. “Let’s go up and look at Chimacum, get a feel for the area, and you and I can build a church together!”

I couldn’t help but agree. So we headed up there and found a beautiful farming community. And then as soon as we got into town, we noticed this huge brick building with a lush, manicured lawn and well-groomed landscaping. It was a Mormon church. Well, here we were, two young, enthusiastic AG pastors confronted with a big Mormon church with an empty parking lot. We couldn’t help ourselves. We drove into that parking lot, got out of the car, and began praying around that building, claiming it for Christ!

We continued driving around after that, looking over and praying over the town. It looked like a great place to live and minister, and at that point, we both seemed to agree that starting a church here would be our next step. But then reality struck as I got home. I continued praying about the plan and became more and more uneasy.

We’re both really young, I realized (which doesn’t strike me as much of a realization now, but it was at the time). Starting a church is a big deal. I mean, I couldn’t even make it as a Youth pastor; am I really ready for this step? Starting from scratch, that’s a big challenge, and as young as we are… It’s going to take a lot of know-how, and Scott and I are both inexperienced. I think this is too soon.

I talked to Scott, and he said he had been feeling the same way. Besides which, he was very active at Hillcrest, and he had just begun StreetLight Ministries in Bremerton. Neither of us felt that the Lord was leading us to Chimacum, so I contacted the Assistant Superintendent to decline the offer.

Soon after that I attended a Minister’s Fellowship meeting in Bremerton, where I happened to see Pastor Jim Hill. I had originally met Jim in the late seventies, when he had first begun as Senior pastor at Neighborhood Christian Center in the middle of downtown Bremerton. Bill Shaw had introduced us back then. I had now heard that Jim’s Youth pastor had recently resigned and moved on to another position, and I went over during one of the breaks and asked him if I could talk to him about that.

“Sure,” he said. “Why don’t you come to my church after the meeting?”

So after the meeting, I hopped into my car and headed across town to Jim’s church. As I drove up, I admired the look of the church: an early-1900s brick building with a big steeple and beautiful stained-glass windows. I parked, then walked in through the big double doors and downstairs to Jim’s office. We began talking, and soon the conversation came to the Youth pastor position.

Jim said, “Yes, there is the Youth position, but I’ve been doing a lot of praying. And in that, the Lord has been showing me a new priority: I need to start working on reaching the children. If I can reach the children, I can reach the entire family. I want to start building a Children’s ministry, a stronger one than we’ve ever had. Would you consider being a Children’s pastor?”

I had never even considered that before. Theresa and I had cared for foster children, and we had Cassandra, so I knew I could handle kids in small numbers at least. The offer sounded interesting, so I told him I’d consider it. I went home and talked with Theresa. After some discussion and prayer, we both felt it was a good decision to take the job. I contacted Pastor Jim and told him we accepted. The church could only afford $300 a month, but that was okay with me; ministry wasn’t about the money. I would just have to find an additional part-time job.

At the same time, Jim also brought on a Youth intern from Northwest College, whose name was Paul. As soon as we met, we hit it off. Paul was a short, skinny guy with a dark moustache and a great personality. It was a good thing we got along well, because we shared an office.

Paul did have this one quirk, though, and it really confused and frustrated me until I grew to understand it. You see, Paul loved to debate, especially theology. I could make a pretty innocuous statement about anything, and he would make a case for the exact opposite view, regardless of which view he actually believed. At other times, without prompting, he would just throw out a view so completely off-the-wall that I thought he must be an idiot. I mean, he’d just said he believed something different an hour ago! I sometimes thought the kid was off his rocker. He would even get the pastor doing it!

But I didn’t have a clue what they were doing; I had never been exposed to real debate. Imagine how I felt: suddenly, after I come on staff, I discover that the pastor holds all of these contradictory theological views, many of which don’t even make sense on their own! So here I was, trying to argue for orthodox Christian doctrine—what I knew was right but hadn’t sharpened my understanding enough to defend. And I just found myself getting angry.

But slowly, it dawned on me. They weren’t really arguing! They didn’t believe these things! What for me had been an exercise in frustration had, for Paul and Jim, just been an exercise in apologetics. As I began to understand Paul’s game, it became fun. Soon, I found in it all the benefits he and Pastor Jim did: the debates sharpened my reasoning, my ability to defend my faith, and my understanding of others. It was an amazing, humbling moment when I realized that Paul, though several years younger, was the one teaching me.

I loved my time at Neighborhood. Not only did I work with outstanding people, but God truly blessed the Children’s ministry there. I saw our group grow from a handful to over 40 who came regularly. We developed a puppet theater with its own stage and cast of characters. We had live theater. We did outreach. We saw kids come to Christ.

One of the biggest blessings that God gave me began when a man from the church came to me and asked if he could help in the Children’s ministry. His name was Rick Long. Rick was wonderfully creative, incredibly funny, and extremely big. He was an amateur bodybuilder and performer. Rick could rip phonebooks in half, break handcuffs, and do all kinds of impressive strongman feats. He even taught me how to do some (though not very well)! The kids loved it.

But Rick had brains as well as brawn. His creativity in the dramatic arts allowed him to come up with some great characters. Our favorite was one that I brought to life on stage: Professor Egghead. The Professor was an eccentric German scientist with a bald head, thick moustache, and wire-rim glasses. Though we soon shied away from the character’s original slapstick conception (with an actual egg on his head), the silly Professor Egghead could always be counted on to make the kids laugh.

God chose this time in our lives to bring another blessing: our son, Kenny Ray. Theresa’s pregnancy with Kenny had been pretty uneventful since we left Montesano. However, because Cassandra had required an emergency C-section, Kenny would have to come that way too; most doctors refuse to perform a vaginal delivery after a C-section has been done. So we scheduled the procedure in advance for August 24, 1987, and the pregnancy was uneventful until the delivery. In the operating room, I stood ready to photograph the miracle of birth as the doctor pulled the baby out. Snap, snap went the shutters of my camera, and then I paused, confused, when my son went limp in the doctor’s hands.

A frenzied rush of attendants surrounded one of the tables in the room, with my son in their midst. Unsure what was happening, I moved to get a closer look and discovered that they were performing CPR on my son! His tiny, wrinkly body was turning blue!

When Cassandra was born I had been filled with a peace; I remembered God’s promise not to take a child from me in the same way as Jennifer Ann. This time, I found myself gripped with a bone-deep fear. Time seemed to stretch.

I turned as white as a sheet.

One of the nurses looked at me.

She knew I would faint in a second.

“Mr. Walls, sit down,” she said.

I didn’t respond.

“I said, ‘Sit down!’”

I sat.

Alarms rang.

The frenzy continued around Kenny.

Theresa leaned over.

She asked, “What’s going on?”

Only seconds had passed since the birth.

“I don’t know!” I snapped.

But Theresa felt God’s peace, and she began to pray in the Spirit.

The pediatrician rushed into the room.

Funny, that same pediatrician treated me.

He grabbed Kenny.

He rushed out of the room.

I got up.

I rushed after him.

Outside the operating room, the whole family had gathered with smiles on their faces, ready to see the new baby and thinking everything was fine. The pediatrician and nurses who had gotten out before me sped past them to the Nursery Ward. Before the grins had slid from the family’s faces, I had gone past in hot pursuit.

The chase ended with Kenny in an incubator in the Nursery and me peering through a window in the adjacent hallway. The doctors had hooked him up to just about every device possible. What’s going on? He’s not going to make it! God, why are You doing this? My faith in His goodness was at just about an all-time low.

What I didn’t realize is that they had measured Kenny on the Apgar scale in the operating room. The Apgar scores a child from 0 to 2 in five areas, for a possible total of 10 points: Appearance (complexion), Pulse, Grimace (response to physical stimulation), Activity (limbs’ resistance to movement), Respiration. Kenny had initially scored a 1; he was a dead baby with a pulse, basically. But within five minutes, miraculously, he went from a 1 to an 8, and it was only after he’d more or less stabilized that they moved him. When they wheeled Theresa out of the operating room minutes later, she of course wanted to see Kenny. They were still working to keep him alive (it was a near thing several times), but they did allow her to see him before taking her into her room.

Normally, newborns are brought to mothers very soon after birth, but Theresa didn’t get to hold Kenny for about twelve hours. When a friend of ours, a nurse at the hospital, found out it had been twelve hours, she said, “Enough of this!” She marched out of the room, went into the Nursery, took Kenny (after clearing that it was safe), and walked him down to Theresa herself. Theresa loved him immediately.

While this birth was a time of great joy for our family, it also turned out to be the beginning of a great trial. Things seemed to go very well for a while. Kenny was the most adorable baby the world had seen since Cassandra, and everyone loved him. But he didn’t seem to be progressing in his development at the normal rate. Most babies can sit up by themselves at six to eight months old. Kenny couldn’t. He couldn’t perform exercises requiring fine use of motor skills. The doctors postulated all sorts of things: retardation, cystic fibrosis, results of the lack of oxygen at birth, whatever.

In addition to the development issue, Kenny was diagnosed with Hirschprung’s Disease. The US National Library of Medicine (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) defines it as “a blockage of the large intestine due to improper muscle movement in the bowel.” Basically, a portion of his colon was missing the ganglion cells that allowed it to function. He couldn’t have a bowel movement unless stimulated by a thermometer or something. We didn’t know what to do. The only option the doctors could give was surgery.

We scheduled the surgery and dreaded its arrival. We knew that our little Kenny—just a baby!—would come out of that room with a colostomy bag. But the day did arrive, and we got him set up at Children’s Hospital in Seattle. While Kenny was in surgery, though, I couldn’t stand the thought that he might not survive this ordeal. I went down to the hospital’s chapel. I knelt down and cried out to God for nearly an hour. I was so upset! I remembered His promise: “I will not take another child of yours in that way again.” I knew that meant He wouldn’t take a child at birth.

“But God,” I cried, “this is worse! I have memories with this boy! I love my son! Are you now going to take him from me?”

Not long after that, I got up to go back to Kenny’s room, where Theresa waited. On the way, a nurse at the nurse’s station called to me: “Mr. Walls, the doctor is on the phone from the OR and wants to talk to you about the surgery.”

When I picked up the phone, the doctor said, “Mr. Walls, I don’t know what’s going on but… I can’t find anything wrong. We did a final test before we went in, and the ganglion cells are there… So we don’t know what’s wrong.”

You would think I’d immediately jump for joy. My son had been healed! But my faith at that point had been so beaten up that my first response was, Now what? So they brought him back up to our room. Most of the family present were uncertain what to feel. I was moping. Theresa, though, had her boy back. She got down to business making sure his needs were met. Sure enough, his diaper was wet, and she started to change it. He had never had a problem urinating, so it’s not like this was an earth-shattering event. But when she opened the diaper, it was full of feces! I did a double-take and then turned to the nurse.

“Would what they did in there have caused him to have a bowel movement?” I asked.

“No, not at all,” she said.

I turned to Theresa, and we were both beaming. It was a miracle! I don’t think any parents have rejoiced so much at having to change a dirty diaper!

A few months after that, every dirty diaper still reminded us of God’s healing power, but Kenny still couldn’t sit up on his own. The development issues persisted. There didn’t seem to be anything we could do. The congregation joined us in praying for another miracle. Kenny’s very life was a miracle, and we had just seen God do another one. One more shouldn’t have been a problem. And then, during one Sunday evening service, we all stood, praising our Lord, when Rick Long noticed something odd. He nudged me and pointed to Kenny, who was in Theresa’s arms. “It looks like he’s being entertained by angels.” And it sure did: Kenny was looking up at the ceiling, smiling, and reaching as if to touch someone. I knew God had His hand on my son.

A couple weeks later, the miracle arrived. Kenny sat up. The other developments seemed to come almost overnight after that. He seemed to rush to catch up—sitting, crawling, walking, all of it. He just spontaneously transformed into a functional, healthy, active boy. He began to run around like other kids at church. In fact, I remember a time, when Kenny hadn’t yet turned two, that I was up at the front of the altar during a service. I heard snickering start to grow in the congregation. I looked around for the source of all the commotion, and what did I see? There was my son, buck naked, striding down the center aisle of the church! I came to find out that he had wet his pants, so he had stripped out of his clothes in the bathroom and come looking for me. He ran up to me on the platform, and I picked him up and hugged him, ignoring the grins and laughter of the congregation.

I didn’t care. I could only smile and be proud to hold him. This was my son. This was my miracle.

Chapter 6:

FLICKERING FLAME

ONE DAY IN THE SUMMER OF 1987, we took the kids to the region’s water park, Wild Waves, along with John and Roxanne, a couple of friends from Hillcrest Assembly. We were having a great time that day, going down all the waterslides and swimming in the pools. And then came The Cannonball.

The Cannonball was a slide not for the faint of heart. From the top of the slide, you would make a short, fast drop through a tunnel, which would then shoot you out twelve feet above the water. You’d feel almost like you were suspended in the air for a second, and then you’d plunge into a twelve-foot-deep pool. When you surfaced, you would swim to a cavern at the side of the pool, which enclosed the pool’s stairway exit.

I had swum quite a bit during my high school years, and I had done some high dives before, though not well. When I dived, it looked more like a comedy routine. I would always end up on my belly or my back. I didn’t last long as a diver. But since I’d had that experience, The Cannonball didn’t scare me. In fact, John and I were both pretty excited to try it.

John went first. He made an excellent splash, then calmly swam for the cavern. When he was out, my turn came. I remember feeling a little apprehension as I dropped through the tunnel, but it was so short that I hardly had time to feel anything. I popped out of the tunnel into bright sunlight. I felt weightless. The moment seemed to stretch out in time, and I felt like I was flying. Then reality crashed back in as I hit the water and plunged beneath it. I came out of the water, located the cavern, and began to swim toward it.

Suddenly, I lost control of my body. My limbs flailed. My head bobbed. I lost all sense of direction. It was like a seizure, but I remained conscious. I was going to drown! Somehow, I managed to yell, “John!”

John dived into the water and swam to me, grabbing me from behind. As he pulled me toward the cavern, the lifeguards saw me and ran for the stairs to help pull me out. They got me out of the pool, but I felt like I was sliding back in. My whole body shook violently.

“John, don’t let me fall back in,” I cried over and over, panicking. And then I said, “John, pray for me.”

John began to pray in the Spirit, and I calmed a bit. I was still frightened.

The lifeguards got me away from the pool to a couple of paramedics. They checked me out and released me to go home. They didn’t know what had happened, but there was nothing wrong with me that they could determine. Theresa drove home because there was no way I could have; I was still shaky and disoriented.

My life changed that day. I had been a bold and confident person, adventurous and ready to try new things. I’d always been respectful of authority and non-confrontational, but I had never been afraid. That day turned me into someone timid and cautious. I began to have spells of fear, when I would be overcome by shaking and a sense of impending doom, like the world was going to fall apart. It sounds melodramatic, but that is really what I felt.

After a couple of months, we saw a doctor about it, and the doctor referred us to the University of Washington Medical Center to get some tests and find out what might be causing these fits. At the UW, they kept me in the hospital for five days, hooked to EEGs (which measure brain activity), with a camera pointed at me. If I had one of these spells, I was supposed to push a button next to my bed, which would call for help and shut off the TV if it were on. I had to push it several times while I was there.

The results of that visit were inconclusive. Apparently, I wasn’t having seizures, but they didn’t quite know what I was having. But there was one bright spot to my time at the UW hospital. They confirmed a miraculous healing that had taken place earlier in my life. Of course, they wouldn’t have said it that way, but that’s what it was.

In 1981, I was diagnosed with cerebellar ataxia, a degeneration of the cerebellum. One night, I had been taking a girl home after a date. When I got out of the car, I suddenly lost all feeling in my legs. For two days, I couldn’t use my legs at all. The doctors did all sorts of tests. They did CT scans. They took muscle and nerve biopsies (sent to the UW Medical Center). They determined and documented that I did indeed have cerebellar ataxia. They then told me that I would be in a wheelchair by the time I was forty years old.

I stood up and said, “I will in no way be in a wheelchair. I’ll fight it.”

Soon after the diagnosis, I went to a revival meeting led by a visiting evangelist at Olympic College in West Bremerton. That evangelist prayed for me and laid hands on me, and I remember very well that I felt a tingling in the back of my head. But as a young man, I didn’t have the experience I do now; I’ve seen God do many more miracles since then. So back then, I just didn’t think much of it. Sure, I was hoping for a miracle, but I’m not sure I really believed one could occur.

So here I was in the UW hospital, with the doctors doing CT scans and all kinds of things to find out why I had these fits. After one of those tests, the doctor, with a confused look on his face, brought in a report.

“Mr. Walls,” he said, “I’m not sure how this happened. I know that you were diagnosed several years ago, but I can’t find any evidence of cerebellar ataxia now. You have a completely whole cerebellum.”

Almost anybody can tell you that brain cells don’t grow back. In 1981, there had been obvious degeneration in my cerebellum. In 1987, the doctors couldn’t even find where it had been. So was it a miracle? I know it was. I am fifty now, and there’s no wheelchair in sight.

As I said, the results of the UW visit were inconclusive. Finally, the doctors concluded that I was simply having anxiety attacks and panic attacks. They referred me to a psychiatrist. It was not exactly the solution we were hoping for. The psychiatrist prescribed Xanax, a depressant specifically for panic disorders. It’s not an addictive drug, so I didn’t ever start craving more of it. But it is a dependent drug. I came to depend on it. I was allowed to take it four times a day, as needed. So I took it four times a day. I remember coming to a weekend when I was running low on my Xanax prescription. I was so overcome with fear at the thought that I might not have enough, that I curled up in the corner of the living room, rocking back and forth and sobbing.

For a year and a half, the Xanax just made the problem worse. Whereas before, I would be timid and overly cautious because of the panic attacks, now I found myself in bondage to this drug, quaking in fear at the mere thought of not having it. I would go to my room early in the evening and try to read myself to exhaustion so I could fall asleep before it got too late—the middle of the night was the worst time. After that year and a half, we finally got the doctor to wean me off of Xanax, and God began to bring peace in my life, reducing and then eliminating the attacks. But through most of the events of the next chapter, we were in the middle of dealing with these issues.

Chapter 7:

AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

I  MET THERESA’S BROTHER TODD while she and I were dating and he was behind bars. Todd had landed a three-year stint in McNeil Island penitentiary. Todd had an alcohol problem, and it turned out to be a bondage he would never break. That was why he was in prison. He had broken into a house to steal a bottle of liquor. It wasn’t a three-year-worthy offense, but the judge wanted to make an example of him.

When I first met him, I thought he was the nicest guy in the world. And, true, when he was sober, he was a friendly, fun-loving guy. In fact, out of all my in-laws, I felt closest to him. I really grew to love him. But when he was drunk, he was an angry drunk and frequently got combative. And his lean, strong physique meant that he was not a guy you’d want to fight. We got along famously when he was sober and even most of the time when he was drunk, but when he got upset, things grew ugly.

Our time with Todd was unpredictable; he flitted in and out of our life quickly. We never knew when he would show up or when he would leave. Once, he called me while drunk and asked me to come over, just so he could have someone to talk to. I remember leading him to Christ as we talked. There he was, drunk as a fish, kneeling in front of his couch and calling out to God.

At another time, Theresa and I were visiting Seattle Center, many miles from home, walking through a park-like area, when out of nowhere, Todd came running toward us. He’d been in Seattle for a while, we later found out, couch-surfing at friends’ houses and doing Lord knows what. But here he came, running toward us, scared out of his mind that someone was after him. Whether it was true or not, I don’t know, but he’d obviously been using some kind of mind-altering substance, which certainly contributed to his paranoia.

He settled down somewhat after moving back to Bremerton a while later. He had a girlfriend, Mary, and we occasionally hung out with the two of them. They had a child together, and for a short time, it looked like he was cleaning up his life. Christmas that year, 1987, was the best time I remember with him. Todd had been sober for a while, so Theresa and I decided to have a small Christmas party with just him and Mary. Between the substance abuse and the jail time, he had rarely been around for Christmas since I had known him, so this time with him would be a very special season for all of us.

Our house had cathedral ceilings, and we got a nine-foot tree that year. When Todd came over and saw it, he lit up brighter than the tree. Todd’s joy at just being with us made him seem like a little kid. But he had put a lot of thought into the celebration, picking out just the right gift for everyone. For me, he had bought a beautiful, gold-plated watch with a black face. That whole season felt like a gift from him. He had never brought more joy to the family than that time of sobriety. I thought it would really last.

But Todd had a bondage that he couldn’t break. He couldn’t stay off the bottle. His alcoholism kicked back in several months later, and he called me.

“Ken,” he said, “I need you to come here. I need you to take Mary and the baby. You have to let them stay with you until I can get clean.”

Of course I agreed. When I got to their house, though, he wasn’t home. So I went in and got Mary and the baby. While they were getting into my car, Todd drove up.

He rolled down the window and yelled, “Hey! What are you doing?”

“Todd,” I said as I walked over to him, “you asked me to take them to my house. That’s what I’m doing.”

He started arguing and getting belligerent, fumbling at the door like he wanted to get out and fight me. But I kept talking to him, reassuring him that I was just doing what he had asked me to. Finally, he relented, and I took Mary and the baby to my house, leaving Todd alone.

I had been planning to go with Pastor Jim to Seattle early the next morning to help at a big Francis Charles Hunter healing ministry event at the old Kingdome, so we all hit the sack early that night. I slept on the couch because of the extra people in the house. Later that night, I heard shouting outside. It was Todd. He was outside our sliding door, banging on the door and yelling for Mary to come out, and soon everyone in the house was awake.

I knew things would get ugly if he came in, so I grabbed my baseball bat, Betsy, and walked to the door to tell him to leave. I actually ended up going out to talk with him for a while, but he got pissed and didn’t want to listen anymore. He threw his keys into the bushes and took off running. So I went back inside and got everyone settled down again, and we all slept through the rest of the night.

The ringing phone woke me up about 5:30 the next morning, and Theresa answered. Pastor Jim was calling to see if I was ready to go. But the night’s encounter had wiped me out. I was so groggy that instead of picking up the phone Theresa had set down for me, I picked up a shoe. I was so tired that I didn’t even notice, and I started talking to the shoe. The scary thing is, I actually had a conversation—Jim seemed to be answering me through the shoe! I finally realized what was going on, and I picked up the phone to talk to the real Jim. I told him about the incident with Todd and said that I didn’t have the energy to help him at the event. Jim said that was fine, so we finished our conversation, and I went back to bed.

About an hour later, Theresa ran down the stairs and shook me awake. “Ken, you’ve got to get up! Todd’s upstairs, and he’s threatening to kill you if Mary doesn’t come with him!”

I ran upstairs, and sure enough, there was Todd. How did he get in the house? I wondered. How did he get upstairs without me hearing him? He seemed to be on some kind of drug, and naturally, Theresa started yelling at him for even being in that state at all, much less in our house. When he swore at her in response, she slapped him in the face. Here we go, I thought, and I jumped in between them.

I grabbed Todd and started dragging him downstairs. Then he made noises like he was going to vomit. Fortunately, we were right next to the bathroom, so I threw him headfirst into the toilet. I was tired and upset, and I didn’t much care if I hurt him. After a minute, I grabbed him by the collar, pulled him to his feet, and pushed him out in front of me through the nearest exit, the door to the garage.

When I got him into the garage, I let my guard down for a second. Todd took advantage. He backhanded me with his fist and knocked me to the ground. He jumped onto my back and tried to smash my face into the concrete. My high school wrestling instincts kicked in, and I pulled my arms in under my body. My forearms kept my face off the ground. What neither of us realized, thankfully, was that the tire iron Todd had used to break in was lying only a few feet from us.

Theresa, in the house, was talking with the 911 operator. When she heard the commotion and saw us through the door, she dropped the phone and picked up Betsy, my baseball bat. She ran out into the garage, yelling, “If you don’t get off my husband, I’ll bash your head in!”

Todd jumped up and ran for the door. I wanted to stop him, so I tried to get there first. But Todd made it out, and in the confusion, my hand went through the door’s broken window pane. The glass shards nearly took off my thumb. They severed the tendons and an artery—the blood sprayed out in quick pulses. I instinctively grabbed my thumb, keeping pressure on the wound, and turned back to the house.

When Todd ran, Theresa went back to the phone, and when she saw me, she panicked. “He’s bleeding!” she yelled repeatedly into the phone. The operator stayed on the line, trying to calm her, until the police and paramedics arrived. Meanwhile, I sat in a chair, too stunned to do anything but hold my thumb together. When the police and paramedics got there, I felt an anxiety attack coming on—an event like this was sure to bring one—but I found that I knew one of the officers and one of the paramedics. Their familiarity brought some comfort and helped ease that anxiety. Once they had me bandaged up, they gave me the choice of riding to the hospital in the ambulance or in the car with Theresa. I chose Theresa.

The police had caught Todd not far from our house, even though he said his name was Kevin Walls. (Kevin was his actual first name, so if he was trying to bluff them, he wasn’t being very creative.) As we walked out to the car to head for the hospital, I saw him sitting in the back of a police car in our driveway. He looked at me with an obviously drug-induced evil in his eyes, and I admit, it made me nervous.

It seemed like the longest trip ever because of the traffic and the stoplights—the things the ambulance would have avoided—but we finally made it to the hospital. I went into the ER, and they took me back to a room right away because of the severity of my injury. Somehow my mom had found out about the incident, so she showed up there along with my stepdad and a few others.

As the doctor checked me out, he said, “I think we’re going to have to prep him for surgery.”

Oh no, I thought. I hate surgery. I hate going under anesthesia; I can’t stand the lack of control.

But God had His hand there to comfort me. It turned out that the orthopedic surgeon who was on call was a man who had operated on me in 1981. I already knew the guy, and that made me much more comfortable and made it much easier for me to agree to have it done.

The surgeon took a good look at the wound and said, “You know what? I think I can do the surgery right here, and I can keep you awake.”

Imagine how comforting that was! So we agreed to have the surgery, and the doctor performed it right there in the ER, with everyone around watching. He reconnected the tendon and sewed me up. I looked away, of course.

I was overcome with grief at this injury. At that point in my life, I’d had probably 20 broken bones and over 200 stitches. I was no stranger to injury, but this hurt went deeper. I grieved for the person Todd had become, for the violence that had overtaken him and brought him to my house that night. I grieved for our broken relationship, the irreparable tear that his actions had brought about between two people who should have been as close as brothers. My thumb could heal; our relationship might not.

It’s odd how you can sometimes remember a situation from different viewpoints. Sometimes, you can even see your own face. This was one of those times. As I look back on it, I remember looking out at Theresa and looking at my mom, but I can also see my own face looking at them, my eyes full of tears.

Well, the surgeon finished up, and they put a full cast on me that stopped just short of my elbow. We went home, but I soon received word that Todd, in the Kitsap County jail, was threatening to kill me. Theresa and I were a little uncertain about whether they would actually keep him in jail, so we decided not to risk being home. We took Mary and the baby with us to a motel for the night.

The next morning, I decided to go to the jail and tell Todd that I had forgiven him. I talked to Pastor Jim, who agreed that I should, and he insisted on going with me to make sure I chose my words with care. At the jail, I sat in a room facing a thick glass window. Todd sat on the other side, and we talked through a telephone.

By now, he had sobered up, and he started to cry as soon as he looked at me. He looked at my cast and then back into my eyes. “Did I do that?” he asked, remorseful. He couldn’t remember any of the night’s events.

“Had you not done what you did—breaking into my house—this wouldn’t have happened,” I responded. “But I just want to tell you that I love you and I forgive you.”

I’ve wrestled with this in my head: did I truly forgive him, or did I have an ulterior motive? Had I honestly come to forgiveness so soon, or was I trying to force him to repent? Was I motivated by love or fear? I’ve truly forgiven him now—I did a long time ago—but I don’t know if I had honestly done so at that point, when I said I had. I hope my motivation was correct and my forgiveness was sincere, but I know there was a lot of fear in me then.

Whether I had truly forgiven him or not, I still wanted him to face justice. He had to take responsibility for his actions. But we soon found out that it wasn’t a matter of our wants anymore. Once the police were dispatched and the arrest was made, we no longer had the option of whether or not to press charges. The case belonged to the prosecutor. He had determined to press for simple assault and simple trespassing, and that decision angered me. Todd had broken into my house, wielding a deadly weapon—the tire iron—and delivered a verbal death threat to me. The fight after that had resulted in my needing surgery. And he would only be prosecuted for simple assault and simple trespassing. I didn’t understand it. Forty-eight hours in jail was nothing compared to what I felt he should have gotten.

My anger at that situation is the primary reason for questioning the authenticity of my forgiveness. But I believe that some anger was still an appropriate response. I was angry because I felt justice wasn’t being served. I believe that even if there is forgiveness, justice still has to be done. Christ didn’t just let us off; He took the penalty upon Himself.

Theresa had a harder time forgiving Todd. I didn’t see Todd for quite awhile after the incident, but Theresa refused to have any contact with him at all until long after I had seen him again. Several weeks after the break-in, Todd called me and asked to meet with me alone. I went, but I was scared. I wasn’t sure where this would lead, but I wanted to give him another chance. Todd had been closer to me than any of Theresa’s family, even though he was messed up. So I gave him that chance: we met in a parking lot in Poulsbo, and we talked for a long while. I believe he genuinely wanted to get right with God and make amends to us, but we saw later that his bondage to the bottle wouldn’t let him escape. And even after Theresa forgave him, Todd never again spent enough time around us to truly seem like part of the family. We didn’t see him much at all.

Then one Tuesday morning, I walked into church for a staff meeting. When I got into the parsonage, Pastor Jim and Paul, the Youth pastor, were already there, but the mood was somber. I stopped, thinking, Something is wrong. This isn’t normal. Our meetings were usually filled with laughter, but I sensed an unusual gravity this day.

Pastor Jim looked up at me. “Ken, I need you to sit down. We need to talk.”

What have I done now? Did I teach something unorthodox? I thought. I soon wished it had been something that easy to deal with.

“Ken,” the pastor continued, “your mother-in-law called me a little while ago. She wanted me to tell you: your brother-in-law Todd was struck by a car on Bainbridge Island early this morning. He was flown to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. They’re still uncertain if he’s going to make it, but his condition isn’t good.” He paused to let me process that. Harborview is the region’s high-level trauma center, and for Todd to be taken there meant that his condition was very serious indeed. Then Jim continued. “Would you like me to be the one to tell Theresa, or do you want to do that?”

I blinked, still stunned, and responded, “No, I had better do that.”

Theresa worked at a day care center in East Bremerton. She worked with the kids and took care of them, and part of her job was to drive the bus on a route to elementary schools to pick up kids for afternoon care. The place was just across town from the church, but it felt like it took forever to get there that morning. I guess that was a good thing, because it allowed me time to figure out how to tell her. When I finally arrived, I stopped in the office and related the situation to Theresa’s boss. The boss gave me the okay to go back to the classrooms to talk to Theresa. So I walked farther into the building, found Theresa, and pulled her aside to tell her what had happened.

“We need to be there,” I said.

Obviously, she was upset. I could tell she wanted to break down and cry, but she managed to hold it together (barely) because she didn’t want the children to worry. We went back to talk with her boss about leaving.

“Well, you can go,” her boss said, “but I need you to finish the bus route first.”

Sometimes, I just don’t understand people.

The boss with the heart of gold graciously agreed to let me accompany Theresa on the bus route to make sure she didn’t crash or anything. I couldn’t drive because I wasn’t employed by them, but at least I was allowed to go with her. So the two of us finished her bus route, and we caught the next ferry to Seattle. That was the longest hour-long ferry ride of my life. We hardly said a word to each other; we just stared, consumed in our own solemn thoughts.

Todd’s life had followed a winding, rocky road, and we had traveled much of it with him. He had been introduced to alcohol and drugs as a child, and Theresa had been the subject of many of his drug-induced outbursts when they were young. We had often wished for him to get a wake-up call. But not like this.

I thought back to Christmas of ’87, less than a year ago, and all the good times we had shared then. I thought of the hope we had held then: that Todd would stay sober and really live his life instead of throwing it away. Here, it seemed, was the end of our hope for that life. We arrived in Seattle and headed for the hospital. At Harborview, as we rode the elevator up to the right floor, the questions pounding inside my head tried to fill in for our verbal silence: What are we going to find here? How is he? What will he look like? How am I going to deal with this? How do I support Theresa? On and on they came, and then the doors opened.

Just as the elevator doors opened, Todd passed by on a cart. They were wheeling him from surgery to the ICU, and he didn’t look good. Todd had bandages around his head and tubes coming from a respirator keeping his lungs working. We hadn’t known just how grim the situation was, but seeing him on full life support gave us a pretty ominous hint.

They transferred him to the ICU bed and let in a few family members at a time. We went in pairs, and I even went in by myself for a while. We all believed in a miracle, and we prayed that God would bring healing to Todd’s body so that he would have a chance to learn from his mistakes, to turn his life around. I remember getting my hopes up as I talked to him and his arms moved. He’s responding, I thought. There’s still life! But I was crushed when the doctor said it was just involuntary body movements; Todd hadn’t heard me. I walked out of the room downcast, and as I turned the corner into the hallway, I saw Theresa crumple to the floor, her sobs echoing down the corridor.

We all held each other, trying to find some comfort in the presence of family. Pastor Jim even showed up to mourn with us. And we were mourning; it was as if death had already occurred. I wondered if maybe it had. If the machines were the only thing sustaining his body, hadn’t Todd already died? Was his spirit hanging around, watching and listening? Had he departed, or was he still hanging on, fighting to keep his earthly existence? I didn’t have all those answers; I still don’t. But when I think about my own death, I take comfort in the fact that my Lord has gone to prepare a place for me. I have confidence that I will be with Him when I die.

But I didn’t even have that comfort when it came to Todd. Sure, he had accepted the Lord, but I had no way to know if it was genuine. After all, when I led him to the Lord, he was drunk. Did that even count? And he obviously hadn’t shown evidence of any lifestyle change. I knew it wasn’t my place to make the call about whether Todd was saved or not; it’s not my place to make that call about anyone—only Christ gets to decide that. But sometimes, especially around death, you just wonder about these things.

After a while, the doctor called the whole family together. He gave us some news we weren’t quite prepared for: Todd was brain-dead. He would continue to survive on life support, but there was little to no hope for recovery. It would take a miracle, I thought. Immediately, all those questions about death popped back into my head. When, exactly, does death take place? Is the spirit still present if the brain ceases to function? Is there any way Todd can still be considered alive?

After some deliberation, we all decided to pull the plug; we would take him off life support. We scheduled the day it would happen. Theresa and I headed home, full of grief, to wait for the call. We didn’t want to return and see it. Theresa’s dad was present when they turned off his son’s life support. I can’t imagine what he must have felt, sitting there, watching the body wind down as his son’s heart slowly stopped beating. There are times in life when language fails us. This is one.

We finally got the call that Todd had passed away, and then the processing began. Where is he? What was his spiritual condition? That’s the hardest part of losing someone: not knowing if you’ll see that person again. If it’s someone who I know has lived a victorious Christian life, then I can feel some joy mingled in the sorrow. I know this is only a temporary parting. I’ll see that person again. With Todd, I didn’t have that surety, so there was no comfort. We knew that the doctors had found alcohol in his system on the night he’d been hit, but I know how hard it is to break free from addictions, even with Christ. There was no certainty either way.

But then, as we worked to make the funeral arrangements, we came into contact with a pastor, Pat Love, who had known him. We came to find out that this pastor had met with him three days before Todd’s death. In that meeting, Todd had accepted the Lord in a sober state! Suddenly, we found hope in the midst of our grieving: in the eleventh hour, Todd had come to know his Savior. I believe he had truly committed his heart to the Lord, and I am confident that I will see him again one day.

Pastor Pat performed the funeral service for Todd, and I led the prayer at the graveside. It was done. Todd was gone.

But I still found feelings of guilt in myself. What could I have done better? Could I have prevented his death somehow? Could I have been a better brother-in-law? As a minister of the gospel, what should I have done to help him? My mind flashed back to the fight in my garage. Then I remembered Christmas. Then a bad scene. Then a good one. On and on, mingling good and bad memories filled my mind. This was Todd’s life, and I could have helped make it better. A darkness began to creep over me.

Chapter 8:

THE BURN BAN

I  WAS STILL THE CHILDREN’S PASTOR at Neighborhood. Yet I longed for something more. God began to work in my heart, drawing me toward something new. I felt called to evangelism. I felt I had “served my time” as a Children’s pastor, and it was time to move on. I knew there was some kind of darkness growing in me from guilt over Todd’s death, but at the same time, I knew God was calling me to a broader ministry.

I had one problem with this calling: Theresa didn’t feel it. She wasn’t ready to move into that area. Desire to evangelize grew in my heart, but she did not share that growing passion. I believe that, as the leader of my family, it is my duty to cultivate unity. Just as Christ desires unity in the Church, I desire unity in my family. So I could not pursue this dream if she were unwilling to chase it with me. I remained Children’s pastor.

Then came a concert and revival meeting. Nancy Harmon came to our church, and she and Theresa really hit it off. But for me, the highlight of the service came when Theresa said, “Yes.” God had worked on her, and she had come to realize that He had called me to evangelism. Such joy filled me when she said that! She agreed to follow, so I gladly led. I turned in my resignation from my position at Neighborhood soon after that, planning to move into evangelistic ministry.

But the darkness had been secretly growing. I was still trying to cope with my grief over Todd, and I wasn’t doing very well. It seemed to overwhelm me, despite my efforts to fight it. So, still months before I resigned from the church, I turned back to my old escape. I dug down to the pit of my soul, where an evil still lived that I had not dealt with. I turned back to pornography.

I began toying with the world of fantasy because I felt I could not cope with reality. My guilt was too complex; the grief was too near. I had to shut it off somehow. I had to escape. But the sin actually just complicated things. I soon became overwhelmed with the pressures of ministry and the uncertainty of my new direction, and I had to escape from that as well. I remember on some days, I would take a lunch break from the church, drive home, and stop by the adult movie store on the way. In those pre-Internet, pre-debit card days, pornography was more difficult to access (still not really difficult, but it required more determination) but also more difficult to trace. I would rent a VHS tape with cash, watch the movie at home, and return it before going back to the church. It was my secret life.

Theresa noticed a change in my behavior and began to suspect that something was going on. It was quite a while before she had any confirmation, but before the end of 1988, she found out about my secret life. She was livid, and rightly so. “I thought you had beaten this!” Her reaction this time made me think of Mount Vesuvius.

As I think back, it isn’t hard to imagine how she felt. She was devastated. I had betrayed her completely; could she ever trust me again? And if she couldn’t trust me, how was she supposed to deal with this? Who could she talk to? Any mention of my sin would tear down my reputation and sully the whole family in the process.

While Theresa dealt with my betrayal, I struggled with her lack of trust. Yes, I had screwed up, but that was yesterday. God’s mercies are new every morning; why couldn’t my wife’s be? I felt I could be trusted—my dedication to purity was stronger than ever (after each new failure)! It always seems to be the case that a sinner is sorry when he gets caught, doesn’t it? Even so, I did want to be committed to my wife. How long would it take for her to trust me again? I wanted to jump from Point A to Point Z and skip the steps in between. Many men are like that. But those steps of rebuilding trust can sometimes take years, especially when each new argument brings up the emotions and the feeling of betrayal, again.

This is the kind of strain that sin puts on all of our relationships, but it is magnified a hundredfold in the marriage relationship. For the faithful spouse, every action, every aspect of daily life, is a reminder of the unfaithfulness. (“Why am I cooking for him when he would rather be taking her out?” “Why am I working so hard for her when he might be at the house right now?”) It is especially difficult with pornography, since it is primarily a mental unfaithfulness. A physical act can often be easier to forgive.

I have talked to several men who have struggled with these issues, who tell me that for a while after they confess, their wives experience emotional breakdowns while simply doing the dishes or hearing a song on the radio. But I do not mean to discourage confession! If you are in sin, please confess and seek help! My intent here is to discourage sin. It breaks the heart of God, and I know from experience that it breaks the heart of every person you love.

Though heartbroken, Theresa forgave me and urged me to get help, starting with Pastor Jim. And that is exactly what I did. I sought the pastor’s counsel, and we prayed over the issue. But it could not end there. As a practicing minister, I would have to accept disciplinary measures for my sin. Jim didn’t want to report me to the AG leadership, though; he wanted me to act on my own accord.

The Assemblies of God churches hold to a hierarchical leadership model similar to that of the Catholic church. Those in leadership positions exercise an apostolic spiritual authority over those under their care. These leaders provide guidance, support, and counsel as well as discipline when necessary. In some ways the organizational model is very similar to a business, with the District-level officers fulfilling the roles of C-suite executives. The District Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent, and Secretary Treasurer hold similar responsibilities to Chief Executive, Operations, and Financial Officers, respectively, in their District. Above them is the General Superintendent.

Each District of the AG is divided into regions, each of which has an Executive Presbyter over it. The Executive Presbyters regularly meet with the District officers in a council appropriately called the Executive Presbytery. The Executive Presbyters are each responsible for overseeing several sections of their region, and each section is under the authority of a Presbyter. Presbyters are roughly equivalent to bishops in the Catholic church; they are the next level of authority above the local pastor—the first link in the human chain for any pastor who needs guidance or correction.

So I went to the Presbyter to determine the next steps to take in order to overcome this problem. I sat down with him in his office and related the situation. He responded with grace, but he let me know that there would be some consequences when I brought this before the District Superintendent, which he nevertheless encouraged me to do. So I made the appointment.

As I have mentioned, I’ve often dealt with the fear of failure. Time and again, I’ve found myself thinking that I could never measure up. Now it seemed that, once again, I’d fallen short. I had tangled myself in sin, shooting myself in the foot and causing my ministry to implode. A pastor with a double life—what kind of a witness is that?

Theresa came with me to the AG’s District office, which was in Kirkland, Washington, at the time. We sat in the waiting room, and I felt about ten inches tall. It was like being called into the Principal’s office in grade school, only much, much worse. After a while, the Superintendent called out my name in his booming, commanding voice. Fear gripped me as we walked down the hall to his office and sat in what would normally have been comfortable leather chairs.

“So what’s going on?” he said.

I told him everything. It must have been tough for Theresa, sitting there, having to listen to me confess the depravity of my sin. I felt the disappointment and anger emanating from the chair next to me.

When I finished, the man looked at me with a fatherly expression, full of mercy, and said, “You know, I don’t think you need a two-year probation.”

This came as a shock to me. Two years of probation, inability to minister in the Assemblies of God, was the customary penalty for adultery, and that was exactly the penalty I was expecting. After all, didn’t Jesus say that lust was equally as bad as adultery? Pornography certainly fell into the lust category! As far as I’m concerned, viewing pornography is adultery—it’s a violation of my promise to love only my wife.

But the Superintendent continued, “I think we’ll be fine with just a one-year probation.”

At the time, I was glad to hear his decision. Alright, I thought, that’s not so bad. I’ve got a year to overcome this thing and get back on the right path, then I can get right back to ministry! Now, though, I’m disappointed that my sin was taken so lightly.

I don’t think the Christian Church in the 1980s really understood pornography. Today, there’s a ton of research to back up what our experience tells us: it is an incredibly addictive, incredibly damaging vice. Today, it’s a multi-billion-dollar industry because society openly accepts it. Today, it’s an epidemic, even in the church. It’s disgusting how many pastors are leading the kind of double life I was. It’s a sin that compromises your integrity, your marriage, and your ministry, and the only way out is full repentance. And after your repentance, the sin will constantly try to creep back into your life. Even now, years after God brought me to victory in this area, I still have to set up protective “hedges” (practical things, like keeping the computer in a public room, with a strong filter installed) and stay on guard. I don’t want to slip again; I know how hard it is to get back up!

But it didn’t seem like such a big deal back then. I thought I could “get right with God” during my year-long probation, and things would be fine. That’s what my Superintendent thought, too. So he got up, came around to the front of his desk, put his arms around me and Theresa, and prayed for us. And that was that.

As part of my probation, I needed to find a pastor to mentor and counsel me. The pastor who had nurtured me for many years at Hillcrest Assembly of God in Bremerton, where I’d spent most of my teen years and some of my young adult life, had now moved to pastor a church in Redmond, Washington. He asked if I would move to Redmond and come under his wing for that year. I thought that was a great idea: how much easier this process would be when I already had a strong relationship with the pastor who would counsel me.

We kept things pretty quiet at Neighborhood Christian Center. Pastor Jim knew, of course, but we didn’t feel it necessary to tell the congregation. I was resigning anyway, so most of them assumed I would simply be leaving to pursue another ministry. The pastor protected my reputation and even asked me to preach one final Sunday before we left. It was the hardest sermon I’d ever yet preached. I felt like I was spitting cotton. I knew the double life I had led, the hypocrisy, and that knowledge kept me sweating in the pulpit. Theresa could hardly look at me. I knew what she must be thinking: You charlatan! What are you doing up there, you phony? I remember catching her eye briefly and seeing a look far more discouraging than mere distrust. Bitterness and resentment seemed to spew from her. Her eyes were glazed; she wasn’t even hearing me. She could not connect with anything I said, could not connect with me. She had ceased to know me, ceased to even see me. Whether she actually felt that or not, that was the condemnation I felt for myself, and I felt it coming from everyone. I was playing a game, and I hated it.

The move to Redmond began on an interesting note. The trip coincided with a late winter snowfall, which made loading and unloading that much more difficult. I felt like I couldn’t catch a break. I was glad, though, that my dad agreed to drive the U-Haul, because ever since the accident in the 1985 snow storm, I felt anxious driving in snow. Despite my anxiety, we made it safely to Redmond and unloaded everything into the apartment without incident. But after everyone from Bremerton left and we were alone in our new apartment, I felt lost. A fog of questions enveloped me: What do I do now? What will come of this? My mind was a busy street with no clear road signs. How do I ask for directions? I was one confused man.

The first step on the road was connecting with our pastor. I needed to set up our time of counseling and wanted to get quickly acclimated into our new church. It had been a while since I had attended a church without having a pastoral role; that just added to the confusion. Our time in Redmond began with a warm welcome, though. Arms were opened wide to our family. We were even invited out to lunch with the pastor and his family following church our first Sunday. A joy I hadn’t felt in a while washed over me. I couldn’t help but think this was going to be a very good year.

The second step quickly became clear: I needed a job. The money we had would rapidly run out. In the past, the employment I had been the most successful in, other than ministry, was retail. So my search began with the familiar. It wasn’t long before I secured an interview with a local convenience store. The interview went well, and I was hired on the spot. Things just kept looking up. My first impressions of the place were above my expectations. But lurking in the shadows was the enemy of the saints, poised and ready for another attack.

One of the obvious conditions for any employment during my probation was that the company could not sell pornographic material. Fair enough, I thought. During the interview and the training period at the store, there were no such periodicals in sight. I was in the clear—so I thought.

Not long after I began to work on my own, I noticed them in the magazine rack, half-covered up. Oh no! I thought. I had told the District Superintendent that this store didn’t sell these. What do I do? I need this job! I tried to ignore them, to act like they didn’t exist. But that pull was still there; I felt the compulsion, almost a command, just to take one quick peek. Most of the time I would resist. But at other times, especially when no one was in the store, I would cave. The pull was too great. The situation made my rehabilitation that much more challenging, if not impossible.

I chose not to inform anyone that these magazines were around. I can do this, I thought. What a foolish man. I was stepping right up to the fire again, thinking I wouldn’t get burned. I kept lying to myself and avoiding telling the truth to others in order to keep my job. I felt like I had nothing else.

After foolishly staying in the pit of temptation for far too long, I received a saving grace. A friend of mine had been the full-time maintenance man at the church we were attending, and now he and his wife were moving, leaving the job available. I was offered the job. This would solve everything! I wouldn’t have to come clean about the struggle; I could now simply ignore it.

On the surface, things seemed on track again. But the struggles inside—the rock ‘em, sock ‘em battle—continued. I fought not only lust, but even deeper, more hidden demons. I had a need for approval. Most men have this need, this desire for respect, and many who turn to pornography are looking to fill it there. At least in our minds, in the realm of fantasy, we can command respect. The trouble is, it doesn’t really work. In my case, like in so many others, the sin made that need even more pronounced. Would I ever be good enough? Or would I wear this badge of failure the rest of my life? I looked for approval and ‘atta-boys from anyone, but responses never came the way I wanted them.

Time and time again, I would sit in the pastor’s office, wanting to ask him a question regarding my struggles or something that he had said. I would begin by saying, “Now don’t get mad!” His response was not what I was craving: “Don’t tell me what to do!” I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but he was struggling with enormous frustration about how things were going at the church. My first hint to that fact came much later, when he said, “Ken, in my last church the people acted like I could walk on water, but here they don’t think I can even tread it.” He was having a tough time and didn’t really mean to let it slip in conversations with me, but I always took it personally.

In time our relationship became strained. To make matters worse, I was not a good maintenance man. I was always making mistakes. The pastor and I would get into conflicts in and out of church. Two men struggling independently in their own lives is not a good mix in a mentoring relationship. Soon I had to do what I did best—run. Theresa and I found it easier and easier not to attend that church. I didn’t think anyone would even notice if we were there or not. The personal pity party I was hosting in my head went on and on. In response, anger and tension built in my relationships.

On one Sunday we sat in a new church, trying to blend in. I knew we were unknown there, but I felt I had a sticker on my forehead that read Pervert. To make matters worse, it was communion Sunday. That was horrific to me. First Corinthians tells us not to participate in communion in an unworthy manner. If we do so, we will be judged for it. Am I worthy to take this, I wondered. Am I bringing judgment on myself? As the plates came nearer, the questions kept pounding in my mind.

Soon enough, the usher stood next to me, offering me the elements. Without hesitation, I reached for the cup. The stress was so gripping that as I pulled the plastic cup from the tray, I crushed the cup in my hand. Grape juice sprayed over the tray. No longer was I invisible. I wanted to crawl underneath the pews and out the door. But I was hemmed in. There was no escaping this humiliation. Something had to change. I soon resigned from my job at the church and returned to the store. It wasn’t the wisest move, but it appeared to be my only option.

The probationary year neared its end, and decisions needed to be made. Would I have to continue in my probation or would the Assistant Superintendent feel I was ready to move on? I was nervous about his decision, but in my final meeting with him, he said, “Ken, I don’t think you are going to be completely restored until you are back in full-time ministry.” I wasn’t sure what to make of that statement, but who was I to argue? If this man of God said it, then it must be true.

Theresa and I made plans to move back to Bremerton. Everything always seemed to come back to Bremerton. I couldn’t leave right away because I had to finish my work obligation by giving a two-week notice. So we decided that Theresa and the kids would first go to stay with Theresa’s parents and find us a place to live, and I would stay with my sister and join them later.

But with my family gone, the loneliness set in, and the temptations mounted. One night after work, the pull became so great that I jumped into pornography by traveling to the next town, where I knew there was an adult bookstore. Obviously, the year of probation was not the final solution to my problem. On the way home, I beat myself up: “I did it again! What is wrong with me?” Yet as I traveled back to my sister’s house, I felt I could just hide this as one final stumble. I could move on, and no one would know. Then, suddenly, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw red and blue flashing lights.

I pulled to the side of the road. Was God trying to get my attention? Was He reminding me that nothing is outside of His sight?

When the officer reached my window, the tears began to flow down my cheeks. He must have thought, It’s just a speeding ticket, man, get over it. It was more than that: I had been exposed again. Theresa would see the ticket and the location of the infraction, and she would know I was well out of my way after work. I had to confess to her that night.

As I expected, the conversation didn’t go well on the telephone. Theresa hung up on me. I felt awful. I knew I would be going home tomorrow to face more of the music. I wanted so much to be free of this bondage! I determined that night that it had to stop, and stop it did.

“At least for now,” I said, “I am on the road back up.” I could now get back into the ministry.

Chapter 9:

REKINDLING

UPON MOVING BACK TO BREMERTON, I launched an evangelistic ministry, seeking to fulfill that call God had given me. I planned to travel around, preaching and singing in churches. But with my failure being so fresh, I didn’t believe I should jump in with both feet. I decided not to allow myself to preach for a year. I essentially placed myself on probation again and continued in counseling with Pastor Jim. This strategy proved more effective.

After that year was ended, I felt ready. My best friend, John, had joined me in the ministry, and we had accepted quite a few invitations to minister in music. My friend Steve Monroe joined us soon after, to catapult our evangelistic ministry toward the vision I felt in my heart. Ken Walls Ministries was born.

Steve, a Religious Program Specialist in the Navy, served as our administrator—he was much more organized than I was. Steve, I felt, was a man who could take my visions and help me implement them; he was a real detail guy, which was just what we needed. He also got us into many venues. And with Steve’s connection to the Navy, our ministry became a great way to bless the Armed Forces. I preached in the chapels of two bases in Kitsap county, and I even got to preach on a ship in port.

We traveled the Olympic Peninsula circuit, going from church to church, preaching and worshiping. John and I developed a powerful ministry singing together, and I preached the Word with passion. Then we and our wives would gather around the altar for prayer ministry. We saw a tremendous movement of God in the congregations where we ministered. Steve, John, and I made a great team.

Earlier in his career, Steve had been stationed in Boston, Massachusetts, where he had gotten involved in the big annual event known as Escape. We had a similar event in Washington called Jesus Northwest (which has now grown into the annual Creation festival)—a time of worship, music, teaching, and revival.

When we began Ken Walls Ministries together, Steve started talking about this event. After a while, he called up one of the organizers of Escape, someone he’d gotten to work with in the past and knew pretty well, and he started telling the guy about our ministry and the things we were seeing God do in people’s lives in Washington.

Well, this man asked Steve if I would be willing to come to Boston to be the keynote speaker at Escape ’90 (they always tagged the year after the name), over Labor Day weekend. They had their speakers lined up for each day, but they hadn’t yet found a keynote speaker for the evenings. So Steve asked me about it, and I jumped at the opportunity. Of course I wanted to preach at a big regional event! This was my chance to prove God’s anointing. The only problem was the cost. The organizers of the Escape rally allowed me a certain amount of money for travel, which basically covered my plane ticket. We would have to pay out of pocket for the rest of the team. So we started doing fundraisers, garage sales, and anything we could think of to get funds to make it to Boston.

John, though, was a practical guy and a deep thinker. After he had mulled over the idea a bit, he felt that there wasn’t really a need for him to go to the event. He opted not to go, so there was one less ticket we needed to buy. I appreciated his decision because I knew that he followed God’s leading—if going with us was not something he felt he should do, he wouldn’t do it.

One great thing about John was his honesty. He could always see through me if I got too big for my britches, and he let me know it. Whenever I started getting arrogant or phony, he could tell—and told me! And he was the only person in my life who did that. If Ken Walls Ministries suddenly became The Ken Walls Show, John would confront me about it. I didn’t appreciate the critique at the time—I grew upset that he was getting up in my face about everything, that he just didn’t understand the direction we needed to go—but now I can look back and feel gratitude for the ways he truly tried to help me grow. I realize that he was a real friend and a man of God, and I’m thankful for it.

But even though John decided not to go, the rest of us still felt that we should, and we raised the funds for Steve, Theresa, and Steve’s wife, Chris. God had met that need, but the devil put a couple more hurdles in our way.

Operation Desert Shield was occurring during this time, and Steve was told that he could be called up at a moment’s notice for deployment to Iraq. Theresa and I would still have gone if he had been called up, but it would have been a heavy burden to go to the conference without him and Chris, trying to preach while thinking about his absence, knowing that his life was in danger every minute. Thankfully, he didn’t get that call.

The second hurdle was more immediate and more personal. One morning in August, my son, Kenny, awoke with intense pain in his left leg. It hurt so much that he couldn’t even walk. So we took him to the doctor, who told us he just had a sore leg that would be better in a day or two. Well, we didn’t see any improvement in that time, so we took him to another doctor for a second opinion.

After a visual examination of the leg, the doctor said, “If this is what I think it is, your son needs to be admitted to the hospital right away.”

The doctor believed Kenny had osteomyelitis, a bone infection that can have serious consequences if untreated. We were told that a common cause is recent trauma; athletes, for example, often develop this disease after injuries. But we couldn’t figure out how it might have occurred in this case.

We took him to the hospital for tests, one of which required a biopsy of his kneecap. As the nurses wheeled him back to the operating room, I heard his tiny voice singing “Jesus Loves Me.” Soon all the nurses had joined the familiar chorus. What an inspiration to see the faith of a child! We knew the Lord’s presence was with him.

The tests confirmed the doctor’s suspicions. Kenny had osteomyelitis. Treatment would require an antibiotic IV, so he would have to stay in the hospital. Every few days, the doctors would perform an hour-long test to measure his erythrocyte sedimentation rate (or sed rate), the rate at which red blood cells settle in unclotted blood. A high sed rate indicates the presence of a disease; Kenny’s rate was very high. The doctor told us it could take up to a month for his sed rate to return to normal levels. We were supposed to leave for Boston in three weeks.

We needed a miracle. We had seen God do miracles before; we had even seen His miracles in Kenny’s life—even where medicine had failed! Still, I worried. How could I go to Boston if my son were in the hospital? Theresa certainly wouldn’t go. How could I go without her? And if Steve were to get deployed, I’d be completely alone! Surely God wouldn’t let me go to the biggest ministry event of my life with no support. Surely not. He had to intervene.

“Please, God,” I cried, “please intervene!”

On his third day in the hospital, Kenny’s sed rate had already dropped ten points. It looked like our miracle had begun. The doctor, however, was skeptical.

“It’s fairly common to drop points rapidly the first couple days on the antibiotics,” he said, “so don’t get your hopes up. Most typically, the rate at which it lowers tends to slow down. We’re probably still looking at a month.”

But we believed in the power of prayer, and God did not disappoint. Every time the nurse checked, Kenny’s sed rate had dropped dramatically. Soon the doctor was forced to admit that Kenny was healing much more rapidly than he’d anticipated. We had our miracle, and the way to Boston was clear.

God had provided for everything, and the time came for the conference. I was pumped for this event. About this time in my ministry, I had developed the “Pentecostal Evangelist” look. And I pulled out all the stops for the Escape rally, dressing to the nines. I had the slicked-back hair, three new three-piece suits (one for each evening of Escape), shiny shoes, and all the trimmings. I looked the part.

We arrived at the lakeside park where they had set up the event, and I could feel electricity in the air. There was power at this conference! Everywhere I looked, people were rejoicing in God. As I enjoyed the food, music, and preaching throughout the day, I couldn’t stop thinking that pretty soon it would be my turn. That evening, they announced me as an evangelist from Seattle (no one knows where Bremerton is!), and I took the platform.

The Lord did incredible things at Escape ’90. We saw the power of God move in a fantastic way. I got word that a lady who lived across the lake had heard the music and come over to see what was going on. While I preached that night, she gave her heart to the Lord. The next evening I asked people to line up in front if they wanted prayer, and I came down to pray with them individually. One couple had brought their very young boy, who was legally blind. After I prayed, I asked my wife to continue praying with them while I moved to the next person. As that couple left, they were astounded when their boy actually looked Theresa in the eye—actually saw her—and gave her the “I love you” sign with his hand.

We saw amazing miracles; God moved tremendously in spite of me. I say “in spite of me” because I realize now how phony I was. We had a friend there videotaping my preaching, the music, and the whole thing. Years later, I watched those tapes, and they sickened me. My demeanor, my swagger, my appearance, everything! Who is that guy, I wondered. It’s sure not me! I look back on that time now, and I realize just how arrogant and prideful I was. And I’m humbled to think that God has brought me to a point where I can recognize it. I’m also humbled to think how He used me anyway; like I said, He did some incredible work there.

Chapter 10:

STRANGE FIRE

AFTER THREE NIGHTS, Escape ‘90 came to a close, and we went home. As we flew back, I remember thinking, I’ve arrived. I thought I had really made it as an evangelist now. I’m the next Rich Wilkerson, I thought. (Rich was one of the top evangelists in the Northwest in the eighties and early nineties.) I just knew that because I had preached at this big East Coast event, all sorts of doors would fly open for me. My head swelled.

I’ve been a Christian almost all my life, so I knew the right words to say. I knew that pride and arrogance were wrong, and if people saw those attributes, they wouldn’t like me. I also knew how to hide them. I knew the face I had to put on, the one that everyone would accept. It’s funny (in an ironic way) how we Christians simply rename our sins to avoid dealing with them. If a man’s work becomes an idol in his life, we don’t call it idolatry; we don’t even call him a workaholic. He’s driven or, even better, focused. Christian women don’t gossip at all; they share concerns. In my case, I wasn’t arrogant; I was confident.

I had begun developing what I call a Nebuchadnezzar spirit. To paraphrase Daniel 4:30, “Look at this great kingdom I have created with my abilities.” That Babylonian king’s thought was exactly the thought that was growing in my mind. I could see it all: Ken Walls Ministries would grow, I would travel and speak all over the world, and I would become a prominent and respected evangelist.

So when we came back, you can imagine how frustrated I grew when none of that happened. I would send out packets of information to various churches, along with response cards for them to send back if they were interested in having me come to preach. I even sent a video we had taken of one service. Then I waited. No responses came. I couldn’t understand it. I had nothing, no response at all. I had never experienced this ministry desert before. Even the churches I had regularly visited in the past weren’t calling. It felt like a dam had blocked the flow of my ministry. Nothing was happening, not even a trickle.

I grew angry. “What is wrong with these pastors? Don’t they understand what we have? Can’t they see the great ministry that God has brought to them?” I had preached in Boston, Massachusetts—3,000 miles away! People across the country had been changed by my preaching; was I suddenly not good enough for these locals?

Because of this anger, I became very hard to live with. I had no joy, no contentment, because I wasn’t seeking to serve the Lord. I thought I was—sure, I thought God wanted to make me into a big-time preacher. What better way to bring glory to Him? But that wasn’t where my heart dwelt. I had unwittingly shifted my desire to bringing glory to myself. I was angry because nothing seemed to be going my way, and that, I later realized, was my biggest problem: I wanted it to go my way. I thought, after all I’d been through—the probation, restoration, and now the growing ministry—that I should be gaining some prestige, becoming known. I had lost sight of making Jesus known.

In the meantime, Steve had decided not to re-enlist in the Navy. He received a job offer at Western Washington University in Bellingham. He took the job and moved, but he stayed involved with our ministry from a distance. As we kept in touch, Steve couldn’t help talking about how much he loved the area up there, and we started talking about the possibility of transplanting our ministry. I was interested. After all, no fish were biting in Bremerton; I had a silent phone and an empty mailbox. So I went up to Bellingham for a visit. I caught a Greyhound bus, and Steve picked me up from the bus stop. I liked the area and thought that ministering there might not be a bad change.

One night while I was there, after having dinner at Steve’s parents’ house (his father was an executive at the university), Theresa called. She wanted to separate.

My anger in the recent months had been very hard on her, and she had talked to Pastor Jim, who had advised her to separate until I went to counseling.

True to form, I grew angry. Why now, I thought. I’ve overcome the pornography issue. We’ve been through so much together! Why does she want to separate now? I couldn’t even see what I was turning into. But my anger on the phone only strengthened her resolve, and she told me that Pastor Jim wanted to talk to me and see if he could help.

I caught the next bus to Seattle, and by the time I arrived at the depot, I was fuming. I was so angry that I didn’t even bother to pick up my luggage. I ran all the way from the bus depot to the ferry terminal (about a mile and a half). Jim picked me up on the other side, and we drove to Neighborhood Christian Center. Theresa met us there.

We sat in the pastor’s office and talked about what was going on. The fact was, I had become a monster. I was impossible to live with, and I couldn’t even see it. The anger, I thought, was a natural response to problems that were obvious to me: pastors weren’t responding, my ministry was floundering, and my expectations weren’t being met. But it would take more than one session for the truth to get through to me. Theresa decided to take the kids and move in with a friend for the time being.

Pastor Jim drove me home. On the way, I asked him to drop me off at a convenience store, and I said I could walk the rest of the way from there. But he said he would wait for me and drive me the rest of the way. He suspected something. So we stopped, and I came out with some snacks and soda—something that would justify the stop. Jim drove me home and left soon after. In my frustration with the whole process, I wanted some kind of escape, so as soon as Jim left, I walked back to that same convenience store. They rented pornographic videos. I checked one out, went home, watched it, and then went back to return it.

My actions just reiterate how sinful that anger was: it led me into more sin. It pulled me back into a sin that Christ was bringing me out of. But, thankfully, my falling back into that particular vice didn’t go far beyond that incident. The Spirit had already convicted me about that sin, and I knew there was no joy to be found in it.

But the devil is subtle. Sometimes he “prowls around like a roaring lion” (1 Peter 5:8 NIV), but sometimes he plays a crafty serpent. Sometimes he even “masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14 NIV).

While Theresa and I were separated, I grew close to Joan, the sister-in-law of Rick, my partner in the Children’s ministry at Neighborhood. I never felt there was anything inappropriate in our relationship. After all, there was nothing physical between us. We were two friends, getting together occasionally (usually just by happenstance at Rick’s house) to talk about life, particularly the marital problems we both had.

But I now know just how dangerous that kind of relationship is. It plants seeds that grow deep roots. A friendship with the opposite sex can easily forge the same emotional bonds that God meant to form between a husband and wife—and the bonds formed outside of marriage are incredibly difficult to break! The bonds formed within marriage have to be constantly mended and maintained to repair the damage done by the stress and wear of daily life (not to mention the devil’s active efforts to break them!).

But emotional bonds formed outside of your marriage come more easily and require less maintenance. There is naturally less friction between people who are less close than spouses. That’s why so many businessmen fall for their secretaries. We come to think, How pleasant it would be to live with this woman, who already serves me so well. She really understands how I work, and she helps me achieve great things. And she makes herself look pretty for me every day. Why can’t my wife do that? Our vision is clouded by distance, so we can’t see that the secretary has just as many failings as the wife seems to have.

Thankfully, my relationship with Joan at that point didn’t go beyond planting seeds for those emotional bonds, but it took a while after my reconciliation with Theresa for me to see the rotten fruit growing from these seeds and uproot them. Our relationship seemed fine to me at the time. I was separated from my wife, and it helped to have someone I could talk to about it.

Well, as our counseling sessions with Pastor Jim continued, my anger grew, and I began acting on that anger. In one instance, Pastor Jim had asked us each to write our feelings on paper he’d handed to us. I didn’t want to do it. I crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it at Jim’s head.

When the paper ball bounced off his head, Jim just looked at me. Then he gave the best response any pastor ever could have. He threw it back at me.

Looking back on it, the situation seems comical. But when I threw that paper, Theresa started crying. That action scared her because it wasn’t normal. I wasn’t an abusive person; I didn’t normally react violently to anything, especially authority. The sort of reaction I had just given wouldn’t normally enter my mind. But now, I was becoming unpredictable, and driven by my rage, who knew what I might do?

The whole mess started because I had taken my eyes off the Lord. I had begun focusing on myself—what could I become; how could I succeed; where can my ministry grow? I knew God had called me to be an evangelist, so why wouldn’t anyone let me evangelize? And God had called me. He did not take away that call; He only took away His blessing. Because of my pride, He had removed His hand.

Thankfully, as we continued counseling, I began to see that. I realized that I hadn’t been listening to God. I saw how I had left God’s path to try blazing my own. And my heart began to soften.

The climax of repentance came while I watched TV. Suddenly, the airwaves flooded with the breaking news that President George H.W. Bush had just announced the beginning of Operation Desert Storm. The United States had gone to war, and I watched as images from Iraq alternated with the face of a news anchor obviously trying to hold back his emotion.

This, I thought, could be the beginning of the end! This war might bring the coming of the Day of the Lord!

I fell to my knees and cried out, “Lord, I want to be ready when you come! I want to change!”

And the Lord changed me. As He caused my heart to soften, He showed me more and more the kind of man He wanted me to be. And He showed me the kind of monster I had become by trying to become who I thought I should be. The changes in my heart became evident in our counseling sessions. And Theresa and I began dating again once she saw those changes. She and the kids came back to live with me again, and I felt I had finally started back on the right path.

During my time of pride and anger, I hadn’t been able to find a job. With full-time ministry apparently not an option, I had to have some way to pay the bills, but nothing would come. But when I started changing, when God finally got through to me, I found one. I landed a job at Kitsap Applied Technologies, which contracted with Boeing. I became a Vocational Supervisor, working with severely mentally handicapped individuals, teaching them how to keep on task when working on projects. We worked on things like sorting fasteners by type, size, and color.

God used this job to teach me humility. It was a job I had never thought I could do. I’m uncomfortable with dirty jobs; I’m a bit of a germ-ophobe, I guess. But we had some people there with Hepatitis. Others would bite. One gentleman, about age thirty, was confined to a wheelchair, and I occasionally had to take him to the bathroom, lift him onto a changing table, and change his diaper. God brought me far out of my comfort zone. He must have felt He needed to hammer home the message that life wasn’t about me.

Chapter 11:

SPARKS OUTSIDE THE FIREPLACE

THE LORD HAD CALLED ME to be an evangelist, but that call didn’t seem to be taking the shape I had thought it would. Even when I had humbled myself and given my ministry over to God, opportunities to preach around Bremerton were scarce. Then one day, Steve called.

“Hey, Ken,” he said, “a pastor in one of the local churches here in Bellingham is looking for a Youth pastor. It’s a non-denominational church, but the pastor is Assembly of God. Are you interested?”

I started out as a Youth pastor, I thought. I don’t really want to step back down to that. (At that point, I hadn’t yet come to a full understanding that there are no levels of ministry—we all serve God, and some servants merely have more responsibilities than others.) But I am ready for a change. This could be God’s next step for me. So I decided to give it a shot. I sent in my résumé and scheduled an interview.

Theresa and I soon drove up to Bellingham to meet the pastor, Dale Smith, and his wife, Tina. We immediately hit it off. They were a wonderful couple, and I found myself excited at the thought of serving with them. We visited the church, which was meeting in a rented space while they were building their new facility, and they gave me the chance to present my ministry there. The Smiths liked us, and it seemed the church liked us too. It wasn’t long after we got home that they called to offer the Youth pastor position. I accepted.

This new position did come with a downside: the salary only paid fifty dollars a week with a love offering once a month. But money has never been an issue for me when it came to ministry. I’ve always known that God would provide. Case in point, I soon got another call from Steve, who said that his dad had told him about a temporary position opening up in the university’s Central Stores division. He said, “The job is yours if you can be up here next week.”

After the initial How am I going to do that? reaction, we set to planning. Steve agreed to let me stay at his place while we wrapped things up in Bremerton, found a house in Bellingham, and moved Theresa and the kids up there.

So I went up and got the job, a Driver’s Assistant position. I loved it. I would ride along with the primary truck driver and help him pick up and deliver equipment, move furniture, and fill supply orders around campus. And while he made off-campus deliveries, I handled the routes on campus myself in a different truck. I found it a great way to meet people, and I really got in shape! When I started, I had to take the elevator frequently, but after awhile, I could pull a hand-truck full of paper reams up several flights of stairs with no problem.

The day finally came to move the family up to Bellingham. Neighborhood Christian Center held a farewell service for us, and we had planned to leave immediately after it. Theresa would drive the car, and I would drive the U-Haul truck. As I walked to the U-Haul in the church parking lot, Joan came up to me. In tears, she wrapped her arms tightly around me and said, “I don’t want you to go.”

That moment triggered something in me. Suddenly, I realized I had grown attached to her. Whereas before, she hadn’t entered my mind—we were just friends—I now found that it would really hurt me to leave her. That moment stuck with me, and for the entire three-hour trip, I couldn’t get her off my mind, even though I tried.

We arrived in Bellingham and began settling into our new home. Soon our daily routine had developed. Every night, I found a reason to go to the church. It seemed to all that I was truly focused on making this new ministry grow. When I got to church, though, I always ended up dialing Joan’s number. I talked to her every night, spending more time on the phone with each call. Our conversations grew more and more intimate as they grew longer. They soon became very personal: we went from flirting to innuendo and from friendship to “I love you.” I knew it was wrong. I knew I shouldn’t pursue Joan, but I felt like I couldn’t stop myself. She became my mistress in every way but physically.

And it was only the grace of God that kept me back from the cesspool of physical involvement. One day, overcome by the need to see her, I asked for some time off work, claiming I felt ill. I drove an hour and a half to the Edmonds ferry, crossed to Kingston, and drove another half hour to where she worked. Surprised by my appearance at her office, she hesitantly agreed to go to lunch. After lunch, we sat in the car, talking. I asked her for a hug several times, but she said she didn’t think it was a good idea. I dropped her off at her office after our conversation, and then I drove home and arrived about the time I normally got home from work.

Christ tells us that we can’t serve two masters; we’ll end up hating one and loving the other (Matthew 6:24). In context, He’s talking about devoting yourself to God rather than wealth. But the idea applies here as well: I could not love two women. As I spent more time thinking about Joan and talking to her, I made fewer efforts to cherish Theresa. I grew distant and cold. It got so bad that I couldn’t even touch her—I wore sweatpants and a shirt to bed!

Naturally, as I became a different person, Theresa felt something was wrong, but she didn’t know what it was. In the beginning, she hadn’t suspected anything. I dodged any attempts at questioning, and she soon realized she had to directly confront me about my change in behavior. She caught me at a time when I couldn’t avoid her, and we sat down to talk.

Soon, hoping for a quick denial at the laughable idea, she came to the question I’d been dreading: “Is there another woman?”

After a brief pause, I said, “Yes.”

Unless you’ve been there, you can’t imagine how devastated she felt. Her questions cut me to the quick—“Why did you bring me all the way up here just to do this to me?”—but I had no answers. She immediately called Pastor Jim, but I couldn’t talk to him. I needed someone else. I hadn’t known Dale long, but I felt I could trust him. I brought the whole situation before him, and we tried to work through it. I wanted to change; I wanted to make things right. But the bonds I had forged were strong: my mind kept hammering me with thoughts of Joan. I couldn’t break them with my own effort.

So God provided an external force to break them. One night, I got a phone call from Rick, my old Children’s ministry partner and Joan’s brother-in-law. Rick was livid, and it shocked me—I had rarely seen him angry before, and certainly never at me. His words—the plain-spoken truth—ripped me up one side and down the other, telling me how I’d betrayed him, how my actions were sinful, and how I’d better not continue. He never threatened me (he wasn’t that kind of guy), but as his words hit home, I couldn’t help but see the image of him tearing my body in half like I had seen him do to so many phonebooks.

I loved Rick like a brother. And as the enormity of my actions dawned on me and I realized just how much I’d hurt him, I found myself thinking, I would have preferred the phonebook treatment. Somehow, in my fantasies, I had imagined that Rick would be happy, that if I got together with his sister-in-law, it would bring us closer. It suddenly hit me that I’d been thinking that, and what a ludicrous thought it was! How could I imagine that getting his sister-in-law embroiled in scandal (destroying both our marriages in the process) would give us a closer friendship? That was how badly sin had clouded my judgment.

Rick’s call provided the catalyst I needed. Joan and I never spoke again. Soon after, the bonds broke. They hadn’t gone as deep as my sin had made me think. Sure, it took hard work with Theresa, talks with Pastor Jim, and a lot of prayer to move on, but once the process had begun, we moved on quickly. The whole relationship had been a fantasy, and Rick had snapped me out of it. Praise God for friends!

Chapter 12:

FRESH LOGS

SOON I FOUND A TRUE PASSION for the ministry in Bellingham. When He put my sin to death, God awakened me to a new life in His church. At the same time, I developed a wonderful attachment to the Smiths. Dale and I quickly became close friends, and I found that I enjoyed their company more and more. We had a lot of fun together. Theresa never really formed the same kind of attachment, though. Her relations with Dale and Tina were always friendly, but she never grew close to them.

I had a great respect for Dale; he was a true man of character—strong, compassionate, and caring. For example, while we were renovating the church, I bit off more than I could chew. The church needed new carpet laid in the sanctuary. I can do that, I thought. My dad was a carpet layer; I know how it’s done. I had worked several jobs with him, so I volunteered, thinking it would be a piece of cake. Several days later, Dale walked into the sanctuary, where I was in tears.

“I can’t do it,” I said. “The job is too big for me.”

Without even a hint of disappointment, he put his arm around me and said, “It’s no big deal. We can hire someone.”

A weight lifted off my shoulders when he said that. I had given my best effort to the project, and I had thought the pastor would be upset when I didn’t come through. But he wasn’t angry, frustrated, or ruffled in the slightest. Instead, like Christ, he met me in my weakness and lifted me out of it.

My Youth group never really took off there. I usually had five kids—Dale and Tina’s. My kids weren’t old enough to attend yet. But the Youth group wasn’t my sole focus; I was actually the Associate pastor, with responsibility for Christian Education as well. The position gave me a tremendous opportunity for growth. I learned so much about ministry and church leadership there, and I made use of everything I learned.

For instance, there was a lady in the church, one of my Sunday school teachers, whose habit of gossip came to my attention. I had been learning about confrontation, and I knew that I needed to talk with her about this problem. I wasn’t thrilled to confront her because, first, I don’t like confrontation and, second, her husband was a former Navy SEAL. (He was a wonderful guy, but I always knew he could kill me in six different ways without even thinking about it.) But I put my nerves aside and met with this teacher and her husband. I provided spiritual correction for her—confirming the problem existed and determining how to fix it—and she began to weep. Both of them gracefully accepted my correction and agreed to change the behavior. Their godly response came as a breath of fresh air to me. Not only was I still alive, but I was also effective!

But while I was growing spiritually, I had a physical setback. During a routine day at work at the university, I had to pick up some tables at the football field. The job had gotten busy enough that I had my own helper now, a kid whose lack of motivation sometimes frustrated me. I held the attitude that said, “Get the job done. Do it well. Do it quickly.” His attitude seemed to say, “Well, yeah, I guess I should probably do that sometime.”

So on this particular day, I was in a hurry. Maybe I hoped that my drive would be contagious. But I was foolish: in an effort to work faster, I neglected to use the safety guard on the back of the truck’s hydraulic lift. We had hoisted the full rack of eight-foot tables up to the truck, and as I, in the truck, pushed them farther in, I stepped backward. Without the guard there, my foot found nothing but air. I fell five feet to the ground, landing on my back. If that weren’t bad enough, the tables slid backward out of the truck, and my helper, seemingly bigger and stronger than I was, couldn’t hold them. He let go. Fortunately for the rack of tables, my body was there to cushion its fall. My body didn’t fare so well.

I lay there, pinned, literally racked with pain. My helper climbed off the truck, yelling, “Help! Help!” He couldn’t lift the rack off of me. But a lady who had been working on the field heard his cries and ran over. In the blink of an eye, she had shoved the tables away and pulled me out from under them. I can’t help but laugh at the situation now: there was my helpless helper, completely stunned that this little lady had manhandled the rack of tables that he couldn’t budge. I fervently thanked her for her help and assured her that I would be fine, and she went back to her work.

I was furious with my assistant, but at least I didn’t seem to be really hurt. “Listen,” I said, “don’t say a word about this when we get back to base. Don’t say anything to anybody. I don’t want anyone worrying about me.”

But soon after we arrived at the warehouse, my boss came up to me. “Ken, what happened?” he asked. “He says you got hurt.” The kid had blabbed at the first opportunity. “I want to take you to the hospital.”

“No, I’ll be fine,” I said.

“No, I want to get you checked out.”

So they took me to the hospital, and we found I had a bruised hip. No big deal.

You’d think I would have learned something from the experience—something about impatience, perhaps? But later, with a new assistant, this one even bigger and stronger, we had to load ten 100-pound bags of sand onto the truck. I asked my assistant to get a pallet, and I backed the truck into position. When I came around the back, I found him just standing there next to the pallet. I grew angry and, without saying a word, started loading the bags myself. I bent down to pick up the bags, one at a time. At some point during that loading, I felt something pull inside my body. But I wasn’t really hurting, so I kept working.

As I continued my route, I found myself walking slower and slower. Something’s not right, I thought. It was lunchtime anyway, so I drove back to base, got in my car, and went to see my chiropractor. He checked me out and said, “Man, you’ve really messed yourself up.” I didn’t go back to work that day.

Even though I had done one or two foolish things at that job, I really enjoyed the work. I knew it was only temporary, though, and I kept hoping for a permanent position to open. After about four months, one did, but they filled it in-house with someone from another department. I was let go.

But God soon opened a door at a local Christian radio station. I applied, took a voice test, and got a job. I became the DJ from 6 p.m. to midnight, and I had a blast! The music was great, I loved the ministry programs like Focus on the Family, and I even got to do live reporting from the Whatcom County Fair. Since it was a Christian station, the radio job felt like an extension of the ministry I was already doing at the church.

In the course of time, I became friends with another young man who had a great idea for a live call-in ministry show, YES (Youth Encouraged to Speak). The station’s president and program director both loved the idea and gave us the go-ahead. We began developing the idea together, but my friend soon felt called to go another direction in life. He left the station but gave me the rights and his blessing to make the show a reality, so I kept working on it. Then the president brought me another idea: he wanted me to host the show, but he wanted to bring on a co-host—the son of one of the station’s biggest financial contributors.

That didn’t sit right with me. I didn’t have a problem working with someone on the show, but shouldn’t I first have the opportunity to at least meet the guy and find out if he really had a heart for this ministry? I mean, was this about ministry, or was it about money? But if that idea didn’t sit right, the president’s next idea didn’t sit at all.

“Ken, we want you to be the Youth Director for our station. You’ll be here full-time, in charge of all the events, programs, and everything. But you’ll have to leave your church position in order to have the time for this commitment.”

Now I had a conflict. Should I continue in the direction God had originally set for me—pastoring and evangelism—or should I strike out in this new direction? The radio station was still a ministry, and one that could afford to pay me. But I knew what I had to do. I knew I was called to Bellingham to pastor with Dale Smith, and that’s what I would continue to do. I resigned from the radio station and devoted my time to the church.

What I didn’t know at the time was that there was a lot of turmoil going on behind the scenes at church. A couple in the church, Deion and his wife, were trying to undermine the church leadership. They had tried to sow division between me and Pastor Dale, but it hadn’t worked. They were making false accusations about me, but at the same time, they tried to buddy up to me. To my face, they were kind—they even bought me a new pair of shoes—but behind my back, they slandered me.

This situation went on for quite some time, and it became a huge burden on the pastor. One day, I sat with Pastor Dale in his office, trying to determine the best course of action. It seemed that taking this couple out of the church would be a long and difficult process. They were well-liked by many in the congregation, and we thought disciplinary actions might spark a battle in the church. But I presented another solution. Since much of the controversy seemed to be about me, I felt it might be best if I left the church.

Dale didn’t want that. But I loved him, and I wanted him to be free to minister without issues. If the couple truly had a problem with me, I thought, this would be the simplest way to make the problem disappear. I was feeling called to a Senior pastor position anyway, so I thought God might be using this bad situation to bring about a good thing in my life. We talked about it, and I finally convinced him that it was for the best. I handed in my resignation and later read it in front of the church.

On our last Sunday, I noticed that Deion was seated on the platform in front, where the pastor and others who were leading the service usually sat. I walked back to the prayer closet behind the platform, where we would all gather to pray immediately prior to the service, to ask Dale about it.

“You know what he’s trying to do to the church,” I said. “Why are you letting him participate in the ministry?”

“Because I’m the pastor,” Dale responded.

“I understand,” I said. And I did understand. His decision was similar to mine: if he let Deion participate in the ministry, perhaps the man would not try to cause dissention. The pastor was trying to keep peace in the church, and this was the way he had decided to do it. I was leaving; it was no longer my place to help him make those decisions.

I stayed back there for a while, in tears because I loved this church and found it hard to leave. The service hadn’t started yet, and before I knew it, Deion had come in. He started spouting Christianese and meaningless platitudes: “God’s got a plan,” “Things will work out for the best,” “You’ve got to keep moving forward,” and things like that. I wanted to sock him in the eye. His phoniness made me sick. But I held my peace. We went through the service, and I took my family home.

That night, on impulse, I made a pan of chocolate brownies. I was depressed—I didn’t have a job; I didn’t even have a direction. I didn’t think about what I was doing, and before I knew it, I’d eaten almost the entire pan myself. Because of all the caffeine in the chocolate, I couldn’t sleep that night. Then, I couldn’t sleep the next night. And I couldn’t sleep the night after that. The brownies, on top of my stress, had triggered a condition of insomnia.

For the next several weeks, the condition persisted. I would try and fail to sleep at night. My body was tired, but my mind wouldn’t slow down. Anxiety gripped me during all my waking hours, and I feared being alone during the day. A friend, a Youth pastor at a different Bellingham church, offered to let me use his office during the day for job search activities. I could make phone calls, draft résumés, and fill out applications, and I never had to be alone. So every day, after dropping Theresa off at the daycare where she worked—the only income we had at that point—I would head over to my friend’s church. Occasionally, when I just couldn’t go on anymore, I would find a quiet corner of the church—usually the choir room—and try to get a few winks of sleep.

But things weren’t looking too good. The lack of sleep had taken its toll. My body didn’t seem to work right; my muscles were sluggish and twitchy. I thought I was losing my mind. I felt like I just couldn’t make anything work. My life seemed like a string of failures. Why did I have to be the one to back out? I thought. But I knew: I had loved Dale and Tina and wanted nothing more than for them to succeed, and this had seemed the best way to help them.

Yet even as I struggled against physical limitations and emotional doubts, I knew—and I began to feel it as a burning passion—that God wanted me to pastor a church, and I needed to be ready. At the same time, I received confirmation of this calling from Theresa. Every time the Lord speaks to my heart, He confirms the message in other ways, usually with two or three other people. Theresa had never really wanted to be a Senior pastor’s wife, but her attitude suddenly changed: she had felt the call, too. We both needed to get ready.

I threw myself into preparation. One benefit of being able to use my friend’s church every day was that it afforded me plenty of opportunity for research. I diligently studied the Word, and I researched all kinds of topics through other resources that he had available.

The most effective preparation, though, was—and always is—prayer. Prayer is our connection to God. It’s a conversation, and the more time we spend in it, the more we recognize His voice. People sometimes ask me how I hear from God. I tell them that it is through spending time in His Word and in prayer. Yes, I’ve had demonstrative experiences, times when I’ve been overwhelmed with God’s presence or when He has given me a physical vision. But it always comes in the quiet times. He says to us, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10 NIV). It’s in those quiet, still times that He cuts through the clutter of our minds and speaks to us. I spent a lot of time in prayer for His guidance, and as I prayed, I knew God heard me. I knew that my life was in His hands and He would take care of me. In preparing myself to answer His call, I began to feel a peace about life. It was this peace that assured me I was in the center of God’s will.

Naturally, as an Assemblies of God minister, one of the steps I took toward finding a new position was to get in touch with the AG leadership. Les Welk, then the Assistant Superintendent of the Northwest District, gave me some good news. The AG church in Aberdeen, Washington, had gone independent, and Les asked me if I would consider starting a new church in Aberdeen. I said I would pray about the decision and look into the situation down there.

I called the pastors of the churches in Central Park and Hoquiam, Aberdeen’s neighboring towns, to see what they thought about the idea. Both said they would be willing to support a new church, if I had the desire to start one. But the pastor of Central Park offered some additional insight: “I’ll support whatever decision you make, but, you know, there is already a strong Pentecostal influence in the area. So I’m not sure there’s really a need for another church.

“But,” he continued, “there’s a non-denominational church in Neilton, up by Lake Quinault, that’s been without a pastor for a year. I know the old pastor; he resigned, but he’s still preaching there until they can find someone else. Let me get you his number so you can give him a call.”

So I called Bart, the old pastor, and talked to him for a long while. “Why don’t you send us your résumé,” he suggested. “We’re having a board meeting at the end of the week, so we can look it over right away.”

I sent my résumé, and about a week later, the Secretary Treasurer of Quinault Valley Chapel, Larry, called me in my friend’s office. “Hi, Ken. Listen, we talked over your résumé at the board meeting, and we’re wondering if you’d be willing to come present your ministry at our church.”

I was elated! “Sure, I’d love to,” I said. So we set a date for me to come preach at their church, and before I knew it, that date arrived. We drove Highway 101 through the edges of Olympic National Forest until we came to Larry’s home, where we would stay while visiting the church.

Larry and his wife were wonderful, and we found them to be excellent hosts. Larry owned a sawmill in the area, and he had a beautiful home (and impressive gun and coin collections). Soon after we arrived, they took us on a tour of the area, including the church. As we walked up to the church, my first impression was that it was crowded. There were a lot of people, and they all looked the same! Not only did they dress, act, and talk alike (kind of a hillbilly-lumberjack look, I thought), but they had similar physical features.

I thought, Wow, I don’t fit in here! These people could chew me up and spit me out—even with their missing teeth! I soon found out that this wasn’t the congregation. One of the church members was having a family reunion. No wonder they looked alike!

We left the church and headed back to Larry’s house. I’ll never forget the moment when we got there. When we pulled into his driveway, I looked out to the backyard—a rolling expanse that stretched back toward the tree-covered hills—and saw about fifteen elk prancing in the mist that hovered a few feet above the ground. It was a spectacular sight.

Up to that point, I had so many doubts about my ability to pastor the congregation there, about that place truly being God’s will for me. That wilderness was a very different culture than I was used to, and I wasn’t sure I could handle it. But then when I saw that sight, I suddenly had a peace within me. I felt God’s reassurance. Although I was still nervous, I went to bed feeling sure that God would see me through whatever lay ahead.

The next morning, Cassandra got sick. Great, I thought, I’m getting ready to go preach to this church for the first time, and my daughter is puking! But when I turned around, there was Larry, cleaning up Cassandra, just as if she were his own granddaughter. He didn’t ignore the situation; he just jumped in to help. It touched my heart.

Well, we finally got ready and headed for church. When we got there, I found the congregation was not at all as I’d envisioned. The reunion folks had made me think everyone would be the same, but the church folks were different. There were teachers, sawmill workers, loggers, and shop owners. I later found that they also came from many different denominational backgrounds. Bellingham had prepared me a little for community churches, but this was even more diverse than I had imagined. We had Methodists, Lutherans, Pentecostals, even a Catholic, all fellowshipping and worshiping the Lord together. It was a beautiful sight.

When the time came, Bart, the former pastor, stood up and introduced us. My preaching went really well. I felt the anointing of God and His favor, and it seemed the congregation felt it too. Except for one man. During my sermon, I kept looking in the back of the church at this guy, because he gave me this uncomfortable stare, like he was evaluating me and finding that I didn’t measure up. After the service, Theresa and I went back to meet with the board, following the potluck they prepared for us. I found out that the staring man’s name was Leon. He was a board member, but he didn’t show up to the interview.

The interview was going great until one question popped up and floored me: “Are there any skeletons in your closet?”

What? How do I answer that? I’d made a lot of mistakes, sure, but nothing had been secret. I had been on probation with the AG because of the pornography issue, but should I talk about that? God had given me victory over that problem already. So I skirted the question. Before I could flounder too much, Theresa spouted out something that totally redirected the situation; she could tell I was sweating. We left it at that, and the answer satisfied. When we left, I felt a peace that the interview had gone well.

Theresa and I had decided to turn this trip into a little vacation. So we took the kids to Ocean Shores for a few days, and we had a great time hanging out on the beach and relaxing. Then we headed back up to Bellingham to await the decision. The following Wednesday was the business meeting when they would vote on me. Those few days were some of the longest days I’ve ever had.

Chapter 13:

A BRILLIANT BLAZE

THE PHONE RANG in my Bellingham living room, and I answered, “Hello?”

“Hello, this is Bart.” It was the call I’d been waiting for. “I wanted to let you know that we just had our vote, and we’ve voted you in as pastor of Quinault Valley Chapel.” I heard people applauding in the background because he had the call going through the intercom system at the church.

When I hung up the phone, I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I was elated—this was exactly what I had wanted. I had reached a new milestone. On the other hand, I felt a real fear. Not only had I just gained the responsibilities of a Senior pastor—a responsibility for guiding, discipling, and disciplining an entire church—but I had taken on that responsibility in a rural area, an area I didn’t know well. I felt a bit like a missionary. I’m a city boy, used to all the amenities and convenience of urban life. I had just become the pastor of a logging town out in the middle of nowhere. It’s a place full of a kind of people I had never known: rugged, independent survivors. These were manly men, guys with missing fingers, who would keep going back, day after day, to that same job where they’d lost those fingers.

I was nervous, so I began to pray. “God, I don’t know what to do. I’m totally out of my element.” I had been an Youth pastor; I had been an evangelist; I had done all sorts of things, but now I would have to be the pastor of my own church. I still felt pretty young; I was in my early thirties. I felt inexperienced. And then I remembered what Solomon prayed. He prayed from his heart, asking for wisdom. He didn’t ask for wealth, prestige, or position. He asked for wisdom so that he could govern well and judge justly. I did the same. “God,” I said, “I really need wisdom. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

So we tied up loose ends in Bellingham and prepared to move. Moving day arrived, and men from Quinault Valley Chapel showed up with a big U-Haul. They wouldn’t let Theresa or me lift a finger; they loaded up everything themselves. Pretty soon, they had packed the truck, and we set out on the four-hour journey to Quinault. Along the way, they bought us dinner.

When we arrived in Quinault, we pulled into the driveway of the beautiful house the church had already acquired for us. We entered the house and found a bunch of people inside, cleaning. They had cleaned the whole house and prepared everything for us to move in. We couldn’t believe the warmth with which they greeted us; we felt so special.

Quinault quickly became home for us. We got our house in shape; my office soon followed. The congregation seemed to love us. I found it a bit odd that the former pastor and his wife still attended that church. But they seemed like good people who really cared about us, so I didn’t think much of it. His wife would come visit my office just to see how I was getting along; she even brought flowers once to spruce up the office. It made me a little nervous (Is she flirting with me, or what?), but it seemed like they were simply trying to ease my way into the church.

One other thing struck me as odd, though. Bart came into my office one day, and during our conversation, he made a strange request. “Ken, I want you to understand that this church wants to remain non-denominational. We’ve got no desire to join the Assemblies of God.”

I didn’t even know what to say. I didn’t have any intention to force the church to become AG—the thought hadn’t even entered my mind—so I said, “Okay.”

I couldn’t understand why he had said that. He had been AG in the past, so maybe he’d had a bad experience? Even so, it felt like he was trying to hold onto some control. We had several similar encounters, when Bart would try to direct my leadership of the church, and they always made me uncomfortable. But I was young, I was immature, and I certainly wasn’t assertive. I didn’t know how to respond. At first, I took Bart’s direction as advice and often followed it. Soon, though, I saw that it was becoming a power struggle, and I began to take charge, focusing on God’s will, not Bart’s. After that, my ministry began to flourish.

The only businesses in Quinault at the time were two mercantiles, a restaurant, a gas station, a clinic, and a couple of motels. For a city boy like me, this wasn’t much variety. So one day, when the Schwan’s truck came to town, I walked with my kids to where the truck had set up to see what they had to offer. At the same time, up walked a burly, balding man with a bushy beard. His skin was weathered, and what hair he did have was disheveled. He looked like a wild mountain man. A young boy followed close behind him. The man seemed angry, and with a gruff voice, he soon started berating me about driving too fast through the neighborhood.

What is this, I thought, the welcoming committee? I apologized for driving too fast, though I was pretty sure I didn’t drive too fast. But my apology had no effect on his attitude, and I began to feel real hatred radiating from this guy. That was about the extent of the confrontation, though, and I soon left with my kids.

Later that day, the same guy came into my office. In a half-sincere tone, he started apologizing, but in the middle of the apology, he started griping again.

Something isn’t right here, I thought. There’s something spiritual going on, but I can’t put my finger on it.

I asked around later, and I found out from the former pastor that this guy, Brady, had some demonic problems. And it was clear from Brady’s strange behaviors that he did. He would flip me off every time I drove past him. He would yell at me everywhere I ran into him, which I seemed to do more and more frequently, and he often threatened to kill me. His wife and son were quiet and mainly stayed out of sight. He would burn things in his front yard, which was next door to the church. He spent a huge amount of time stoking that fire in his yard, and I never really understood it. It seemed almost like he was obsessed with fire, and it was really creepy, especially at night. Several times, when the Holy Spirit really moved in the church, I would look out the window to see him burning a cross in his yard. Sometimes, he’d fire a shotgun into the ground. Like I said, I’m a city boy, and I come from a pretty non-violent background, so I wasn’t used to seeing people waving guns around. You can imagine how distracting it was when, in the middle of preaching a sermon, I’d hear gunfire and see this guy outside waving his shotgun.

I managed to engage him in conversation several times, sometimes getting past the demonic influence to know he was really hearing me. When I saw that, I started talking about Jesus. It seemed like I could briefly get through to Brady, but then he’d get agitated and would have to run back into his house.

There was another individual in Quinault who troubled me, but this one was in the church. Soon after I became the pastor and started really getting to know the congregation, I began to ask questions about Leon, the board member whose stare had made me uncomfortable on my first visit. He seemed like such a strange choice to serve on a church board. He was almost militant in his faith, and not in a good sense; he would have preferred me to preach condemning messages, blasting everyone with the Word. He always seemed apprehensive and uncomfortable around me; I felt sure he didn’t like me being there. I came to find out that he had been hurt by pastors during his life, so I guess it was natural that he kept his guard up.

He was a peculiar individual: in his theology, in his emotions, in his lifestyle, he differed from all the rest of the congregation. It seemed like he was watching over his shoulder all the time, and there seemed to be a darkness in him. It fit well with the whole atmosphere of the area; there was a spiritual darkness there.

Quinault lay just off an Indian reservation. The Indian folklore and spiritism had heavily influenced the entire area, and I believe much of that influence is demonic. I remember one time, as my family and I were driving back to Quinault from Bremerton, that we could almost see that influence with our eyes. It was like a fog that got heavier as we got closer to Quinault, though there wasn’t any physical fog. True, in our time there, we saw God do some amazing work in Quinault, but we never got over the feeling that something resisted Him. The atmosphere seemed spiritually oppressive.

I saw that same effect in Leon. He rarely sat down in church. He had to keep moving, almost like there was a spiritual struggle inside him that made him uncomfortable and wouldn’t let him sit still. I believe he loved the Lord, but he sowed discord everywhere because of his abrasive attitude. His attendance, even at the board meetings, was sporadic at best. Every meeting he did attend seemed like a battle. He came to the meetings not to reach decisions for the good of the church but to fight. He seemed to question everything about the organized Church worldwide, and he couldn’t agree with any of us about decisions for our church in particular. On the other hand, when it was just the two of us having coffee at his house, we had some great conversations. I really just couldn’t figure him out; I don’t think I ever did.

Finally, Leon resigned from the board and stopped coming to the church. It was odd because he lived on the same street that the church was on. His family still attended, but he didn’t. I believe it was God’s hand that caused him to resign, because as soon as Leon was off the board, peace reigned.

I replaced Leon with a man named Merl. Merl was a wonderful guy. The only problem was, he had been divorced. Many church members hold to a very harsh interpretation of Paul’s words in 1 Timothy that an overseer (sometimes translated bishop or elder) should be the “husband of one wife” (KJV). They believe that any man who has been divorced does not meet this qualification and should never again hold a position of authority in the church. Several of my board members fell into this camp. I, on the other hand, interpret that verse in light of the culture Timothy was dealing with in pastoring the church at Ephesus, a culture where polygamy was not at all unusual. In my view, anyone with a heart to serve the Lord should not be kept from serving, regardless of past mistakes.

So I fought for Merl, and I won the fight. As a board member, he was supportive and submitted to my authority, which was refreshing after the frequent conflicts with Leon. Our board meetings no longer sparked discord and resentment but were full of laughter and joy, even when opinions differed.

When I got to the church, they had been without a pastor for a year, which meant that they hadn’t paid a pastor’s salary. I feared the church finances would suffer after they had begun paying me. As I had feared, they did soon hit a slump. The church began to worry about finances, which I now believe was an attack of the enemy, as evidenced by the result.

The board soon approached me with a plan to cut the missions program from our budget. I fought and fought, but after awhile, they wore me down. We cut all missionary funding, intending to review the question again three months later. As soon as we made that decision, our finances did a steeper nosedive. Then one day as I prayed, I began grieving: God put it on my heart that we had made a grave error. We had not followed Him in faith; we had allowed ourselves to be consumed by the cares of the world.

I took it to the board immediately. It had been only one month since our ill-conceived decision, but I wanted to respond to God’s words without hesitation. We started again with one missionary, and we sent money right away. It seemed to me that God’s response was almost instantaneous: our finances turned around. When I left Quinault Valley four years later, the church’s finances were just as solid as they had been before I had come.

Other than my issues with Brady and Leon, the first few months in Quinault went pretty smoothly. In fact, they were great. We had sixty conversions in the first couple of months, and we saw God’s Spirit really begin to move. With such a quick influx of people, I really struggled about how to lead them. I remember weeping in my office, crying out to the Lord: “God, I don’t know how to disciple these people; I don’t know what to do. Please help me!”

The Book of James tells us that God gives wisdom to those who ask, and He proved His Word again this time. He laid on my heart the desire to form cell groups. By encouraging the church body to meet in these smaller groups during the week, I could give them the opportunity to grow and enjoy fellowship outside of Sunday morning.

So I called a pastor friend of mine who had started a cell group ministry before. I asked him to come out and talk to me and my board about the process and give us an idea of what the ministry might require. He and his Associate pastor came to visit and walked us through what their ministry looked like. By the time they left, we had decided to try out this cell group idea. God continued to pour His wisdom on me, prompting me to write a curriculum for these groups rather than follow an existing one.

Our cell group ministry was born! The congregation jumped right in, and the groups grew and grew. God blessed this ministry and those who participated. It seemed like everyone I talked to had developed a deeper relationship with Christ as a result of joining a group. The church flourished.

Then I got a phone call. It was one of the board members. Larry, our Secretary Treasurer (whose house we’d stayed at during our initial visit), had been out logging with his grown son. They had been lifting some trees with a loader when one tree shifted. The tree had rolled onto his son’s leg, crushing his leg and pinning the young man to the ground. The father had moved the vehicle to lift the tree off, but the tree had shifted again. This time, it had crushed the young man’s head.

At the same time I felt the horror of that accident, I felt a terror of my own. Now, in my early thirties, I had to conduct a funeral for a man not much younger. I knew this tragedy would be a real test for me, and I needed the wisdom of God. I had been to funerals, sure, but I’d never conducted one before. In a town that size (about 1,500 people), everyone knows everyone else. That young man had been known and deeply loved by that community. And they all knew me—the outsider, the new kid on the block—and would judge me by how I handled that situation. I suddenly felt I was under a magnifying glass.

Well, I met with the family, and we planned the service. It was to be held in our church, which seated about 200, so we were planning for a packed house. Later, as we worked to set up the church, Brady, the demonized man, approached. He came into the church, walked up to me, and said with gentleness, “Can I help you?”

Floored, I said, “Absolutely, you can help us.” I came to find out that he and the young man had been friends. So Brady worked along with us to set up the church, and while we worked, we all joked and laughed together and got along really well.

Then the guests arrived, and the time came to begin. I was nervous beyond words. The church overflowed with people. We had over 400 in attendance. They stood wall-to-wall in the sanctuary, they massed outside all around the church, and they even peeked in from the kitchen.

And God proved Himself again by giving me wisdom. The service was awesome. We really felt His presence there, comforting the grieving. Everything went smoothly, and people came up to me afterward to affirm me.

“You did a great job,” they said. It was like I’d passed a test in their eyes by conducting this service well.

I had passed a test with Brady, as well. His attitude toward me seemed changed. He was friendlier, almost companionable. His wife had prepared a dish for the potluck, so I went over to their house afterwards to return the plate. He actually talked with me! He didn’t argue, cuss me out, or flip me off; we just talked. I thought, Hey, maybe I’m making some in-roads with this guy. Maybe I’m finally in a place where I can minister to him.

Every day after that for about a week, I found myself over on Brady’s property, talking with him. Mostly, we talked about surface things, but I directed the conversation to the Lord whenever I could. And it seemed he actually listened and agreed!

Wow, I thought, this is really happening! The walls are breaking down. I’m really getting through to him, and there’s going to be a victory here!

Then one day, on my way home, I pulled into Brady’s driveway to check up on him, just to see how he was, which I’d been doing regularly. He was out in his front yard, stoking a fire.

I pulled in, and with the window rolled down, I said, “Hey, Brady, how’s it going?”

“Get the [expletive] off my property,” he said.

“Brady, what’s wrong?” I asked.

“Get off my property,” he repeated.

“Alright,” I said, “I’ll just come back tomorrow.”

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” he spat.

I didn’t. We never had a comfortable relationship again; it became combative, as it had been in the beginning. The fact that I couldn’t get through to Brady weighed heavily on me. I couldn’t help free him from whatever bondage had a hold on him. Maybe nothing I had done would make any kind of difference in his life. Could I have done more? I didn’t know.

After the funeral, our ministry in Quinault became even more vibrant. God caused the church to grow and flourish. The cell groups continued growing, and I saw immense growth and strengthening in the faith of the new believers. They were going into the community and reaching the world for Christ, demonstrating even to our “seasoned saints” what it meant to have passion for Christ. We were fast becoming the kind of active church most pastors only dream about.

Quinault Valley Chapel was a fairly small church, though; we had about 125 regular attendees. With a small church like that, there just isn’t room for a large pastoral staff. So I was the Senior pastor, the Youth pastor, and the Children’s pastor, which meant I had to lead a gathering for each of those groups on different nights during the week. (I did have a volunteer, Leroy, who led worship. He soon took on the role of Associate pastor, though still on a volunteer basis.) Sure, it was tiring, but I loved the fact that I could see the ministry grow. The youth group alone held steady at about fifty kids. I never had this many as a Youth pastor! I thought. It was true; I’d struggled to get twenty in my Bellingham group, and it had usually been just Dale and Tina’s kids. But here, the Spirit of God moved, and kids got saved. I felt like God had poured Miracle-Gro on the whole church.

This growth allowed me great opportunities to reach more people in creative ways. For example, I decided to teach the Youth group about life after death. So I went down to the funeral home (forty minutes away) and asked them if I could borrow a casket. Talk about an unusual request! I explained to them my plan, and they agreed to let me use one. They gave me a really nice one—beautifully constructed and shiny, with a satin lining—and we loaded it into my van. I took it to the church and set it up.

When the teens came in for the Youth group meeting, I had dimmed the lights and set the church up just as it would have been for a real funeral. I held a mock funeral service there, and throughout the service, I asked, “Where has this young person gone? Did they go to heaven, or did they go to hell?” We talked about choices, small decisions to choose either the things of God or the things of this world, and how those choices set up a pattern that either leads us to God or leads us away.

At the end of the service, I had each of them come up to view the person in the coffin. I told them they would decide in their own minds where this young person went. As each came up, I opened the coffin enough for that person to see inside. Each one looked in and saw the mirror I had placed there.

As I closed the lid each time, I saw tears on each face. The solemnity of the occasion really hit home. Those teens knew that this was a grave choice that each one of them had to make. And many of them that night chose to give their lives to Christ.

When I took the casket back to the funeral home, the director told me he loved what I had done. He said, “We’re going to be having students from the local high schools coming here for a presentation. Would you be willing to speak to them?”

He continued, “Obviously, it can’t be exactly the same talk. I mean, it can’t be a Christian production; the school wouldn’t go for it. But you could give a motivational talk on making good choices.”

What an opportunity! God had opened a huge door. Imagine: the chance to talk to all of the high-school students in the area, not just your own Youth group. The kids who really needed to hear about making right choices would get to hear it. And at the end, each one of them would come face-to-face with the reality of death, forcing them to consider questions of eternity.

After that talk, I had several teachers from the K-12 school come up to me and say, “I don’t know what you’re doing, but whatever it is, keep it up; this is the best school year we’ve ever had.” Kids were getting along, respecting the teachers, and generally making good decisions.

I often went to visit the school after that, and—I don’t know if this happens anywhere in the United States—when I pulled onto the property, teachers would give the students hall passes and let them leave class to come see me! The school let me walk the halls and speak with the kids. I could give them advice, help with their problems, and even pray for them. I had kids yelling out of the windows to greet me when I showed up. These kids were really getting touched by God.

The football team began praying in their team huddle before going onto the field—many of them were in the Youth group. After the games, they would come to our church, and we’d have a Fifth Quarter, a hang-out and party time with music and food. They all had a great time, and it was an easy way to help them make right choices—we knew that nobody was out getting into trouble with their post-game energy.

Chapter 14:

OTHER FIRES

SOME TIME LATER, an evangelist named Aaron came to the town of Central Park, and I wanted to go see him. So I went down to Central Park to attend one of his services. Aaron was a big guy with a big voice. I mean, this guy was demonstrative. His style differed from what I was used to, but I saw the Spirit of God moving when he preached.

So I talked to him about coming to Quinault to hold a revival. He had a lot of requirements—we had to provide lodging and all sorts of things for him—but the church agreed to make it happen. We found him a place to stay in a member’s mobile home, and we started the revival. Revival meetings usually last three to five days. We had scheduled this one for a week, but God moved in that revival, so we kept it going. And it seemed to just keep going. We ultimately held the revival for three weeks at my church and three more at the nearby church where my friend Les pastored. But it wasn’t long into the run that I started butting heads with Aaron. He basically took over my church and started telling me how he was going to do things. He conducted the service entirely on his own. I couldn’t do anything; I couldn’t even take up the offering—he preached what amounted to a second sermon during the offering time and then asked the ushers to pass the plates.

He said to me once during the revival, “If people aren’t falling under the power of the Holy Spirit every time you preach, then you are not walking in the Spirit.” Like I said, a demonstrative personality. But I was young, and this guy was more experienced, so I took a back seat for a while.

Many good things came out of that revival. For one, we held a baptism service in Lake Quinault. Fifty people got baptized that day! As we were nearing the end of that service, a man came running down to the lake. I recognized him; he had been saved during the revival. As he ran, he threw off his shirt and yelled, “Can I get baptized too?” Not long after that, I began to see that God had called this man into ministry. I allowed him to take on more and more responsibility, and we eventually made him the Youth pastor. He has since continued in ministry and now serves as a Senior pastor.

There were also some troubling aspects of that revival, in addition to the personal ones I mentioned earlier. One night, during the revival service, one of the ladies in the congregation started having chest pain. I’m of the mindset that you pray for it, but you call 911 at the same time. You don’t know how God is going to heal this person, so you have to use wisdom—you have to take advantage of the services He’s already made available to you. So I did exactly that: I took her outside, prayed with her, and called 911. When Aaron heard about this a few minutes later, he stormed outside—in the middle of the service—to confront me about it.

“Why did you call an ambulance?” he scolded. “Why didn’t you come get me?”

“Hey, I was trying to use some wisdom here,” I started, but he continued berating me.

Several people, including Theresa, had come out by now, so he said, “Get everybody out of the area except the pastor.” He looked at my wife and said, “You leave too; you don’t have enough faith.”

At this point, someone came out of the sanctuary and said to me, “His mic is on; everybody in the church heard all of that.” But what else could I do at that point? So we prayed for the lady. When the ambulance arrived, the EMTs checked her out, and she appeared to be fine, so she didn’t go with them.

The next morning, I was livid. I asked Aaron into my office, I sat down, and I said, “Listen, if it weren’t for what I’m seeing the Holy Spirit do, you’d be gone tonight. You don’t speak to my wife that way. And scolding people like that is not the way I do things around here. I don’t want to get in the way of what the Holy Spirit is doing in people’s lives, so we’re going to continue on for now, but if it weren’t for that, you’d be gone.”

So we finished our three-week run of revival services without any more incidents, and then Aaron moved on to my friend Les’ church in Amanda Park, four miles away, for another three weeks. The revival there went well until the same incident occurred again. Another lady began having chest pain during a service. In that instance, Aaron came out and took charge immediately. Again, he didn’t want to call an ambulance. Well, the lady lived through that night, but she died of a heart attack several weeks later. I really struggled with guilt after that.

Could I have done more? Would her life have been saved if the ambulance had been called that night?

After the revivals, God was still moving in the lives of our young people. He made His presence known with signs and wonders, and the kids really seemed on fire for the Lord. So we decided to give them the opportunity for some focused time to seek God; we planned a retreat. I asked my brother-in-law, a Youth pastor, if he would come and lead the retreat. He did, and it was a huge success.

Once the retreat ended, though, discontent grew among many of the parents. Their kids had not just become Christians—they had become Spirit-filled, Pentecostal Christians. The young people spoke in tongues and saw visions. To the parents, it seemed their children were over the top; they were becoming fanatics! I didn’t see their fervent faith as a bad thing, though. I thought the young people even seemed more respectful to their parents than before.

But the popular opinion swung against me. Rumors sprang up that I had started a cult. A rumor grew that I was the next David Koresh (the Branch Davidian leader in Waco, Texas). Parents started pulling their kids out of the church, not allowing them to come to Youth group events or participate in anything. Naturally, the Youth group dwindled. This situation was a difficult struggle for me. I saw the enemy waging this counterattack against God’s work in the lives of these young people, but I wasn’t going to set myself against their parents, the God-appointed authority in their lives.

One thing the Lord has shown me lately is that whenever He begins working in someone’s life, the devil always tries to mount a counterattack. We have to be prepared for that to happen; it will. Even when we’re prepared—“for we are not unaware of his schemes” (2 Corinthians 2:11 NIV)—it can be difficult to know how to defend against those attacks. And that difficulty was exactly what I faced in this case.

But I kept working through it. Eventually, I found a Youth pastor and a Children’s director, which allowed me to focus on ministry for the adults. The Youth pastor was the young man who had run to the lake to get baptized, and the Children’s director was the wife of one of our board members—she had a huge heart for kids. I believe the extra accountability of having a larger staff helped quell the rumors that had been circulating.

Chapter 15:

PILLAR OF FIRE

AFTER A COUPLE OF YEARS pastoring in Quinault, I began to feel a little drained and a little discontented, kind of like I was going through the motions but wasn’t giving my heart. The church had gained some victories, and we had seen some growth, but I felt that God had more in store for us. So I began to pray that God would give us—and especially me—more opportunity to serve Him, more love, more faith, and more openness to His voice.

I began to study the Generals of the Faith—men and women throughout history who have devoted their lives to serving God and made a tremendous impact—to find out what made them tick. I studied people like Smith Wigglesworth and W.J. Seymour and more modern ones like Kathryn Kuhlman and Benny Hinn. I wanted to see how the Spirit moved in their lives and how they responded. In my studies, I discovered two common denominators.

First, they were obsessed with prayer. Each one demonstrated a life consumed by prayer. It seemed they took advantage at every possible moment of this powerful connection with the living God. This focus on prayer led to the second characteristic: a friendship with the Holy Spirit. Each one had a personal, intimate relationship with the Lord, especially His Spirit. He literally became their friend.

So I began to ask God for that intimacy with Him, and I passionately pursued that desire. I wanted to know God; I wanted to be filled with His Spirit. I had been baptized in the Holy Spirit, spoken in tongues, and done other things like that, but this was something different. I wanted a true relationship. I wanted the dynamos power of the Spirit to be actively working in my life, teaching me and reaching other people through me.

When I started asking for that relationship, God started giving it to me. God began doing amazing things in my life and in my ministry. Signs and wonders accompanied the Spirit’s presence in the church. I remember a time on a Saturday night, when we had a prayer group. I lay on the floor, prostrate before God, pouring my heart out in prayer. Suddenly, I saw a river coming toward me. It started small, but the closer it got, the bigger and wilder it grew. It seemed so real that when it got to me, I turned my head because I didn’t want to get water in my nose! The Lord showed me through that river that He had granted my request: He was pouring His Spirit out on me, filling me until I overflowed.

There are two inter-related dangers of this kind of Spirit-filled worship. The first danger is becoming addicted to the feeling of the Spirit’s presence. We can rely so much on the power that we forget the relationship. We can forget that the Holy Spirit is the God who wants to intimately know us, and then we begin to use Him like a drug to attain some kind of spiritual high. The second danger, and the one that I now began to fall into, is that we can start measuring our ministry by the signs and wonders we experience. (Aaron the evangelist had traveled down this road, as evidenced by his statement to me about people falling down under the Spirit’s power.) The signs and wonders then become the point of the ministry.

One night, in another prayer group, as I prayed for people, the Lord spoke to me and told me to blow on these people. He also told me why. When Jesus sent out His disciples, “He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (John 20:22 NIV). I realized that He didn’t ask me to do this because I had any kind of special power; He wanted to see if I would obey Him in the unusual. Well, I did. I blew on the person I was praying for, and that person fell to the ground under the power of the Spirit.

Young man that I was, I thought, Wow, this is really amazing. And so I kept doing it. Pretty soon, I did things like that all the time as part of my regular ministry in that church. Basically, I turned the gift of God into a gimmick. But then God spoke to my heart.

He said, “Let Me move My way. If I ask you to do something, do it. If I don’t, don’t do it.” God scolded me because I was making a mockery of His power. So I stopped misusing that gift, and in return, God blessed my ministry even more.

God had to tell me that He knew what He was doing. He does have a plan, and most of the time, we can’t know it. Sometimes He chooses to act in powerful, visible ways, but He more often speaks in that still, small voice. He controls the tempest, but His name is the Prince of Peace. It isn’t always about signs and wonders, and I had to learn that.

He also led me to the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22, where He showed me that the sign isn’t the Holy Spirit; the sign is the result of the Spirit, merely one effect of the Spirit. The sign can be evidence of the Spirit’s presence, but the sign isn’t a necessary requirement for the Spirit’s presence. God told me that as long as I walked in His Spirit, the fruits would be evident: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Those fruits are how we determine if we’re truly walking in the Spirit, regardless of how many people fall down in our services.

My focus on signs and the demonstrative power of the Spirit was leading me down a path where God didn’t want me. He wanted me following His path. Rather than focusing on the external, He wanted me to focus on the internal. He wanted me talking with Him and examining my own attitudes and actions. So I began focusing more on the internal, and I began praying more.

One day as I prayed, God planted an idea in me: merge the two churches. He wanted me to bring together Quinault Valley Chapel and Amanda Park Assembly of God. I knew this idea wasn’t mine; the thought of doing anything like that had never even crossed my mind before. So I drove the four miles to Amanda Park and talked to Les.

Les was the second pastor to lead the church at Amanda Park since I’d been in Quinault. The first pastor had never really fit in well at that church, and he’d also seemed to have issues with me. Even when there was a fire on his property and we helped him out, he had a problem with me being there. I guess it seemed like a competition to him—Quinault Valley Chapel had a larger congregation, so maybe he felt intimidated? Whatever his issues, he left, disgruntled. Then Les arrived. Les had been the other candidate for the Youth pastor position in Montesano years ago, and the two of us swiftly became good friends when he started at Amanda Park. I found it funny that we had once competed for the same Youth pastor position and we now held Senior pastor positions near each other.

When I told Les about what God had put on my heart, he said that was funny, because God had told him the same thing. Neither of us had a doubt that God had spoken to us and given us His desire. But the next question was, how would we proceed? Obviously, the first step involved talking to our boards. His church had been struggling with low attendance for some time, so his board was all for the merge. When I talked to my board, they all seemed interested. Step one: complete.

Then I called Les Welk, the Assemblies of God Assistant Superintendent, to see how he felt about it. He seemed pretty excited, so I asked him to come down to Quinault and talk to my board. Even though I was an AG minister, Quinault Valley Chapel was not an AG church; Amanda Park was. As part of the merge, we were considering becoming one. As it stood now, we had no covering, no spiritual authority over us to provide guidance or correction, and I was a little uncomfortable with that situation. So Les came and preached a service and then talked with my board about the possibilities. The board seemed to agree that it was a good idea—the majority of the board and the church members were AG anyway. So it seemed the merge would happen.

The final step was to bring it before the congregation. Amanda Park had already done that, and their congregation supported the merge. Their pastor and I saw this as an opportunity to bring unity to the town, and their congregation definitely wanted that. There had been a rift between the two churches for years. Les and I thought that if we could bring them together as brothers and sisters in Christ, there could be healing—we didn’t even care which of us would pastor the church! As the discussions continued, we leaned toward my taking on the Senior pastor role, and we were both fine with that.

As I took the time to prepare the Quinault congregation for the vote, Bart, the old pastor, and his family rose up, spearheading opposition to the whole idea. They had never left the church and had never been taken off the membership list. So they had votes; they could be involved in the whole process. They started speaking against it, trying to sway opinions.

One day, Bart stormed into my office and started accusing me. “You said when you came that you’d never do something like this!”

I sat there baffled. I had been there three years by now, and most people seemed to approve the work I’d done. I said, “Bart, I was a young man. How dare you put the responsibility on me to make a statement like that? I didn’t know the situation; what else was I going to say at the time? I’m just trying to do what I feel is right.”

Despite the old pastor’s discontent, I kept hearing from people how great an idea it was. Everyone seemed to be for it. Then came the night of the vote. We would have a time of discussion, where anyone could stand to take the floor, and then we would vote. I knew the atmosphere would be tense because Bart and his family would be there—they were, even the kids who didn’t often come to church. I made the rule beforehand that if anyone stood to speak, I would ask if they had earnestly prayed about the situation. If they hadn’t, I would ask them to sit down.

I was determined to make this a fun, peaceful night, regardless of the outcome. So we were all talking and laughing for a while, and then we had our discussion time. Of course, the old pastor and his family all stood to speak. When I asked if they’d prayed about it, they of course said yes. Even though I didn’t buy it, I allowed them to continue. And they presented the negative side of the argument.

Then, we cast our votes. Since I was determined to make this a fun evening, I had the congregation sing Christmas songs (it was July) while the votes were being counted. When the vote came back, my heart sank. Remember, going into this night, every member of the board was for the merge. Everyone on the board but one (my Associate pastor) had voted against it. I couldn’t believe it! I knew that I had heard from God about this.

As I walked down the hall that night, preparing to leave, person after person came up to me in tears and said, “I knew that it was God’s will to merge, but I was afraid of what Bart and his influences in the town might do. So I voted against it.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing! I thought. You knew it was God’s will and voted against it from fear? But I didn’t respond that way. Instead, I said, “It’s okay. I understand, and we’re going to go forward.”

I walked out of the church in grief. People knowing God’s will and hindering it really bothered me. I thought, I can’t be here much longer. I can’t lead if the people won’t follow. But I didn’t want to leave on this note. So I continued ministering there.

Another sad thing about this process was the effect it had on my relationship with the Assemblies of God. While we had been thinking about this merge, it had seemed like I was the Good Ol’ Boy with the AG. I got phone calls from AG people all the time: “Hey, we hear of great things going on in Quinault.” “Sounds like God’s really moving down there.” “We’re really excited about what you’re doing there!” Then when the merge was voted down, the phone stopped ringing.

But the Assemblies did say that if it took closing their church to bring unity in Quinault, they would do it. They actually did close Amanda Park for a period of time, and the members started coming to Quinault Valley Chapel. That was fine, but I knew it wasn’t the situation God had desired. Then the AG decided to reopen Amanda Park with new leadership. The irony this time was that the new pastor had been one of the Youth leaders under me in Montesano. But the new leadership seemed more competitive, so we didn’t connect as well. I supported them and offered whatever help they needed, but the churches were never close in the rest of my time there.

I knew that we had missed God’s leading, and I knew that meant I couldn’t stay much longer. So I began looking around to see what possibilities for ministry existed elsewhere. Some places were seeking leadership, and I received a few invitations to visit. I was asked to present my ministry in Soap Lake, Washington. (It’s a cool place; the lake has a high mineral content, so it feels like soap.) I took Theresa, of course, and Leroy and his wife also joined us—we thought it might be cool if we all moved together to begin a work somewhere. We met wonderful people in Soap Lake, and I loved them immediately. I felt a real kindred spirit with them, and I thought this would be a great place to minister. But Leroy and his wife didn’t like it, and they convinced Theresa that moving there wasn’t a good idea. So that possibility fell through.

And then another door opened. I had connected with Eddie, a man who used to be my Executive Presbyter. He was holding a revival down in Vancouver, Washington, so we went down to participate. We weren’t looking to serve there or help with the revival, just to let the Spirit of the Lord refresh us. We found God moving there, and we loved it. So when another revival began soon after in the nearby city of Portland, Oregon, preached by a well-known minister from the powerful revival that had recently begun in Argentina, you’d have been hard pressed to stop us from going to that one too.

I connected really well with Eddie, and he kept saying, “You know, I’d really like you to move down here. We could start something really big, and I could provide an apostolic covering for you and help you get started.” (The apostolic covering he talked about is the same sort of authority the Assemblies of God leadership would have provided for Quinault Valley Chapel if the church had elected to join them.) At those same revivals, we met Eli, a pastor whose ministry was connected to Eddie’s. Eli had pulled out of the AG, and he also urged us to move to Vancouver and maybe join him in a more independent ministry.

One day soon after that, as I sat in my home in Quinault, I got a phone call from Eddie, who began to encourage me to leave the Assemblies soon because things were not right there. Then, soon after I hung up the phone, it rang again. This time it was my old pastor from Montesano. We hadn’t ended our relationship on very good terms, so you might imagine what a surprise it was to get a call from him. Well, he had heard that I’d been talking to the former Presbyter, and he’d called to discourage me from getting involved with him: “You don’t know about Eddie.” “He’s this,” and “He’s that.” “Don’t go down there.” But nothing he said gave me a good reason not to go.

When I got off the phone, I started weeping. “What is going on here?” I wondered. I couldn’t see why one man who sought to serve God would try so hard to slander another man who did the same. It broke my heart that this sort of bitterness could exist in the Assemblies of God, this church family that I loved.

And then I made a brash move that I would later regret. I sent my formal resignation to the Assemblies of God. I explained that I felt the Lord was leading me in a new direction of ministry, a more independent one. That wasn’t entirely true; the decision was more an act of frustration.

It had been a year since the church had voted down the merge with Amanda Park. I thought that enough time had passed; it wouldn’t look like I was leaving because I’d gotten my feelings hurt or something. I felt it was time to move on. Theresa and I decided to take a year off from ministry to get our bearings and see what God wanted us to do, and we thought Eli’s church in Vancouver would be the perfect place to do it. So I resigned from Quinault Valley Chapel and closed another chapter in my life.

Chapter 16:

PILLAR OF CLOUD

WE LEFT QUINAULT in the spring of 1997, heading for Vancouver, Washington. The move was a leap of faith: I had no job and no prospects. I didn’t even have any credentials, since I had now resigned from the Assemblies of God. I wasn’t sure what shape Eli’s ministry would take or what part I would play. All we had done so far was secure a house to rent. But Theresa and I felt certain God was calling us to Vancouver and certain that He could take care of the details.

And He did! Until He finally opened the doors for employment, God kept providing for us in strange, miraculous ways. Even in the little things, He showed us that He cared. For example, on Mother’s Day, I wanted to do something fun with the family. I thought a picnic in the park by the lake would be just the thing, but there was one problem: we were broke. We didn’t even have money for lunchmeat. But Theresa prayed that God would help her find just five dollars so we could buy some meat for sandwiches. When we stopped by the house, Theresa walked to the bedroom, opened the closet, reached into the pocket of a jacket she hadn’t worn in quite some time, and pulled out a crumpled five-dollar bill. We just looked at each other, both amazed and thinking the same thought: “Why didn’t we pray for more?”

Once we had our lunch made up, we headed for the park. But when we arrived, I noticed a toll booth. Oh no, I thought. Lord, I didn’t expect this. How am I going to pay to park here? We drove up to the booth; the attendant was standing outside of it, so I asked her, “You have to pay to use this park?”

“Normally, yes,” she said, “but I’ve just locked myself out of the toll booth.”

She was waiting for someone else to show up with a key, so she decided to let us in for free. And as we pulled into the parking lot, which was full of cars, a pickup truck was just pulling out of the choicest spot—right next to the trail that led down to the lake. Not only did we get in for free, but we got the best parking spot there. It astonishes me that God cares even about the tiniest details of our lives. But if I’m astonished by His caring for the small stuff, I’m totally blown away by how He handles the big things.

It was the first day of our second month in the house, and our rent was due. I still had no job, and I knew we didn’t have the money to make this payment. But I knew that somehow God would come through for us. That morning, I lay prostrate on the floor, crying out to Him: “Father, today our rent is due, and we do not have the money. Please provide for us today so my witness is not hindered with my landlord.” Most of the time when we pray things like this, we’re panicking, full of anxiety, throwing up drive-by prayers as we scramble to figure out what we are going to do to fix the problem. I had a different attitude this time: I had no fear, just confidence, a calm assurance that God would provide.

Within an hour, the phone rang. A woman from the church—someone who didn’t know about our financial situation, who barely knew us at all—had called to tell us she had been praying that morning. “The Lord told me to give you a thousand dollars,” she said. “Could you and your wife come and get a check from me?”

Talk about a Father who knows how to give good gifts!

When we moved to Vancouver, we had no idea what kind of work God wanted us to begin, but I strongly felt that there was a reason to be there. During this time, I was invited to a pastors’ luncheon. When I walked into the restaurant, a lady saw me and asked one of the ministers next to her, “Who is that man?” He told her, and she said, “I see a wagon wheel around him, and I see him being crushed by the wheel and made into a spoke of it.” There had been a prophecy in the area recently about all of the churches there being spokes in the wagon wheel of God’s Church. Later, as I got to know this lady and her husband, she began to speak into my life.

My friend Steve Monroe and I had kept in contact, and soon after that luncheon, I shared with him about the move, the anointing we’d found in Vancouver, and the desire to begin a ministry. I was confident that the Lord wanted me to begin an evangelistic ministry, so I asked him if he wanted to come down and be a part of it. Perhaps it would be something similar to our earlier Ken Walls Ministries, but I thought a church planting might be in the picture this time. I also shared about our lack of funding. Nevertheless, Steve started getting excited about the possibility of ministering together again.

Steve took a leap of faith. He came down to live with us and began looking for a job. He had few leads and no guarantees, but he believed strongly that the Lord planned to use me there. He wanted to help. And while he was there, the same Spirit that was working in us began working in him too. For example, we attended a service together, and the Spirit came upon him. He fell onto his back and started shouting. Steve is usually a pretty mild-mannered kind of guy, but he began to shout militant phrases like “Charge!” and “Attack!” It was like he was storming the gates of hell.

Eventually, Steve got a job as a music teacher at a Christian school, and then he brought his wife and family to live in the house he’d found not far from ours. His employment still fell short of secure, but it was enough for the time being. They started attending the same church.

Soon after talking to Steve, I talked to Leroy, my Associate pastor from Quinault, about the ministry going on in Vancouver, and he and his family moved down too. But they started attending a different church, and we never seemed to really get going on a work together. We’d talk about it and make plans, but we never did anything.

Eventually God provided employment for me, but I was still unsure of how He wanted to use me in the ministry here. We loved the church we attended; it was spiritually alive and very Charismatic—signs and wonders accompanied the movement of the Holy Ghost. Theresa and I knew we were supposed to be here. We just weren’t sure what we were supposed to be doing here. I still felt God’s calling to minister, and I still had the desire to preach, to touch lives with the Gospel of Christ. But it seemed like God had closed my mouth.

For an entire year, I had trouble speaking publicly. I couldn’t even give my testimony. I had never experienced anything like this feeling before. I felt like Moses during his burning bush experience, “slow of speech and tongue” (Exodus 4:10 NIV). I even stuttered just trying to introduce my family to the church!

So the extent of my ministry became playing the piano. And I soon realized that God didn’t want me here to serve, at least not primarily—He wanted me here to soak. For a time, He was calling me not to evangelize but to be still, to marinate in His Word and His Spirit. I had gone through a tough time in the last year in Quinault. I had felt like Moses there too: trying to lead a stiff-necked and rebellious people. I couldn’t help but feel like a failure; I had had another chance to fulfill my pastoral calling, and I had botched it again. I had known what God wanted, and I couldn’t bring it about.

But God knew how I felt, and instead of letting me dwell on what I saw as my failure, He caused me to dwell on Himself. That year in Vancouver became a time of healing, a time for God to demonstrate to me His provision, His sovereignty, and His love. I experienced the intimacy of the Holy Spirit that year in a way I never had before and never have since. God showed Himself to be intensely personal, and He changed me. My prayer life was different; I found myself constantly on my face before the Lord, constantly seeking Him. And He showed up.

One night in bed, with Theresa asleep beside me, I lay awake, praying. Suddenly, the room began to fill with a gray smoke. There were no fire alarms going off, so at first I thought my eyes were just messing with me. I rubbed my eyes, but the smoke remained. The smoke filled the room and started coming toward my mouth, like I was inhaling it. Then, I felt the presence of God, and it suddenly dawned on me what was going on here: this was the shakina glory of the Lord! I could hardly believe it. I had heard about God appearing to others this way, but never had he done so for me.

Throughout the Bible, the glory of the Lord is described as a smoke or a cloud. This was the shakina glory that had appeared to Moses and the Israelites on Mount Sinai, the pillar of cloud and fire that had led them through the wilderness, the cloud that had filled the Tent of Meeting, the glory that had so filled Solomon’s Temple that the priests could not go in. And now He had appeared to me!

What could I do but worship? The Lord was so present there that I could see a movement, almost a physical figure, in the smoke. And as I worshiped the Lord, the smoke flowed toward my mouth, and I felt an overwhelming desire to breathe it in.

This went on for some time, and the smoke began to dissipate. But I cried out, “Holy Spirit, I want more!” As soon as I said that, the smoke billowed and filled the room again. I continued to worship, and eventually the smoke faded away. But the presence of the Lord remained strong throughout the night. I had felt God’s presence before but never this strongly, this tangibly. It was an awesome experience.

One night not long after that, again as I lay in bed, God showed me what is known as an open vision—an image or scene visible not just in the mind but to the open eye, sometimes accompanied by sounds or feelings. Prior to this experience, I had seen only one open vision in my life.

I was four years old, and the earth trembled. This was the 1965 Seattle earthquake, a 6.5-magnitude quake that killed seven people, caused 12.5 million dollars (1965 currency) in damage, and made my four-year-old heart quail. While the earthquake shook the house around us, my family—my mom, my dad, my two sisters, and I—gathered together, holding hands to pray. After the quake had run its course, I ran to the window to look outside. As I looked, I saw Jesus! He was holding down the foundation of our home, and He smiled at me.

The memory mostly faded, as childhood memories do, but years later, as an adult, that fuzzy memory came back to my mind. At that time, I wasn’t sure it was real, so I asked my mom about it.

“Yeah,” she said, “you ran into my room later that afternoon and told me what you had seen.”

Since then, the memory has returned fully, and I can still see Jesus, with the warmest, most compassionate, most loving smile I’ve ever seen on anybody. To this day, I cherish that smile in my mind.

Fast-forward to 1997. As I lay in bed in Vancouver, the Lord opened up a vision in front of my eyes, just like a movie screen. I saw a door, and I was standing, alone, on the near side of it, with a crowd on the far side. I’m a very social person; I don’t like being alone. But the feeling the vision gave me was much stronger than dislike. I felt a need, a craving, to be around the people on the other side of the door and an overwhelming sadness that I couldn’t.

In the vision, I wore a red sweater that I owned, which I thought might indicate the season when this vision would come to pass, as the weather was currently much too warm for sweaters. I could not understand what the vision meant, though, and there was no more of it. The vision closed, and I was left with the grief of loneliness.

From time to time, the vision would come back into my mind, and I’d be overcome with grief again. It happened in church a while later, as I lay on the floor in front of the altar. I remembered that vision, and I started sobbing. Grief, sorrow, and loneliness washed over me like a flood. I lay there weeping, and a good friend of mine, one of Eddie’s assistants, came over to pray with me. Theresa knelt next to me as well, praying, and then God gave her the same vision. She started praying that God would let me get through the door. My friend didn’t know what we were seeing, but he laid his hands on me and prayed that God would be with me in that time, whenever it came to pass. It wasn’t until after the vision had been fulfilled that I figured out what it meant and realized that God had answered their prayers.

Around the same time, the same lady who had seen me crushed into a spoke of the wagon wheel gave me another prophecy. She told me that everyone around me would leave and I would be alone. She hadn’t seen this vision; I hadn’t even told her about it. But it seemed like she was confirming the vision. All the men God had brought into my life would be leaving, she said, but I was to continue on—God would be with me and take care of me.

So I had all of this in my head, and I just chewed on it. I was doing all I could to grow in my relationship with God, to live in the Spirit. Then one day, Eli came to ask me if I wanted to preach. Of course I wanted to! I’d been soaking in God’s presence for a year: I couldn’t preach, couldn’t talk, couldn’t give a testimony, couldn’t do anything. I had prayed this year like never before, and God kept filling me. But I’d had no way to share His presence with others. I suddenly felt I could do it. And here was my chance.

“Sure,” I said. “I’d love to.”

That Sunday, Steve and I got to church early for a time of prayer. God was definitely present, and He began to move during the service in a demonstrative way. People were falling down everywhere, overwhelmed with the presence of the Holy Ghost. It’s awesome to see things like this happen, knowing there’s no manipulation. People are genuinely feeling God’s presence; it’s the real deal. We can’t even comprehend the power of the Spirit of God, and when He comes to us, it can be overwhelming. Much of the time, God speaks in that still, small voice we often talk about, but on occasion, He thunders.

The Spirit of God was moving like crazy, and I felt it as I went up to the platform to preach. I felt drunk in the Spirit, totally consumed by the Holy Ghost. I saw people lying all over the floor of the sanctuary, people lying on the platform, more people falling left and right, and then I began to speak. I like to move around a lot when I preach, and I probably should have been worried about stepping on someone. Normally, I’m so clumsy that I could trip over a piece of lint. But the Spirit came on me so heavily that it never crossed my mind to worry. I moved all over the place, unconcerned, and my feet found all the right spaces—I didn’t step on anyone.

Then I gave the altar call, and many people came forward. As I prayed for them and walked down the line—bam!—they were hit by the Spirit, and one after another, they hit the floor. I felt God moving through me, and it was incredible.

At the end of the service, Theresa and the kids went home. Steve and I stayed for a little longer, and then he had to drive me home because I was still overwhelmed by the power of God. When we got home, he had to support me into the house, through the front door, and up to my bedroom because the Spirit was on me so heavily that I could barely walk.

My daughter, Cassandra, had a friend over for the afternoon. When she saw me come in, the friend turned to Cassie and said, “Is your dad drunk?” You can’t blame her for thinking that; I certainly looked like it. But Cassie understood that I was only “drunk in the Spirit,” as the saying goes, and she explained it to her friend.

Well, the next morning, I got a call from Pastor Eli, who said, “Hey, I’d like you and Steve to meet with me and the Youth pastor.”

So we met later that day at a coffee shop. I had no expectations, but I was certainly surprised when he said, “I’m here because I need to ask you to leave the church.”

Stunned, I asked, “Why? I’ve always been submissive to your authority. I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to. I’ve never stepped on your toes or tried to take on any leadership on my own.”

He said, “Two strong ministries cannot co-exist in the same church.”

Wow, I thought, where did this come from? The things that had happened during that worship service happened often in that church—it wasn’t anything I had done; God was just moving in the people there.

Then the Youth pastor started being a smart-aleck, and I felt an attitude coming from the two of them. I’m not sure if it was jealousy, anger, pride, or what, but they had some kind of bad attitude that showed in the conversation. But I kept my mouth shut. I’ll be honest: that’s not a typical reaction for me when I feel attacked. I don’t like conflict, but often I will react. This time, I wanted to vent my frustration at them, but God kept my mouth shut. Proverbs 15:1 says, “A soft answer turns away wrath” (NKJV), and that was the kind of response God wanted.

I thanked Eli for the opportunities I’d been given, and we left. I wrote a letter to the pastor and the board of the church, thanking them also for the opportunities to minister and to be a part of their church. The letter never made it to the board. I found that out while talking to a friend from the church. He owned a car lot, and I’d stopped by just to chat. During our conversation, he brought up the letter, saying that the pastor’s wife had seen it and had told him and his wife about it, but the board had never received it. This friend and his family soon left that church.

Not long after, the church split, with the Youth pastor taking half. It split for spiritual reasons, not because of our leaving. There was a spirit of pride or jealousy at work, causing division, where the church had seemed so healthy such a short time before.

Chapter 17:

THE FIREMAN

WE ALL BEGAN TO FEEL it was time to move on. My family and I moved to a different church in Vancouver. Steve and his family went to a different church as well, but things weren’t going too well for him in Vancouver, so he decided to move back to Bellingham, where it seemed some opportunities had opened up for him.

That wasn’t his only reason for leaving, though. Before he left, a strain grew in our relationship. Steve had moved his family down here on the prospect of ministering with me. Now that seemed to have fallen apart. After Eli’s rejection, doors just would not open for us. When we left Eli’s church, Steve and his family did not follow us to a new church. They began attending church with my old Associate, Leroy. I felt abandoned—cut off from my ministry, cut off from my friends. Our relationship with both families grew stale.

Steve’s employment in Vancouver had never quite provided enough, and he soon ran into a wall. They would not be able to make their rent payment. Steve came to me. I had recently received funds from a car insurance settlement. (Theresa and I had gotten into a bad accident in Quinault that had caused me to undergo extensive physical therapy.) Steve asked me for help with his rent; without it, he would have to move. I had the money, but I said, “No.” I had plans for that money. My friend had financial needs, and I didn’t help him out, even though I had the means. He needed me, and I didn’t come through for him. I was focused on my own interests. I had also grown paranoid, thinking he might be simply using me, trying to ride my coat-tails in ministry. I refused him, and he was forced to leave town.

Soon after, Leroy moved back to Quinault to pastor the church there. (He did that for only a short time before moving again.) So here I was, with just my family. I felt like that prophecy was being fulfilled: the men around me left, but I was to continue on. The complete fulfillment was yet to come, but I didn’t realize it at the time.

After that incident with Eli, I started re-evaluating the decisions I’d made with his guidance. I realized he had pulled out of the Assemblies of God in rebellion. Why did I get out? I thought. The conflict hadn’t been about the Assemblies. They hadn’t gotten involved; they hadn’t been the ones to call me. I had gotten into the middle of a conflict between two pastors, and I’d made an impulsive decision—the wrong decision—based on faulty information. The AG had been like a family to me, and I had just walked out on them.

I called Les Welk, who was still the Assistant Superintendent of the AG’s Northwest District. We’d gotten to know each other pretty well over time through the AG circles, and he’d been one of my biggest supporters in my pastoral career. It would be easiest to talk to him.

“Pastor Welk,” I said, “if a person resigned from the Assemblies of God, and if he had a change of heart, how hard would it be for him to come back?”

He said, “You know what, Ken? When I got your resignation letter, I said to the Executive Presbytery, ‘He’ll be back.’ Now, you’ll have to come before the Presbytery. We’ll ask some questions and go through the formal process to reinstate you.”

“That’s fine. Let’s do it,” I said.

So I met with the Presbytery at the District headquarters, and they asked questions about why I’d left, my philosophies, and my doctrinal beliefs. In the end, they accepted me back, and I was re-ordained and re-credentialed.

My family and I stayed in Vancouver for a little while, trying to determine if we were actually supposed to start a ministry there, or if we’d just been there for a time of soaking, a sabbatical to prepare for the next stage of life. During this time, I talked to a friend who pastored at Christian Worship Center near Seabeck (northwest of Bremerton), and he talked to me about my ministry and asked if I’d consider preaching at a three-day revival.

“Sure,” I said.

The time came for the revival, and the church was packed. Among the attendees were Theresa’s brother Jack and his wife, Kim, as well as a couple of other family members and friends. And I prayed that God would do something different in my preaching. “Lord,” I prayed, “give me humor. Give me humor in these messages so people will remember what they’ve learned.”

It’s interesting that I hadn’t ever prayed that before, but God answered this prayer. Humor had never really played a role in my preaching before, but suddenly it did. I’d been passionate and demonstrative but never funny. This humor drew people in and allowed them to better receive the message. I hope it helped them remember the message, too. They certainly remembered the humor. It became such a part of my style afterward that one lady nicknamed me “Pastor Funny.”

After the revival finished, Theresa and I headed back to Vancouver. A few days later, the pastor of Christian Worship Center called me again.

“Ken, would you consider coming on staff here and becoming my Associate? You know, I’m getting close to retirement. I’d like to have someone here I can groom to lead the church when I step down.”

Talk about opening doors! Theresa and I prayed about it, and we determined that it was time to leave Vancouver. We felt God had placed us there for a season, to grow and be refreshed, and He now wanted to use us in ministry. He had already provided the position. It didn’t pay much, but money has never mattered to me in ministry. I had seen God provide plenty of that before, so I wasn’t worried.

We moved back up to Bremerton, and I became the Associate pastor of Christian Worship Center. God provided for us, as I knew He would, and it seemed I would soon become a Senior pastor again. But then the Lord led us in a different direction. I received a call from Pastor Jim Hill of Neighborhood Christian Center, asking me to consider rejoining him in ministry. I thanked Jim and told him I would pray about it. (That seems to be the standard response in Christian circles, whether we mean it or not. I meant it.)

Soon after, a man named Verlon joined the staff at CWC. We quickly became friends, and I began to see that God had given him the vision and passion to lead CWC. I prayed over the situation, and it became clear that Verlon had the Lord’s anointing to become their Senior pastor. I thought it best to resign to make the way clear. I did so and called Pastor Jim to see if he still wanted me—he did. After only a few months at CWC, I found myself leaving for another ministry.

So I came back to Neighborhood Christian Center as the Associate pastor. Rick Long was still there and was now the Children’s pastor. It was just like being home again. But things were a little different this time: Jim seemed a bit more intense, a bit less relaxed, than he used to be. He was approaching his twenty-year mark in pastoring that same church. When that anniversary came (toward the end of my first year there), we had a celebration service for him. I got to MC, and we invited the Presbyter. Everyone had a great time.

But after that service, things weren’t the same. Jim had decided to resign, and I grew a bit frustrated. I felt like things kept changing so quickly; I only got to be at a church for a short stint before something happened and it was time to move again.

One day, at home with my family, I heard a knock at the door. When I opened it, I saw two of the board members from the church. I invited them in, and we sat in the living room.

They came right out with it: “Ken, we want you to put your name in for consideration to become the pastor of this church.”

Their request was a dream come true. I loved Neighborhood. I had loved it my first time on staff there, and I loved it more now that I’d come back. So I said, “Okay, I’ll pray about it and consider that.” But I really felt compelled to put my name in. This was the opportunity I’d been waiting for: a chance to pastor a church and maybe even settle in long-term—in a place where I’d already put down roots.

Even though I really felt like putting my name in right away, I had to take into account the advice of the other pastors. Both Jim and Rick counseled me to do what was customary—resign along with the other pastors first, and then put my name in. This wasn’t required, by any means, but it was customary in many AG churches looking for Senior pastors. Within a couple weeks of the Senior pastor’s resignation, the pastoral staff steps down to make room for a new Senior pastor and any pastors who might come with him. For example, I had intended to bring Leroy with me to a new church after leaving Quinault, and the pastoral staff at the new church would have stepped down to allow that. During the pastoral search, the Elder board takes on the responsibility of leading the church, usually with assistance from an Interim pastor who specializes in leading churches through this transition. The custom of resignation helps to ensure that a new pastor has other leadership he knows he can rely on during what can be a stressful time for him. By allowing him to bring in pastors he already trusts, the church helps him feel secure in his new position and minister more effectively.

But I had a hard time with that advice. There were little fires popping up everywhere—people were talking about leaving left and right—and I was the one running around trying to put those fires out. The church had really struggled through the last few years, and I had to save it! I ran to people’s houses, met them over coffee, and tried to encourage everyone in any way I could: “Don’t abandon the ship.” “Walk with us through this.” “We have to move this thing forward.”

I wore myself out trying to keep people there, and I thought that if I left too—if we had just an Interim pastor who came in for the search process—people would just flock out in droves. I didn’t want the church to fall apart. I was the only one left; I couldn’t just walk away! So I did not resign, and I still put my name in for consideration. We still brought in an Interim pastor—the former Superintendent, who had presided over my first credentialing as well as my probation—but he didn’t want me to resign either. He believed I was the right man for the church, and I felt his support was a blessing on my decision to stay. So I rejected the advice of the other pastors, which I now believe was wise counsel that I should have followed.

But I didn’t reject their counsel because of arrogance. I rejected it because of fear. I feared what would become of the church if I left. Already, I was relying on my own power. And what a prideful statement! I mean, who am I, that the church would fall apart if I left? I’ve learned better now. The Church is God’s, and He is all that’s needed for any church to survive. All we can do is serve faithfully, and He will bless whom He chooses to bless. I didn’t get it then, so I wore myself out trying to “save” the church.

When I had first come back to Neighborhood, I had felt one of the strongest anointings of my life. I felt the Spirit of God in me, and I knew that God was using me. I had been spending time with God and time cultivating the gifts He had given. Now, though, I got so caught up in the day-to-day mechanics of running the church and the frantic firefighting that I neglected that part of my life. The fruit of that neglect would soon ripen.

Well, the time came for the congregation to vote on my candidacy. I was the only name being considered. The business meeting began, and Theresa and I were allowed to participate as members for the regular part of the meeting. At the end, when they would vote whether or not to elect me, we were asked to wait downstairs. It felt like the longest time I’d ever waited for anything; the minutes seemed like hours.

Suddenly, we heard an eruption of applause. We hoped that meant something good—hopefully, it wasn’t applause at getting rid of us! A board member soon came down and asked us to come back up to the meeting. When we entered, we were greeted by applause, and the Presbyter, who had been here for the meeting, came up to shake our hands. “This is your new pastor,” he announced to the church. My dream had come true! I was once again the Senior pastor of a church—a church in my hometown, no less. I walked down to greet my new congregation. In the front row were my brother-in-law Jack and his wife, Kim, both beaming.

Chapter 18:

SPARKS FLY OUT

MY TIME AS PASTOR OF NEIGHBORHOOD started out fairly well, all things considered. It wasn’t smooth, by any means—I still had to run around putting out those fires—but I was really excited to be there. I was tired, yes, but I thought I could handle the job. Then I hit some roadblocks.

One lady in the church had a sister with demonic problems. I’ll use the term “demonized” because I can’t be sure of the exact condition of her soul; I simply know she had some kind of demon-related problem.

So this lady came to me and asked, “Pastor, would you come and pray over my sister, and cast these demons out of her?”

Well, I’m a young pastor, totally gung-ho to prove myself in any way I can. So I agreed. I prayed a little beforehand, and I went in, taking my prayer team with me for support. We went into the house and discovered that this was a bigger issue than we’d thought. This demonized lady was really far gone, in my opinion. She sounded like she was out of her mind, saying all sorts of crazy, blasphemous things. She scratched at me and screamed filthy words at me. She recoiled every time I mentioned the name of Jesus. I felt empowered by the Holy Spirit, though I now realize that the Spirit was merely protecting me in my stupidity. I was ignorant of what I was doing.

I went in there like I was going to beat up the devil. I think now that I was standing on my own laurels, like my own spiritual brawn could win this fight. I shouted like the demons were hard of hearing, commanding them out. Now, I believe the Lord does give us power over these things in the name of Jesus, but it’s not magic. There is no special formula or set of words that will work like a charm every time. Each experience is different, and you have to go in prepared for anything. And I have to wonder, how much did my flesh—my own pride—get in the way that day? I prayed over the lady, I invoked the name of Jesus, I tried everything I could think of, but nothing worked. I was losing my shouting match with the devil.

Suddenly, without warning, I couldn’t breathe. My chest got tight, and I felt like someone was choking me. It was like the air had left the room. I started to panic, but I raised my hand up and said, “Jesus, help me!” As soon as I said that, the feeling lifted, and I could breathe again.

I ended the session soon after that and went home. When I got home, I almost immediately developed a high fever. It just came on me—bam!—like a slap in the face. I don’t handle fevers well. I got very lethargic, and then I started having convulsions, shaking, and vomiting.

I was rushed to the hospital, where they put me on an IV (I was extremely dehydrated from the vomiting). Once they managed to bring the fever down, I was released to go home and recuperate, but I was still very sick. My wife called the prayer team to come and pray for me, which they did that night. In the morning, I realized I had completely recovered, with no residual effects at all. At that moment, I realized the fever had been a demonic attack. It finally struck me that I was walking into a battle between very powerful opponents, and I could be in danger.

The lady from church asked me to come again. This time, I fasted for a meal or two and prayed a little—again, not nearly as much as I should have. I realize now that I was spiritually lazy. I was fasting in the flesh, not in the Spirit. I didn’t take the time to properly prepare to let the Lord work through me; I never even asked Him if I should go into this situation. I think I was trying to make a name for myself in this confrontation. I tried to prove who I was as a pastor, not who I was in Christ. And it went badly again. The situation seemed so dark. This time, the demonized lady, who was in her sixties, started saying all kinds of lustful things. After I had prayed for her, I ended that session, and I never went back again.

I had begun to realize just how serious spiritual warfare is. When I first went, I had been taking the situation too lightly, thinking the demons would just flee from me because I was on Christ’s side. But you have to spiritually prepare for these encounters; there is no “magic word” that will make demons flee. On our own, we don’t even have the authority to interfere in these situations. It is only Christ actively working through us, granting us His authority, that will have any effect. I made the decision not to go back again because I knew I wasn’t equipped or knowledgeable enough to deal with that situation.

Meanwhile, the church was struggling. People had left, and I was frantically trying to rebuild. I felt like things were still falling apart, and I had to hold them together. I focused so hard on ministry that I neglected my family. I spent far more time at church than home, and the stress began to wear on me.

Over the years, my sister-in-law, Kim, had become one of my best friends, and she now became a confidante, someone I could turn to for support. Kim and I had developed a close bond through years of family gatherings. We both felt a bit like outcasts among our in-laws, Theresa’s family. We were different. Our personalities, which really clicked with each other, often conflicted with our extended family. The two of us often found ourselves talking exclusively with each other during those gatherings. There had never been any impropriety in our relationship; we simply enjoyed each other’s company.

Now, Kim became someone to rely on for ministry needs. If I needed any supplies—an office chair, for example—she would go out and get them for me so that I could focus on other things. If I needed things done that I didn’t have time to do, she would do them. She started taking care of me, almost like an Executive Assistant. And it was just her personality: she’s a very giving, caring person, and she helps wherever there is a need.

And I needed help. I couldn’t meet all the demands these needy people had, and at Neighborhood Christian Center, an inner-city church, it seemed there were a lot of needy people. I would walk toward the front of the church before the service started, and people would constantly touch me. Hands grabbed me, one after another, each one followed by a faceless voice as the crowd pressed in around me.

Pastor, this—Pastor, that—I need this—Could you pray for that—I need to talk to you about this thing—Just wanted to say hi.

I got bombarded by contact. I told people sometimes that I felt a bit like Elvis Presley. And it wasn’t that they thought I was a great guy or anything; I was just the pastor, and they needed the pastor. But it was driving me crazy. By the time I got to the front of the church, my energy had been spent; I had nothing left for the message.

So I started sneaking in through the back of the church. I would pray in the back and then come out to the platform. But after the service, it would start up again anyway. People wanted my attention. People needed me. It got so bad that one day after church, I just sat in my car, crying. I can’t do this, I thought.

When I got home, I crashed onto the couch. Theresa joined me there. Staring up at the ceiling, I said to her, “They’re eating me alive.”

Her response, I’m sure, wasn’t meant to come across the way I heard it. She may not have even said it with the tone I heard. It just goes to show you the subtle ways the enemy can twist our emotions and perceptions. From my wife, I heard a curt, uncaring, “I thought this was what you wanted.” From my point of view, I had just reached out for sympathy and been met with a brick in the face. I clammed up. I stopped talking about my feelings.

The next day at work (I worked as a subcontractor to help make ends meet), I called Kim on my break. We talked all the time, just because we were friends. In the course of our conversation, my ministry struggles came up, and I said the exact same thing to her: “They’re eating me alive.”

She responded, genuinely, with words every man would love to hear: “What can I do to help you?”

I needed that. I needed someone to say those words to me. Theresa couldn’t. She had been going through the same stress I had in the church and more—anyone who has been involved in church leadership knows that the pastor’s wife has to deal with intense scrutiny. Plus, she had the added pressure of my being at church all the time and of having to take care of the kids by herself while I was there. She was exhausted and needed me just as much as I needed her. But neither of us was there for the other. This is where emotional affairs begin, when spouses cease to provide emotional support for each other.

All day long, Kim’s words ran through my head. All I could think about was her sensitivity, her caring nature, and her desire to help me. These thoughts continued for days, and the two of us grew closer. We began talking more, on the phone and in my office. In her, I found someone I could really talk to, someone who would listen and care about what I had to say. She found the same in me. She would pour out her heart to me about her struggles with Jack, and I could justify being that support for her because I was the pastor.

Kim did have a difficult relationship with Jack. Since coming to the Lord, he had become a great guy, but he still had issues that had developed in his life before he was a Christian. He had an anger problem that he’d been struggling to control; sometimes he became verbally or physically abusive, especially when he got alcohol inside him. It was a hard situation. He’d made some definite improvements, but he still had a long way to go.

Kim would tell me about these things, and sometimes I would have to step in and talk to Jack. Sometimes they would have me over for dinner and then try talking things out afterward, with me as the mediator. Inevitably, Kim would end up crying, and Jack would end up angry. Sometimes, the arguments would start at the table. Kim, in tears, would get up and leave the room, and I would go after her to offer as much comfort as my words could. Through all of this, the two of us grew emotionally closer.

One day, I was babysitting Matthew, Kim’s youngest, who was not much more than a year old. I watched over him as my dad (who lived on our property) and I worked on a project at my house. When Kim arrived, I went into the house to chat with her.

During our chat, she eventually brought up the fact that she had developed feelings for someone in the church and she didn’t know how to deal with those feelings. I could have guessed who it was, but I tried to pull the name out of her, even as I was counseling her. But she didn’t want to tell me. She wanted help. She didn’t want to feel this way. But I kept bugging her, on and on and on.

“Why don’t you just tell me?” I said.

Finally, she just blurted it out: “Okay, fine, it’s you!”

Everything after that is a blur in my mind. I’m pretty sure I said, “Okay,” and walked outside for a minute. When I came back in, I said, “I have the same feelings for you. I’ve had them for a while.”

Like I said, everything is a blur, and I’m not sure if we talked some more or if that was it, but before she left, I asked for a hug. She gave it, reluctantly. She didn’t think it was a good idea, so it was a very stiff hug. I then prayed for us, but it was really just lip service; there was nothing heartfelt in it. I was kind of enjoying this “moment” with her—at least, that’s what it seemed like in my head. Theresa showed up at about that time, and Kim left. Theresa knew Kim and I were friends and that we talked a lot, so she didn’t suspect anything at this point.

But Kim and I kept talking after that, day after day. And our conversation soon grew more intimate, more inappropriate. But at this point, it was still just talking—flirtatious talking, but still just talking.

Chapter 19:

OUTSIDE THE FIREPLACE

THE CHURCH STARTED really going downhill. It felt like God’s blessing had been removed. I remember calling Les Welk to see if we could get some help in turning the church around, but he said that the AG wouldn’t be able to provide assistance at that point. I believe he suspected something was wrong with my ministry.

And something was: I had become a hypocrite. I felt uncomfortable preaching, so I did it as little as I could. I had guest preachers, held completely worship-oriented services, did whatever I could to avoid getting behind the pulpit.

I still preached occasionally, of course, but my sermons felt dead to me. I had people come up to say a sermon was the best one they’d ever heard, but preaching it wouldn’t have affected me in the slightest. The Lord tells us that His Word will not return void. He worked His will in the lives of the congregation in spite of me. God can use anyone—I mean, He spoke from a donkey’s mouth to Balaam. Looking back on it, I feel like I was the hind end of a donkey at that point. God used me for His purpose, but I was collapsing inside. How much more could He have used me if I had been working with Him?

I felt so dry, so shriveled, inside. I felt phony. I knew I wasn’t meeting God’s standards, but instead of repenting, I just wallowed in my shame and misery. I had fallen for my sister-in-law! Sure, she was a wonderful person, but she was married, as was I! And now, man of God that I was, I was pulling her down into sin, into ruin, with me.

I called out to God, “What am I doing?” But I couldn’t stop. The relationship had become an addiction. I wanted to stop, to break away from this emotional high I got every time I thought of her, but I couldn’t do it. I asked God to help me break it, but I felt like there was no answer.

Theresa soon became suspicious of my behavior, particularly the fact that Kim and I seemed to talk so often. One day, she caught me. I had left my pager on our kitchen counter, and Theresa happened to be in the kitchen when it began vibrating. She picked it up and saw 11111111111111111111. That was the code Kim and I had worked out for “I love you.” She asked me what it meant, knowing that something was going on, and I could do nothing but confess.

Rage overcame her—understandably so—and we got into a huge fight. That fight was one of the scariest moments of my life, but I won’t go into details about it. Ultimately, I agreed to end the relationship with Kim and go to counseling to try healing our marriage. So I tried to break off the relationship with Kim; I honestly tried several times. But she had tried to end it earlier, and that hadn’t worked either—I had kept pursuing her. Instead of ending our relationship, we became more secretive.

I did try counseling with Theresa. We worked with Pastor Bob Smith, who led a church on Bainbridge Island. He wanted me to completely break it off and sever all ties. He even wanted us to ask Kim to leave Neighborhood Christian Center and find a different church. I strongly objected to that idea. After all, Kim was one of my Sunday School teachers; I didn’t want to replace her. When you’re in sin, you will use any excuse—even seemingly godly ones—to justify your actions. But my real motivation was that Jack hadn’t yet found out what was going on. Asking them to leave would have meant confessing to him.

Then the fire got hotter. One day, Kim and I sat on her couch, talking. Her husband had gone to work. For the first time, she kissed me. That complicated things. Suddenly, the relationship had become physical; we couldn’t justify it by claiming it was just “harmless” talk anymore. We had not had sex, but we had moved beyond a “simple” emotional bond. (In reality, an emotional bondage is about as simple as a chemical bondage to a drug.)

Jack soon began preparations for their annual mission trip. Every year, he and Kim would take a team of students and adults to Mexico to volunteer at an orphanage. This time, Kim told him she didn’t want to go. She made a few excuses, but her true reason was the sinful bondage of our relationship—her guilt wouldn’t allow her to minister. I remember the day Jack’s team left. I drove to their house, where they were loading the bus, to say goodbye and bless them as they left. Pastor Bob had come with me to make sure I didn’t stay once the team had left. So we left together. But I went back later that day to talk with Kim. We continued meeting secretly to talk, even though we told ourselves we still hoped to break it off.

Theresa wasn’t dumb, though. She knew, or at least had her suspicions, that something was still going on. We got into fights, and a couple of times, they got pretty bad. When it got really bad, I would retreat to a motel for the night. Kim actually paid for that. But some friends had been spying on me, and one night, they saw her drop me off at the motel. They confronted me right there, in the parking lot, and it was not pretty. So Kim and I became stealthier, and when Jack returned, our secrecy only increased. He remained in the dark.

Then John, an evangelist, came to town. John wanted to hold a city-wide revival, and I jumped in with both feet, thinking that this event might be just what I needed to break this stronghold in my life. I thought I could participate in the revival and God would get a hold on me—the bondage would be broken, quickly and easily, with little effort on my part.

Several other pastors and I supported the evangelist as the revival started. A moderate amount of people came, but it didn’t have near the turnout John had hoped. I went every day. Jack also got involved in the revival, but Kim never came; she felt too guilty. Sitting up on the platform with other preachers, I thought day after day, This is the day it’s going to break. But after every service—after Theresa had gone home—I’d end up on the phone, talking to Kim. Then we would meet somewhere the next day.

Kim and I had fallen into a pattern. One of us would try to end the relationship, and the other would agree. We’d be fine for a couple of days and think it had actually worked. Then we would run back to each other. We each felt the other was the only person in the world who could be counted on. She was the only one I could lean on, the only one who understood.

Toward the end of one night of the revival, as I sat on the platform, I saw Theresa toward the back of the building, talking with the pastor from Christian Worship Center, where I had been on staff before Neighborhood. As she talked to him, she pointed at me.

She’s telling him what I’ve done, I thought. Immediately, I began crying—not out of repentance, out of fear. I stood and walked down the stairs behind the platform. I asked someone from my church to go and get my wife. She came back there to find me bawling my eyes out. I hugged her and said, through my sobs, how sorry I was. It even entered my mind that I might truly be sorry. This might actually be real repentance, I thought. The bondage might have broken.

Believing my display was true repentance, Theresa became overjoyed and said, “I’ve got my miracle tonight.”

We went home, and things seemed to be fine. I even called Kim that night to say, “I can’t do this anymore.” She agreed, and it seemed like that would be the end of it.

But in my office a few days later, not long after thinking how well everything was going, I called her because I had to find out how she was handling the situation. While we talked, Theresa walked into my office. “I gotta go,” I said to Kim. Then things got really ugly.

We started shouting at each other, but our words escalated to actions. Theresa attacked and grabbed at my chest. I shoved her up against the wall. I held her there, and her arms lashed out. A picture crashed to the floor. I let her go, and she stormed out of the office. I still had to vent my rage, so I picked up my office chair and threw it against the wall.

At that moment, Jack, still ignorant of my relationship with his wife, walked into my office. All he knew was that Theresa and I were having a major fight, and he thought things would work themselves out eventually. And I just went off, ranting to him about my wife. But he didn’t want to hear it. He tried calming me down, but I wanted to vent to someone. I wanted vindication.

“I need you,” I said to him.

That’s what you call ironic.

Here I was, having an emotional affair with his wife, fighting with my wife about it, and asking for his support in that fight. This is what sin does—it warps your thinking, which changes your actions. I mean, I’m not the kind of guy who hurls chairs when he gets angry, but that’s exactly what I did. I had caught myself in an emotional affair with my friend’s wife, my church was falling apart, my marriage was disintegrating, and somehow, I believed at that moment it was Theresa’s fault.

Then one day not long after that, I drove Jack and Kim’s kids home from the Tuesday night Youth group. Kim came out to greet me when all the kids went inside. We talked a bit, and she leaned into the van to kiss me. Just then, I saw headlights in the distance, and I knew it was Jack coming home. Kim went into the house, and I sat there, not wanting to appear suspicious—I didn’t want to look like I was running away. So he pulled in, and we talked for a bit. He hadn’t seen anything, but a tension still existed in our conversation.

About midnight that night, I awoke to pounding on the front door. I ran downstairs and opened the door to find Jack, pain visible on his face. “How could you do this to me?” he shouted.

“Let’s go outside,” I said. “Let’s talk in the van so we don’t wake the kids.”

Apparently, Jack had held suspicions for a while. That night, he’d asked Kim, point-blank, whether she had feelings for me. Scared spitless, she’d replied, “Yes.” He had stormed out of the house, heading for my place. She had tried calling me to warn me, but I had turned my phone off before going to sleep.

We went out to the van and climbed in to talk. I assured him that there had been no sex, that it was still an emotional relationship, and we would break it off. We wouldn’t let this happen again, I told him. But he still felt betrayed. I was amazed that he didn’t try to hit me. He wasn’t violent at all; he was heartbroken.

“I considered you my best friend!” he said.

I hadn’t known that. I’m not trying to justify my actions or say I wouldn’t have done them if I had known; I’m simply stating that I hadn’t known the strength of his friendship toward me before that night. After all, our relationship had been pretty rocky through the years. He hadn’t really treated me well until I became the pastor of his church. But he’d considered me his best friend, and I’d stabbed him in the back. I had felt bad about my actions before, but this just crushed me. Not only had I sinned against a man, I had sinned against a brother, someone who liked and respected me. So we continued talking, and I told him I would undo this mess I’d gotten into if he would help me. He agreed he would help me break out of it, but he could never really trust me again.

Jack made Kim move out that night. She took their kids and went to live with her parents, and she and Jack officially separated soon after. After Kim moved out, Jack wasn’t the same. I remember preaching soon after that, and my eyes strayed down to his. He looked away. He couldn’t even meet my eyes, and I knew he saw through my pastor façade. He was trying to restore me and help me break out of my sin, but he couldn’t really help. No one could help me because I didn’t really want to be helped. I had people praying for me, people counseling me, people supposedly holding me accountable, but I would lie to their faces and call Kim behind their backs.

And then I jumped into the miry clay and dived for the bottom. I became so reprobate at this point that it’s literally a miracle that God turned me around. I decided that I needed to go away for a weekend. I told everyone who knew about my struggles that I needed a weekend to pray through this issue and break free from it, once and for all. A few of those people from the church helped by pitching in some money and even letting me borrow a car. I lined up people to preach the church services, and I left.

I didn’t tell anyone where I was going, but I made up my mind to go stay at a motel in Poulsbo. Rather than getting out of town and going somewhere—even as close as Seattle—where I could really get away from temptation, I chose to go to Poulsbo. And I knew why I chose that: Kim now lived with her parents in Poulsbo, and we were going to get together. My wife, my friends, and everyone who knew about this issue thought I was going away to pray and get free of it. Instead, I went to dive deeper into it, to get to a place where I could never get out.

That night, I had Kim come to the motel I was staying in. The affair went far beyond the emotional that night, and we could no longer deny, justify, or qualify our sin. But it seemed like we no longer cared.

Chapter 20:

THE HOUSE BURNS DOWN

THE NEXT MORNING, I called Theresa and said, “I’d like to talk with you,” like nothing had happened.

“It’s over,” she said.

God had given her discernment; He had let her know exactly what I was doing. She had known exactly what motel I had gone to, and she had chosen not to confront me. I am thankful for her wisdom in that choice—a confrontation probably would have turned very ugly. But she let me know, in no uncertain terms, that it was out now.

“The church knows, and the Presbyter is going to know,” she said.

Once I realized my sin was getting out in the open, I called the Presbyter myself and made an appointment to meet with him. My focus was containment: I need to sideline this thing before it gets really bad, I thought. I wanted to make sure he got the story from me. I didn’t want him to hear it from someone else; I didn’t want someone tattling on me.

All kinds of thoughts went through my head as I drove to meet him. How public is this going to become? What’s it going to do to my image? Nevermind the sin itself; my first panicked thoughts were about how to save face. Who knows what? What are they going to do? Where do I go from here? A fog of confusion surrounded me during the entire half-hour drive from Poulsbo to Bremerton.

What’s happened to me? Just eight months earlier, I was on top of the world. I had felt like I was really going somewhere—spiritually and in ministry. I was the newly raised pastor of a church I loved, where the Spirit was moving and the congregation was alive and vibrant. Now the church was falling apart, and so was I.

What am I going to say? I had known this Presbyter since I was a kid. He was the pastor who had nurtured me when I was a teen. At the same time, though, I had never felt that he thought I could amount to much. I had never felt that he saw much potential in me. So here I was giving him confirmation of all those doubts. I could feel the “I told you so” coming; the first words out of his mouth would be, “See? That’s what I thought. It’s nothing more than I expected of you, Ken.”

As I pulled into the parking lot of the convenience store where we’d decided to meet, he was waiting. We sat in his car, and I confessed everything. I wasn’t sobbing with remorse; there weren’t many tears at all. I was just numb.

I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting from him. Disappointment? Certainly. Anger? Perhaps. Rebuke? Without a doubt. But he surprised me. Instead of stern judgment, he showed me compassion. I imagine he had already heard all about my sin through other channels, because he showed no surprise as I laid it out to him. But he had no words of condemnation, reproach, or even fatherly correction. He simply said, “I’ll help you through this.”

He advised me to quietly step down from the ministry. (By saying “advised,” I’m trying to emphasize his gentleness in the matter; he did have authority over me in the church.) He instructed me to resign my pastoral role immediately, without speaking to the congregation.

“I’ll take care of that for you,” he said. He announced my resignation to the congregation the following Sunday. That was a burden off of me, for sure; I couldn’t imagine having to confess this sin from the pulpit.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “I’ll escort you to the church, and we’ll get your stuff out of there.”

Then he prayed with me, and I left to go back to Poulsbo, back to Kim, the one person I knew would still speak to me. I didn’t even know how my mom was going to respond, much less everyone else I knew. I had mixed emotions. Sure, I felt terrible. I felt grief beyond words. I felt like everyone’s hand was against me and I was losing everything—it felt like death. But on the other hand, I had a strange sense of relief. Everything was out in the open now. I didn’t have to play the game anymore.

The next morning, I drove back to Neighborhood to meet the Presbyter. The whole time I drove, I thought about how I had felt, driving up to this church as the pastor. All of those times, I had felt proud and excited, like I was living my dream. And here I was now, driving back to the church, essentially sneaking back in, as a failure. I felt like a reprobate, a disappointment to everyone who had supported me; I felt I had lost everything.

I waited for the Presbyter, and when he arrived, we went in to collect my things. My stuff was already packed—it all fit in one box. So I grabbed my one box and headed out of the door. It was done.

Back to Kim I went; I had no one else. Soon, though, I did talk to my mom. Of course, she already knew. I thought she might condemn me—or at least rebuke me—but to my surprise, she didn’t. I thought she would be so angry with me, but she showed only love and compassion. So I knew I still had my mother’s love at least. My sisters also continued to be there for me. And there was Kim.

Then Sunday came, and it really hit me. Where do I go? What do I do now? I couldn’t go to church; everyone there knew about me now. I had no job, no ministry, and no friends—overnight, I had destroyed my entire life. In only twenty-four hours, because of a bad decision, everything was over.

Of course, more consequences were coming. The next step I had to take was to meet with the Executive Presbytery of the Northwest District of the Assemblies of God. I had to face the Executive Presbyters plus the Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent, and the Secretary Treasurer—nine men in all.

Executive Presbytery meetings were held in various locations around the District on a rotating schedule. This meeting was set for Leavenworth, Washington, of all places. Leavenworth was where Theresa and I had originally gotten to know each other, where our relationship had begun. What an ironic twist that it would end here!

As I pulled into town, a flood of memories of this town overwhelmed me—not just the beginning of our relationship but also all the trips we had taken here over the years for anniversaries or weekend getaways. I drove up to the small church where the meeting was being held, and as soon as I got out of the car, I laid eyes on the Assistant Superintendent, Les Welk.

Les was a man I deeply admired. He had been a bulwark of support for me over the years. He had striven to help me succeed, and he had truly become my friend. Now, he was very courteous, but I could see pain in his eyes the instant I looked at him. He led me into the building and asked me to wait in the foyer until they finished some other business. So I waited there until the Secretary Treasurer came out to me and said, “We’re ready to see you now.”

I walked into the room and immediately felt the eyes of all the Executive Presbyters and Senior Executives focused on me. I felt no excitement, as I had when I was called for my ordination. No joy, as I had when I was reinstated. I felt only discouragement; this was the end of all my ministry. They asked me to sit. I sat in the open seat, with all of them facing me from the other side of the table.

The Superintendent, Warren Bullock, began the conversation. After introducing the issue, he said, “I’m going to pass this on to the Assistant Superintendent. He and Ken have a personal relationship, so I want him to address this situation.”

Les turned to me with pain in his eyes—no anger, no disdain, no rebuke or condemnation, just pain. We didn’t directly address each other much, but I knew what he was thinking. I knew I had let him down. I knew I had hurt him. I felt like I had physically injured him with my failure. This was the man who would always go to bat for me, the man who would personally step in to guide me into places he wanted me to pastor. He’d write letters of recommendation and make phone calls to say, “You really need Ken Walls in your church.” After Quinault, for example, he had wanted me to go to a church in Moscow, Idaho. That position had never worked out, but it was through no failure of effort on his part; God had simply had other plans for me at that point. Always before, Les had helped me to figure out “What’s next?” Now here we were, gathered to determine, in a much more ominous sense, “What’s next?”

They asked me, “Is your marriage salvageable?”

I said, “No.”

As soon as I said that, it was over. There was no need for more discussion. They wanted me to go through rehabilitation to save my marriage, but if I wasn’t even going to try, there was no rehabilitation possible. But I felt that it truly was over. I felt like I couldn’t go back, even if I had wanted to. Les had tears in his eyes.

The meeting was over, and as we got up to leave, Mark Pearson, one of the Executive Presbyters, gave me a hug. He whispered in my ear, “I will always protect your reputation.” That meant a lot to me. Here I was, a moral failure. I had committed adultery, one of the worst sins there is. (Not that there are actually levels of sin; any sin causes separation from God. But at that time, I felt like the worst of sinners.) My evil action was irreversible. But Mark, who was also Theresa’s friend, was still going to protect my reputation.

I walked out of that office with a heavy tread. I was a convicted sinner. At the same time, though, there was a strange sense of relief. At least it was over. My sin was out in the open, and I could go on with my life.

Chapter 21:

IN THE ASHES

I HAD BEEN SO STRESSED OUT before the meeting that a sense of relief had followed its conclusion. But this relief turned out to be very short-lived. The three-hour drive back to Poulsbo seemed to take forever. What was I going to do? It wasn’t as though my situation had improved any. Only two things had changed: my credentials were gone, and my marriage was beyond saving. I still had no job; I had nothing. When I got back, all roads pointed to Kim. So I went back to her.

At that time, she was getting ready to move into a double-wide trailer across from her parents’ house. As you might imagine, I had not developed a relationship with Kim’s parents. Her mom struggled with the idea that Kim and I maintained a relationship. She’s a wonderful lady, but she had legitimate concerns. She even said to Kim, “Maybe he has a girl in every port. Maybe this isn’t a first-time event. Maybe there are others out there that we don’t know about.” But we were past caring what other people thought.

So I helped Kim move in there, but I didn’t move in with her at that point. My mom allowed me to stay at her place for a while, and I would visit Kim and her kids most evenings. She and I were so close that sometimes I even took her on visitations with my kids. We’d pick up Kenny and Douglas, a child Theresa and I had been fostering who was almost as close to me as my own kids, and we’d drive to the other side of Hood Canal—somewhere people didn’t know us. I tried to act like everything was okay, like it was all normal.

One day, we had Douglas with us, and we pulled into the driveway of Theresa’s house to find her very angry. She was upset that I had taken Douglas with me and Kim, like we were just a happy family. We had a heated verbal exchange, and then Jack showed up. It looked like he and I would even come to blows; I was that angry. Thankfully, we had no physical contact, and Kim and I soon left. Incidents like this were becoming more and more common, and I knew it was wrong. The anger, the verbal abuse—this wasn’t really me!

I left Kim’s house late one evening, headed toward my mom’s house. As I was leaving Poulsbo, I noticed flashing blue and red lights behind me. I pulled over, thinking this was no big deal, and the police officer came to my window and asked for my license, which I handed to him. He went back to his car, and when he came back, he said, “Could you step out of the car, please?”

Confused, I asked, “Why?”

“Just step out of the car,” he said.

So I got out, and he said, “Put your hands behind your back. I’m not going to have any problems with you, am I?”

“No. No, sir,” I said. “What did I do?”

“You have a suspended license,” he said.

“What? I had no idea.”

He said my license was suspended because of a ticket I hadn’t paid. Then he handcuffed me and put me in the back of his car. I was petrified.

Can it get any worse, I thought. Here I am, a moral failure, divorcing my wife; I’ve lost my church; now I’m being handcuffed and thrown into a police car on the side of the road. I could only wonder how many of those driving by knew me. I was in the darkest place of my life. Sure, I’d been pulled over for tickets, but I’d never been arrested before, never been handcuffed.

After awhile, the officer opened the door and said, “I’m going to go ahead and release you here, since you haven’t had any prior arrests.” I’d still have to go to court and everything, but I might not have to go to jail. So I got out, and he took the cuffs off and said, “I’ll let you walk from here.”

Of course, since my license was suspended, he wouldn’t let me drive. But I was a little concerned about walking in the dark along a well-traveled, curvy backroad, especially since I would have to walk five miles or more to get to my mom’s house.

“Let me walk?” I said. “It’s the middle of the night! Could you at least drive me back to Poulsbo so I can call someone for a ride?”

He said, “Okay, I’ll take you back to Poulsbo.”

So he drove me to Poulsbo, drove past a well-lit convenience store, and let me out at a pay phone outside a dark, closed convenience store.

“What am I supposed to do,” I asked. “I don’t have any money on me.”

Without responding, the officer left. So I called collect to my mom’s house, but they were asleep and didn’t hear the phone. All I could think to do was call Kim. So I called her collect as well. She heard the phone, got up and answered, and then came to get me. It was four in the morning, but she came to my rescue nonetheless. And I spent the rest of the night at her house.

The next morning, she drove me to my car, and I managed to drive it back to her house without being seen. Then I made the phone call to find out what was going on with my license. It turned out that I had paid the ticket, but the payment hadn’t been posted yet. I cleared up that mess, and they assured me that the arrest wouldn’t go on my record. Still, though, it felt like just one more thing stacking against me. Everything in my life seemed to be going wrong, and even when I tried to do something right—paying the ticket—it didn’t work out right. I felt even worse when I heard that Jack had heard what had happened and thought it was hilarious. I don’t really blame him, though. If another guy had stabbed me in the back like I had done to him, and I heard about a similar situation involving that guy, I’d have laughed too. I’m sure I would have thought, There, you jerk, it’s no more than you deserve!

Of course, at that point I wasn’t thinking about what my reaction would have been. This incident and his reaction just reinforced my feeling that I hadn’t a friend in the world. I honestly felt like the most hated man in Bremerton, like I couldn’t even go into a grocery store without everyone there knowing who I was and what I had done. Every day, I expected to see my story in the newspaper: “Another Fallen Minister.” We see it all the time; the media loves those kinds of stories.

Neighborhood Christian Center was a pretty well-known church, active in the community. I imagined that all the ministries associated with it would be tarnished or destroyed by a public scandal as a result of my sin. Fortunately, though, God did not allow that to happen. It did not become a public spectacle or destroy the reputation of the Church. I really thought it would, but God protected His bride.

While my sin hadn’t hurt the world’s view of the Church much, it had sorely hurt the Church’s view of me. At least, that’s how I felt. I felt like I couldn’t go to church at all. Admittedly, I didn’t much want to, but even if I tried, where could I go? If I went to any of the Pentecostal churches, I was sure someone would have known me. From time to time, I went to various non-Pentecostal churches in the area, but even that felt dry. I was a hypocrite. I couldn’t really worship, couldn’t raise my hands, couldn’t do anything. I felt like a spectacle, like everyone was judging and condemning me. So I just floated along spiritually, existing, not even really living.

Kim had gotten a job on Bainbridge Island, but I still hadn’t found a thing. My dad and I decided to find an apartment together, where we would share expenses. He had been living on the property where Theresa and I had lived, and he had stayed there for a while after I had left. But she had finally booted him out when they got into a big fight.

While Theresa and I were still married, Dad had co-signed on the van that we drove. We had been making the payments at the beginning, but he was making them now and his name was on the title. One day after I had left, he borrowed the van, which normally was no big deal, but he didn’t come back with it for several hours. He was taking care of personal matters, and he didn’t really care to inform Theresa. She got mad and called me, saying that he had stolen it and asking if I would help look for him.

Kim and I went out in her Suburban looking for my dad, with Kim’s eighteen-month-old son, Matthew, in the back seat. I drove, and we decided that I would go to my mom’s house and let Kim take the car back from there. On the way, we stopped at the Poulsbo waterfront so that she could go use the public restroom.

While I waited in the car, Jack drove up with a girl he had started dating soon after Kim moved out. Jack saw me sitting there, and he got angry. He opened the passenger door, climbed in, and started pushing me, saying, “Get out of the car!”

I held the steering wheel and shouted back at him until I realized, I have no control over this car. I don’t own this car; he and Kim own it. My name isn’t on the car. If the cops get called, I’m going to be the one in trouble here. It might look like I stole it! I don’t want to go to jail over this! So I got out. Jack jumped into the driver’s seat, not realizing that Matthew was in the back, and drove off.

Kim came out about that time, and I felt like even more of a loser. I hadn’t protected her—I couldn’t. I was not going to get into a fight with her ex-husband; that would have made the papers for sure. It would only have made our situation even worse.

So we walked to the police station, even though there wasn’t a lot they could do about the situation. Kim’s divorce was still being worked out, and even though it looked like she was going to get the car, Jack’s name was still on it for now. And Matthew was still his son.

Later that evening, Theresa called and said that she had Matthew and asked if we could come get him. She didn’t want to get into the middle of a custody battle, so Kim got him back without a fuss. The next morning, I called Jack from my mom’s house, and I tried to encourage him to give the car back. He said he wanted to meet me somewhere to give the stuff back, but that sounded a little sketchy to me, so I declined. Eventually, he did give the car back—in their divorce settlement, the car did go to Kim. But he never did return any of my belongings that had been in the car.

After we got the car back, the situation was still rocky; we had no idea how volatile Jack would become. We were never sure what he might do. He’d often drive by Kim’s house, which was going quite a bit out of his way, in his dump truck, and he would always turn the Jake brake on to make sure she heard him. Oftentimes, he would follow her to work, just to creep her out. His unpredictability put a constant stress on our lives.

Chapter 22:

UP FROM THE ASHES

LIFE WAS MISERABLE at that point. I couldn’t go to church; I felt almost like I couldn’t go anywhere in the county. I could feel a bright, red A branded on my forehead, and I knew that even strangers could see it: Adulterer. I couldn’t find a job to save my life. I was sure I would never minister again—even if God could accept me back into His flock, I could never lead it again. Right then, though, I didn’t even bother looking; I knew I was living in rebellion. How could God even want me anymore? I’ve messed up so badly. God could see that red A better than anyone.

I was living with my dad, but Kim was often insecure about being by herself. Anytime the weather was going to be stormy, she would want me to stay the night at her place. After all, she lived in a double-wide trailer that was old, moldy, and rickety. On a good day, you’d be nervous even to sit on the toilet, for fear that it would fall through the floor. In bad weather, the place was downright scary! She also got nervous about Jack; would he get upset and try to break in? So I ended up staying there some nights, just in case.

Then one day, not long after I had started this practice, Jack called me up and sincerely asked for my forgiveness. I was shocked and speechless. How was I supposed to react to this? Here’s a man whose life and marriage I’ve destroyed, calling me to ask for my forgiveness!

“Wh-what do you mean?” I stuttered. “I’m the one who needs to ask your forgiveness!”

“No,” he said, “I really want to be able to move on, and I want God’s blessing in my life again. I don’t want my behavior towards you hindering what God has for my life. Can you forgive me?”

“I do forgive you,” I said, “but I need you to forgive me.” I still didn’t get it, though. Why the sudden change in his attitude? He did forgive me, but I just felt worse after that. He was no longer angry with me, but his kindness toward me just heaped burning coals on my head.

Even so, I ended up staying at Kim’s more and more frequently, especially after my divorce from Theresa—a fairly quiet one, as divorces go. Finally, I just moved out of my dad’s apartment and started living with Kim.

One day as we pulled into the driveway, we looked at each other, and out of the blue, we just broke down. We started sobbing uncontrollably. “What have we done?” we asked. We had hit bottom. Not only had our individual lives fallen apart—our marriages, our jobs, and our ministries were crushed—but our life together seemed to be headed downhill. We were fighting all the time; it was terrible. Statistically, of course, that would have been expected. Second marriages are even more likely to fail than first ones, and we weren’t even married! So we sat there, bawling, and resolved to start doing things right. As I look back now, I can clearly see that on that day, at that exact moment, our repentance began.

We looked at our situation, and we made some difficult decisions. We knew we couldn’t simply go on living together; that was sinful. We couldn’t go back to our spouses; both of them were already engaged to new people. As is the case with any sin, it was impossible to erase the consequences of ours. We could not undo what we had done. But God is faithful to restore us once we have truly repented and come back to Him. He frequently uses what was intended for evil to bring about good.

God had given us a love for each other. Though it had started wrongly, it had developed by His grace into a real love. So we decided to get married.

I talked to a Methodist minister I knew. He himself had been through a divorce, yet he still served God as a pastor. I wasn’t sure that I could ever serve in that way again, but this man was living proof that God does restore. This minister’s example gave us hope for the success of our marriage. The pastor agreed to marry us, so long as he could see that real repentance had taken place. We spent some time counseling with him, and at last he agreed.

I’ve mentioned that I couldn’t find a job while I lived in sin; that wasn’t entirely true. I couldn’t find anything I considered to be a real job. I still had the opportunity to work part-time as a subcontractor on occasion, as I had done while I pastored at Neighborhood. I use the word “opportunity” very loosely here; the job was dead-end grunt work. For example, I had the opportunity to crawl on my belly under houses, shuffling over dead rats in order to pull down insulation. It didn’t help that I had back problems. When I would get home from this grunt work, I could barely even walk. I can’t do this forever, I thought. I had hit the bottom of the barrel in everything.

After Kim and I repented, though, things began to change. I was looking in the paper one day, and I saw: “Deli for Sale.”

You know, I thought, Kim said she always wanted a restaurant. I’ve had a lot of retail experience; I’ve even managed a restaurant. Yeah, I could really do this! Only one problem…

I had no money to buy a deli; I had no way of getting any money. But I thought I might as well go down and talk to the owners. What could it hurt—my pride? So I went down to the deli, and I really liked what I saw. It was near Harrison Hospital in Bremerton, a great location, and I thought, Yeah, we could really make this work.

I went home and wrote up a proposal: $0 down, $750 per month, with balloon payments of $3000 every six months, until the eighteen-month note was paid off. It was crazy; it was hopeless. I knew they would never go for it. I would never go for it, were our roles reversed. But I was desperate. So I gave the proposal to the lady who owned the deli, and she said she’d have to talk to her husband.

They made a few minor changes to the proposal, but they agreed! They totally agreed to it, which was a miracle in itself. Nobody would have agreed to that deal—it was insane. But they did. They even agreed that I could come down for two weeks before we took over, so I could start my marketing campaign and learn the business and their recipes.

So I started working at the deli two weeks before Kim and I took over, and I initiated my marketing campaign and even started making deliveries. All of a sudden, business boomed! Customers were lined up out the door at lunchtime. The owner said to me, “This is insane. I’ve never seen this much business.” I took encouragement from those words, and worked hard to keep the business coming. Before I knew it, the two weeks were up, Kim and I were owners and employees, and we brought on Kim’s mother to work the kitchen and help us keep up with the demand.

Business boomed, but our relationship had its ups and downs. We had repented of our adultery and divorces, but obviously we couldn’t undo our sin. There are always consequences to sin, even after there is repentance. Guilt is one of those consequences, and it can affect behavior long after the sin that caused it is dealt with. And on top of our past sin, we were still living together, unmarried. We were planning the wedding, true, but that didn’t make our current situation okay.

There were plenty of awkward moments as we dealt with child visitations and other issues that came up with our former spouses. Jack would often pick their kids up at the deli when it was his weekend to have them, Theresa would call there to talk over some issue about our kids, and there were plenty of other divorce-related stresses that would pop up with little or no warning. All of those stresses put a burden on our relationship. In addition to those, we still had the guilt from our sin; as I said, repentance doesn’t take that away. All of that tension built together, making us often irritable or angry. And I think that at times, we even carried some hidden resentments toward each other. So it wasn’t unusual for Kim and me to be back in the deli’s storage room, arguing.

And even as we were dealing with natural consequences of sin, we were trying to learn how to love each other. We were both coming out of marriages, carrying all the expectations and habits that had developed in them, trying to adjust to living with someone who was completely different from the person each of us had gotten used to. We built frustration on frustration, and it often came out in speech and action. One time, I got so angry that I punched a brick wall. My hand swelled up quite a bit, but we never did anything about it. Ten years later, dealing with wrist problems, I found out that I fractured my wrist that day. We’re still dealing with consequences.

Even through the first year of marriage, we questioned if we were going to make it. Ultimately we did, but it was seriously in doubt for a long time. And all of this happened with two people who had renewed their desire to seek God! What must the situation be like for unbelievers? It’s no wonder second marriages have an even higher failure rate than first ones do.

But in spite of all the difficulties, we knew that we had to stick it out. We knew God would bring good out of the evil we had done, and He has. But it required us to persevere through some tough times emotionally, physically, financially, and in every other way. For example, while we were living in the trailer, we didn’t have a lot of money. We were scraping by, just trying to make ends meet, even when the deli was doing very well. (We still had to pay off the former owners, remember?) When the kids went off for visitations, we didn’t often have money to spend on dates, but we knew it was important to spend quality time together. So we became very creative.

One night, we decided to have a drive-in movie night. Of course, we couldn’t afford to go to a real drive-in theater. So we pulled our TV out onto the back porch, popped some popcorn, and watched a movie outside, as if we were at an actual drive-in. The raccoons kept growling and making noise behind us; we almost wanted to call for an usher to ask them to leave. This unique experience lasted until we started getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. At that point, we brought the TV back inside to finish the movie.

But you know, even though it sounds cheesy and dumb, it was so much fun. We didn’t have any money, but we knew things would be okay—God would take care of us as long as we sought Him. And He did!

The deli was a focal point for our healing and reconciliation. It became a place of refuge and community, where we could bless people by meeting their basic need for nourishment and cheering them up as well. At the same time, they could bless us by their very presence—a group of people who simply appreciated us, with no thought of condemnation.

One day at the deli in February 2001, with only us three employees present—no customers had come in yet—I started hearing a strange sound while we were prepping for the lunch rush. It sounded like a freight train. Suddenly, the building started shaking. We quickly crouched down, and one of us yelled, “Earthquake!” I looked behind us and noticed our large microwave ovens moving on the counter. Kim and her mom ran to the doorway and stood under it. Now alone in the kitchen, I heard a frightened-child voice in my head: They just deserted me! They left me here by myself!

When the earthquake finally stopped, I ran out to the parking lot. I heard a chiropractor friend of mine yell to me to ask if we were okay. We were fine, just a little rattled. It seemed like everyone else around was fine as well, so we went back into the deli.

We thought business would be dead for the rest of the day, but we were surprised to see we were wrong. People were scared, and it seemed they just wanted a public place to gather—they wanted a community. All of a sudden, we had a flood of customers who just wanted to come in and be with other people.

The same thing happened with 9/11. We were already married by that time, though we were still living in the old, rickety trailer. I got up on the morning of September 11, and when I turned on the news, I saw that the World Trade Center in New York had been hit by a plane. The second plane hadn’t hit yet, and the newscasters were still speculating about what was going on—was this accidental, a terrorist attack, or what? Just then, the second plane struck.

Like all of America, Kim and I were glued to our television, full of grief and anxiety, all the more so when they finally announced that this really was an attack. But we had to go to work; we had a deli to run. So I took a TV with us, set it up there, and turned it toward the tables so that our customers could watch. The news covered the attack all day, and people just filtered in and lingered to watch what was happening. That day was so momentously tragic; it changed all of us forever, I think. It changed how we viewed our country, ourselves, and each other.

In those days, we saw people rallying around each other. George W. Bush’s presidential popularity rating shot through the roof. People were altogether unified, and in a small way, our deli helped to bring that unity. By becoming a place where people could simply be around other people, our deli became a place of safety. It was like our deli became a hub during tragedies, especially for the elderly and the sick (we were located near a hospital, after all), a place where people could gather just to comfort each other by being together.

That was probably the best part of owning the deli: we got to be a part of people’s lives; we really got to know them. We had the ability to connect with people. Since we were next to the hospital, people who were battling terminal illnesses would come in regularly, and we were able to talk with them, to minister to them. I remember one elderly couple who used to come in regularly and always order the same thing. The husband was battling cancer, so due to his frequent doctor visits, they came in all the time. We got to know them fairly well; they became almost like grandparents to us. They were a wonderful couple. They’d sit down and enjoy their lunch while we kept working away. Then, the next time we looked up, they would both be fast asleep at their table, with their food still in front of them. Many people, like them, would just come and hang out there.

As we became part of our customers’ lives, they became part of ours. Kim and I planned to get married in March of 2001. As the date kept getting nearer, our customers got more and more involved, cheering us on toward it. They all seemed so excited and kept encouraging us. As I said, many of them were older people with various medical issues, and we started to seem like family to them, almost like their kids. I think it gave them a sense of purpose or comfort to hang out, talk to us about life, and spur us on toward the wedding.

Chapter 23:

BUILDING A NEW FIREPLACE

THE DAY OF OUR WEDDING finally arrived: March 10, 2001.

The Best Man at my first wedding, my best friend at the time, had since turned his back on me because of my sin and was no longer a part of my life. So I asked my brother-in-law Ken, my sister’s husband, to support me as my Best Man. Ken was fighting a difficult battle with cancer. In the course of his treatments, the cancer had gone in and out of remission, but he was doing pretty well at that time.

Ken and I had had a rough relationship in the past, but the primary issue was that he could never get along with Theresa. They seemed to always get into a fight when we all got together; for some reason, they just didn’t like each other. But since the divorce, we had begun talking more, and I started to understand him. We soon became good buddies, and so I asked him to be my Best Man. When I asked, his face just lit up, like he felt honored to simply be asked. At that moment, our relationship really cemented, and we became like brothers.

This relationship meant a lot to me; I had never had a biological brother. I had two older sisters, but I’d never had a man I could look up to, one I knew would be there for me no matter what. (I loved my dad; he was a great guy. But he had always tried to be a buddy, rather than the father I needed.)

With Ken, there had been a healing in our relationship, and now it was growing. We both needed each other: I needed him to stand by me and guide me through the beginning of this now-sanctified relationship with Kim, and he needed me to support him through his battle with cancer. He agreed to stand for me as my Best Man, and he took the job seriously, organizing and directing things throughout the whole process to make sure everything ran smoothly.

We held the wedding in a small church in Scandia, a rural neighborhood between Silverdale and Poulsbo, the church where Kim had gone as a teenager. The wedding was small and simple, but it was beautiful. Both of our families attended, as well as the few friends we still had. Kim’s best friend, who lived in Oregon, flew up for the occasion to help with the preparations and the decorating and to sing in the wedding.

This was the day we had been waiting for! We were elated. God had brought us out of sin, showing us His love and grace and guiding us through the process of repentance. We knew this was one of the final steps in that process. Finally, our broken and miserable existence in the depths of our wretched, rebellious relationship would be transformed by God’s grace! By His power, He was turning the corruption we had caused into a new creation. Our relationship would now be sanctified, holy, and pure. Even after we had decided to get married, we still lived together (though we knew it was wrong) for financial reasons. But now, we would live together for spiritual ones.

So Ken and I stood with the pastor in front of the church, waiting. Then, Kim entered. She was radiant. I’m sure every man must think this on his wedding day (or at least, he should), but I thought there had never been a more beautiful woman in the entire history of the world. (And I still think that.) She began walking down the aisle toward me, and the moment was surreal for both of us. Neither of us had had a real wedding before; we had both eloped. The serenity of this moment contrasted sharply with the frantic, desperate rush of my prior experience.

The ceremony soon finished, and a tremendous weight lifted from our shoulders. We felt the culmination of our repentance. With our marriage, our relationship became a holy bond in Christ. We had been living in sin, but God had now captured our evil hearts and turned them toward His good purposes. And then He really started to bless us.

In His amazing way, it seemed God was moving us toward a place of acceptance. We had committed this grievous sin, but we had repented. And God blessed our repentance! The deli flourished, and we were hard-pressed to keep up with the demand. The day after our wedding, we were back at it: making sandwiches and serving our guests, who all congratulated us on the marriage. God soon blessed us with a new house, and all kinds of things just seemed to be going right.

We were now reconciled with God, and it appeared that He was working to reconcile us to others. In time, as the word got around that Kim and I operated this deli, more and more members of Neighborhood would stop in—showing us their forgiveness. It was an awesome blessing in our lives. We had started our life of repentance together with only family and a very few friends around us, and now all of these people were coming to us, blessing us, forgiving us. I even had people asking my forgiveness, as though they had sinned against me. Perhaps they felt they hadn’t been there for me. I’m still not sure why they needed it, but I readily forgave them. We had sure signs that God had crafted a victory out of our failure.

And then one day, Don, a minister, walked up to me. For the past year, I had had no real contact with any pastors (aside from the few months of counseling with the man who married us). None had reached out to me, and I’m pretty sure that was due to a lack of knowing how. I am not sure how I would have reached out, if our roles had been reversed. It’s a difficult thing to reach out to someone in the midst of their sin, and it can still be difficult once that person has come back to the Lord. Visible sins like adultery mark your life, mark your relationships, forever. People don’t really know what to say. I think it was almost as if I were dead: “His name was Ken Walls. He was a valiant soldier, but he contracted leprosy.” People don’t know how to approach you, even if, inside, they really want to extend forgiveness. I can look back on it now and understand this. Maybe I even knew it intellectually then, but I couldn’t feel it. I felt adrift. I was walking with the Lord again, but not with the Church; my boat was no longer sinking, but I had no port to call home.

So Don was passing by one day, recognized me, and came in to talk. We had met while renewing our first aid cards, prior to my divorce. I’m sure he knew everything that had happened, but here he was anyway, talking to me! I was shocked! We started getting to know each other better, and he eventually asked us to come visit his church. That hadn’t happened before. Kim and I had been going around to various churches, but we still felt awkward in any Pentecostal churches. We felt like we were marked, like we were lepers and no one would want us around because of what we had done. But here was Don, a Pentecostal pastor, saying, “I want you there. Come be a part of our church. Just come and see what you think.”

You can only imagine how much this meant to us. We had felt so unwanted. The Lord had accepted us, but it felt sometimes like His people never would. We went to Don’s church, and we really enjoyed it. The people embraced us joyfully. Don encouraged us, and we liked him a lot; he and I got along really well. Kim and I decided to jump in with both feet.

Not too long after we started volunteering there, Don asked me to be his Associate pastor. What do you think I did? Yes, a chance for redemption! I’m going in with both barrels blazing!

After having lost everything through my sin, I had been out of the ministry for over a year. I had struggled for months with doubts about my fitness to minister and with doubts about God’s ability to use me, but when I finally repented of my sin, He spoke to me.

While I sought Him in prayer, His words formed in the peaceful quiet of my mind: “The call of God is without repentance.” What God told me was that when He calls someone, He does not change His mind.

I have since seen it confirmed: God’s calling remains for me to serve Him in ministry, though it looks different now than it did before my fall. I did not understand at the time that God wanted my ministry to look different, that He had a plan for me to minister to other ministers—helping them avoid falling if I could, or helping bring them back to the Lord. He placed the seed of this desire within me shortly after my own fall (I wished I had let someone in enough to help me come back), and it grew stronger with time.

When Don asked me to be his Associate, though, I felt a monumental desire simply to minister, to use my gifts, and I would not let the opportunity pass. I accepted the position, and it worked out fairly well for about a year. I preached from time to time, and the church grew a little—my new in-laws even became a part of the church for a while.

Then God began to open doors for me to reconcile with people in more powerful ways. Ron Whitney, the pastor of Christian Worship Center at the time, had served as an Interim pastor at Neighborhood Christian Center after my fall, trying to hold the church together until the new pastor, Eric Roberts, had taken over. I had actually met Eric when I had pastored in Quinault. He had been a Youth pastor about 40 miles north in the town of Forks.

Ron sat down with Eric when he came to Neighborhood and said, “You need to contact Ken Walls. He’s a good man, and you need to bridge that gap.” Eric agreed.

Ron called me, and the three of us met for lunch. They thought it would be good for me to meet with Neighborhood’s board, even though many of them were not the same members who had been on my board there. But it would be a symbol, showing the church that I really had come back to the Lord, and it would allow me to move on and stop living in fear of being judged by the church. After all, I had never come before the church to repent—I hadn’t even been allowed to go before them to resign. I had simply disappeared into oblivion. He and I agreed that I would come to the next board meeting.

So I went in through the back door of the church, and I sat down in the kitchen area, waiting for them to call my name. I was so scared. I hadn’t been back at Neighborhood since my fall two years earlier, and in a place that used to be like home to me, I felt like I didn’t belong. I waited and waited, dread building over why it was taking so long. I didn’t know that no one had told Eric that I’d arrived. Finally, I talked to someone, and not long after that, they called me into the meeting. I walked in and faced the imposing group of men.

Eric looked around the table and said, “I’ve invited Ken here because he has something he needs to say.”

Then I began. I laid it all out to them, confessed everything, and repented. I told them how God had changed my heart and brought me to my knees. I also shared with them what God had been doing in my life since and how He was currently blessing me.

They were very gracious. They accepted my repentance and forgave me for everything. Some of them then began to share about the grudges they had borne me in the intervening years, the bitterness toward me that had existed even up to that moment. One gentleman said that this act of repentance, this moment of confession and my seeking their forgiveness, had broken the spirit of resentment in him. Although a couple years had passed, the feelings in some of these men had only buried themselves deeper. But at that moment, those feelings died, and forgiveness reigned. When I left there, a weight had lifted from my shoulders as well.

I had been reconciled with Neighborhood Christian Center, and I was ministering at Don’s church. Things were looking up. But after a little while, controversies started growing up around the church, and things just started to feel wrong. Soon, Rob, a friend of mine in the church, and my father-in-law came up to me and said, “You know, we really feel like we need to start a new church. And we think you should be the pastor.”

I thought, Wow! This is my chance to fulfill my calling, to get right back to where I was. I ended as a Senior pastor, and now I could be one again. It wasn’t in my mind to pray about the decision. After all, I remembered God telling me prior to this that His call is without repentance, which means that once you’ve been called, He does not take away that calling. So I knew that I would minister again; I assumed that this was it. Here, I thought, is my chance.

So we decided to leave the church and start our own. Declare the Word Fellowship, we called it. At first, we met at my friend’s restaurant, which was closed on Sundays, but we grew so quickly that soon that place wasn’t big enough anymore. Our congregation wasn’t huge, by any means, but the small group that had started with us quickly grew. My dad even started attending! We moved a couple of times and finally ended up in Bremerton’s old Charleston Cinema on Callow Avenue.

I was so excited to be meeting there. I loved the theater-style seating and the big platform in front, and I thought that Declare the Word would really take off now. And it certainly looked like I was right. I preached and led worship, accompanied by a friend of mine on the guitar. We could feel the Spirit, people were visiting the church, and it seemed like things were really starting to move.

At the same time, another man I knew, who had been a friend of mine, had begun a food ministry in the same area, and one of our board members asked him if they would consider joining our church, partnering with us to work together.

The response that came back from this guy was, “No, because I don’t really think that Ken’s repentance is even real.”

That really hurt. His doubts about my repentance, though frustrating, were not really something I could change. I knew I had repented, nothing he said could make me doubt it, and probably nothing I could have said would make him believe it. It had been more than two years since we had come back to the Lord.

After all this time, I thought, you have doubts? In all that time, you never once talked with me. How would you know if it’s real or not? That really bothered me, but Declare the Word Fellowship continued on, unhindered.

Some months later, I met with my in-laws and my wife, and we decided to take three days, fasting during the day and gathering to pray at night, to determine a new direction for the church. Declare the Word didn’t seem to be taking off like I had thought it would, so we laid it before the Lord. One night after the in-laws had left, Kim and I were sitting on our bed, watching TV, and I felt compelled to go out to the living room. All of a sudden, I knew God was speaking to me: I needed to go into the living room—it wasn’t an audible voice, just a drawing, a pulling, a firm insistence that I needed to do it.

So I told Kim, “I need to go out and pray.”

I went to the living room, and I started to pray. Then I started to weep. I could hear what God was telling me, and I didn’t like it. That’s why I was certain it was God. I don’t mean to say that God will always tell us what we don’t want to hear, but His plans are different—and ultimately better—than ours. Oftentimes, they don’t make sense to us, and they sometimes seem unpleasant at the time. Anyway, I was certain that this thought was from God because it was not a thought that I would have come up with; it was not something I had been considering at all.

God spoke to my heart clearly—again, not audibly, but a clear knowledge—as clear as the words on this page, “I want you to resign from your church.”

He followed that by saying, “I did not take My call from your life, but what I am calling you to do will not resemble what you have done before.”

I thought, Oh man, what am I going to do? Well, obviously I’m going to resign, because God’s telling me to resign. I’ve messed up enough as it is; I’m not going to intentionally disobey Him.

I wasn’t going to play games. I wasn’t going to wait for a while and see what happened. That Sunday, I brought it to the church. I had talked with my father-in-law beforehand, and he said, “You know, I’ve had the same feeling.” So there was a confirmation, as if I’d needed one. I got up in front of the church and told them I was resigning because God had told me to. I turned it over to my friend Rob, giving him my blessing to take the church if he wanted to continue on.

Even though they chose to continue without us, the church folded soon after that. But it affected Kim and me very little, since we were already in Limbo. Here we were, once more, without a church. So once again, we church-hopped with very little direction.

While our spiritual direction shifted, our business direction also changed. When Kim and I had started at the deli, we had thought we could keep up the momentum, keep the business booming as it had when I had first started advertising. But I didn’t know business then as I know it now. We had only three employees: me, Kim, and Kim’s mother. Kim’s mother is amazing in the kitchen; she’s a wonderful cook, and she did a fabulous job in the deli. But she wanted to stay in the kitchen. She didn’t want to deal with customers. That was fine, since it left the other two of us to serve our guests, but Kim soon began having health problems. And when she couldn’t come to work, that left only me.

As I said, I didn’t know business as I do now; I didn’t realize that I had to spend money to make money. Without more employees, we could not keep up the pace. If Kim couldn’t make it to work that day, I couldn’t make deliveries on time. Our business started falling away because I couldn’t keep up the pace. When I started running late on deliveries, doctors started ordering from other places.

Then we began to realize that something needed to change. So I started thinking, What in our deli produces the highest revenue with the lowest overhead? Espresso was the obvious choice. I began looking for an espresso stand for sale. At the end of September, I found one: it was attached to a Flowers To Go shop in Bremerton and had only one drive-up window.

My stepdad had just passed away from asbestos-related mesothelioma and had left me an inheritance. (This condition had been affecting him for quite some time, and my mom had been essentially his caregiver for a couple years, as well as his mother’s caregiver for several years before that. He had managed to make it to our wedding—he would not have missed that for the world—but he died a few short months later.) His generosity allowed us to pay off the last of the debt on the deli and also get into this new business. So we bought the coffee stand, and I became the owner and a full-time employee at Rocket Coffee.

At the same time, Kim and her mom kept the deli going while we tried to sell it. We found a woman who wanted to buy, but she wanted to buy it with monthly payments, like I had. I thought, Well, it worked for me. It could work for her. So we signed the contract, and she took over the deli. Unfortunately, the situation didn’t work out well. She kept falling farther and farther behind on her monthly payments. That wasn’t such a big deal to Kim and me, but she was supposed to be making the rent payments to the landlord for the space as well. That was a big deal because the landlord had not trusted her and had never agreed to take my name off of the lease; all of her missed payments fell back on me! I had no choice but to evict her. Eventually, we were able to sell the business, and it became a pizza place, which has done well since.

Meanwhile, Rocket Coffee had been born. I worked the stand full-time in the afternoons, and we hired one opener for the morning shift. Flowers To Go closed on the weekends, so we were closed as well. Soon, though, an opportunity opened up to buy a familiar location on Newberry Hill in Silverdale. While pastoring at Christian Worship Center, I had also managed a Mexican restaurant for a short time at this location. Now, we had two Rocket Coffee stands. Business went very well. Eventually, it was so good that we were able to hire staff full-time, and we no longer had to work the stands.

Chapter 24:

WARM REUNIONS

KIM AND I CONTINUED TO GROW in our relationship. Although our new marriage was often a struggle, we were committed to the Lord, which gave us strength to keep working to make our marriage succeed. One day, the two of us were sitting in a restaurant in town (we could finally afford to go on real dates), and I looked around and saw some friends of mine who were members of Eastgate Assembly of God in Bremerton, a church that was without a pastor at the time. One of the group, a man I had known for years (I had grown up with his kids), walked over to us and asked how we were doing.

“Oh, we’re pretty good,” I answered.

We talked for a little bit, and then he said, “Hey, we just interviewed a pastor and had him come to the church to present his ministry. His name is Dale Smith.”

“Dale Smith?” I said, “I know Dale Smith; I was his Associate pastor!”

“Well, come on over to our table and talk to the board—give us your opinion of him.”

So my wife and I went over to their table and sat down, and they asked us about Dale and Tina Smith. I shared with them that he was one of the best pastors I had ever worked with, that the Smiths were wonderful people. They were compassionate and easy to get along with, and he was a great preacher. I could feel the board’s excitement as I told them about how much I loved the Smiths, and I had hope that Dale would soon be pastoring there. I was not disappointed.

One day, while I was working at Rocket Coffee, the one in Flowers To Go, the same man who had approached us at dinner came in. He said, “Hey, Ken! I want you to know we’ve elected Pastor Dale to come be our pastor. The only problem is that he can’t come until December. We’ve got most of the services covered, but we still have one weekend that we need someone to preach. Would you be willing to preach for us that morning?”

I couldn’t believe my ears. This is an Assembly of God church, I thought. You’re asking me to preach at an Assembly of God church! I’m not even an AG minister anymore. I’ve practically been excommunicated… at least as far as credentials are concerned. You’re really asking me to preach! But I knew that instant that I was supposed to do it. God really wanted me to preach there, and He would handle the details.

The day came, and I was so nervous. It had been years since I’d preached in an actual Assembly of God church, and here I wasn’t even an Assembly of God minister. And now I would be preaching in a church where I had grown up. (I was part of this church until age fourteen.) So I just sat in the church, not even wanting to look around because I still felt marked. I felt like I had a flashing neon sign above my head: “Ken Walls the Adulterer.” It didn’t help that I noticed a lady and her daughter who had attended Neighborhood while I was the pastor; as soon as she saw me there, she and her daughter got up and left the building. I wondered what other people were whispering when they saw me: “That’s the guy.” “Hey, did you hear what he did?” But I knew I couldn’t let my feelings or people’s reactions deter me from fulfilling God’s purpose here.

Attendance had dropped while they were without a pastor, and there were only about 45 people at the service. Plus, the church was in the midst of remodeling, so parts of the sanctuary were in various states of disarray. But setting distractions aside, I got up to preach.

And the Holy Spirit moved. I suddenly felt God’s anointing on my life again. I had felt the certainty of His call at times while preaching at Declare the Word Fellowship. But here I was preaching in an Assembly of God church again, and the anointing was stronger than ever!

I thought, Wow, God really didn’t take the call from me!

While I preached, I looked around and noticed a couple I had known for years. In fact, during the time when I was struggling with my inappropriate relationship with Kim, while I was pastoring Neighborhood, another minister had taken me to their house for a prayer meeting to try to break the spirit that was on me. Now they were at Eastgate, and as I preached, I saw tears in that wife’s eyes. I wondered, What are they thinking about me?

But after the service ended, she walked up to me and said, “The anointing is still on your life.”

It was like she was giving her blessing on my ministry as well as confirming God’s. And they had been there—they had known everything that had happened almost from the beginning! But with tears streaming down her face, she came to confirm God’s anointing on my life. That meant a lot to me, and I told her so. She gave me a hug and left.

The service was over, and I went back to my life. I had been given a great opportunity, and I had taken it. I had fulfilled God’s desire for me to preach there, but now it was done. Or so I thought.

Time went by, and I went about my business as usual. The coffee stands were busy, and I kept busy between them, running back and forth with deliveries and whatnot. One morning, though, when I arrived at the Bremerton stand, there was a note waiting for me.

“Ken, give us a call. —Dale and Tina Smith”

Well, there’s a voice from the past, I thought. Sure, I had known he was coming to Bremerton, but I didn’t think he would actually want to see me. After all, they surely knew all about my sin. Suddenly, anxiety filled me. Of course they know everything! Maybe that’s why they want me to call! But I couldn’t ignore them. For the sake of our friendship, I had to make the call. So I did.

It was awesome to hear Dale’s voice again. We talked and we talked, and he finally said, “Hey, I want you to bring your wife by; I want to meet her. Why don’t you guys come by the house?”

“Sure,” I said, but what a mess that made of me inside! What’s it going to be like, I worried. Is he going to reprimand me; is there going to be a rebuke? Will he look at us with disdain? This can’t be good. I role-played all sorts of scenarios. Even though I thought they were wonderful people, and I knew how compassionate they were, I still worried.

When you feel like a marked man, you’re always waiting for the gavel to drop. “Am I ever going to be accepted again,” is the question forever on your mind. Even to this day, when I see someone I haven’t seen since my fall, I worry about how I will be judged. I worry that I will be condemned.

When Kim and I arrived at their house, I was scared to death. And I knew Kim felt the same way. Her mind was consumed by thoughts like, This is Ken’s former pastor, a guy who used to be one of his closest friends. What’s he going to think of me? We walked up the sidewalk to their door and knocked on the door, and they answered.

I had been on staff with Dale from 1991 to 1993, and now it was 2003, ten years later—and they didn’t look any different at all! They looked great! They were smiling and welcoming us to their home, and the kids were even there. They had five kids, and two were still living at home, but all five were there for the weekend. On the one hand, it was great to see them all. On the other hand, it wasn’t just Dale and Tina we had to face; there were also all of these kids who had been in my Youth group.

But they immediately embraced my wife, and they hugged her just as if she’d always been my wife. There were no uncomfortable looks or anything. They showed genuine, complete love—love like we had not truly felt since the fall. We were surrounded by total love and acceptance. We sat with them and talked for hours. Dale shared with me about the church and the visions and dreams he had for it, and he said he’d love for us to come be a part of it.

Kim and I decided, one Sunday morning not long after, that we would stop by the church to check it out. We found that the church had already begun growing since Pastor Dale had started there. So Kim and I slipped into the crowd that morning, and we found them very welcoming. We decided that we liked it enough to keep attending there. But we made the decision to lie low for a while; we weren’t ready to jump right in again.

And Dale had already told me, “Listen, if you come, you do whatever you want to do. You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to.”

Previously, in Don’s church, it felt like Don had tried to push me into leadership right away. I mean, I hadn’t attended very long before he asked me to be the Associate pastor, which I thought was great at the time. It had all happened so quickly. Dale’s attitude was completely different, and it was refreshing not to have any pressure put on us.

Of course, I couldn’t just be in a church without serving somehow. I knew I wasn’t ready to be a pastor (though I did have credentials through an independent organization), and I didn’t want to jump into any position that I would have considered “important” at an earlier time. But I still wanted to serve, so I became an usher.

I loved it! Finally, I learned what servanthood was all about. In all my years behind a pulpit, I had never truly figured out what it meant to serve. Now, I learned that I didn’t have to be up in front of the church—I didn’t have to be where everyone could notice me—to serve God. I was coming to a conclusion that I should have come to decades earlier. God finally got through to me with the revelation that service was not about me. I finally realized I was not serving for myself: anything I could do to minister and bring joy to another person was what I should be doing.

We serve to glorify God, and God is sometimes glorified more by a person shaking a hand and sharing a smile than preaching an outstanding sermon. More people are led to Christ by the kindness of a friend than a demonstrative speech from a stranger behind a pulpit.

I found such joy in greeting someone at the door and seeing a smile come to that person’s face, joy in helping collect the offering, joy in simply assisting people. All this time, I had missed such a great blessing. At last, I discovered what real ministry was. And I discovered that in all my years of “service,” even though I had said, “There are no levels of ministry—only different callings,” I had never truly believed it until now. I really felt it now. I finally, truly, understood that being an usher or a janitor in the church is no lower calling than being the pastor of the church; they’re just different. We’re all there to serve.

The longer we spent at Eastgate, the closer Kim and I became with Tina and Dale. And, strangely enough, I began to notice that they were closer to Kim than they had ever been to Theresa. We hung out together, and there was a wonderful connectivity between us all. Dale and I quickly became best friends again, and it got to the point where I was his closest confidante and he was mine. And after a while, he expressed a desire for me to come on staff at the church. There was no pressure, especially as there was no money to pay me, but it was a situation he hoped would come to pass. The money was no issue for me, and I soon said yes and became an Associate pastor.

The Children’s ministry at the church was floundering at the time. Pastor Dale had had to remove the Children’s director from the position, so there was a hole that needed to be filled. So Kim and I agreed to temporarily work with the kids. And we did—for three years or so. We never found anyone else to do it, so we just kept running with it the whole time we were at that church. The ministry grew, and the church as a whole was going very well. I got the opportunity to preach at least once a month, which I enjoyed, and we all grew together.

At that time, I began writing a book, Falling off the Mountain, about my experiences of sin and the grace of God. Dale agreed to write the foreword. But, through the process of writing, I realized that there were some loose ends I still needed to tie up in my repentance process. Even while I wrote about moving on, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to move on without an effort at reconciliation. I knew I had to talk with Les Welk.

In the years since that Leavenworth meeting, Les had become the Superintendent of the Northwest District of the Assemblies of God. And I knew that my repentance wouldn’t really be complete until I personally repented to him. So Pastor Dale made the appointment, and we went together. We drove to the Superintendent’s office in the Snoqualmie area and walked into the plush, new building for our appointment.

Les arrived and said, “Hi, Ken and Dale, come on in.”

We walked into his office and sat in the big leather chairs. I was mesmerized by the look of these new offices and the spectacular view from the windows; as we talked, I admired the mountains in the distance.

Of course, I was also nervous and feeling very out of place. After all, this man had sat on the committee that had been forced to remove my credentials with the Assemblies of God. Not only that but he had been my friend. I felt so condemned—not by him but by myself. At every step forward, I felt the pain from the past.

Well, the conversation finally got around to the reason we were here, and Les asked me, “So, Ken, what’s on your mind?”

So I shared my heart with him. I know I will never find words to express how sorry I am for what I did, but I sure tried that day. I confessed how I had sinned against God and sinned against Les, because I had irrevocably damaged our friendship by my actions. I shared how God had been working in my life and how He had blessed me since my repentance.

Then he said, “Ken, I know it’s real. I can see the repentance in you.”

I rejoiced to hear that from him! He knew it was real, and that meant so much to me.

Then Dale, ever my advocate, spoke up. “Yes, Ken and Kim really have repented. They’re very involved in our church. I use Ken as my Associate, and I’m going to continue doing that.”

He wasn’t trying to be mean or disrespectful to Les; nothing in his tone even hinted at that. He was simply stating a fact. He supported me, knew the anointing of God was on my life, and intended to continue making use of my gifts.

Les said, “Okay.”

He gave his approval; he even agreed with Dale’s decision. He stood up, put his arm around me, and prayed that God would bless my ministry. He made sure I understood that I still could not be re-credentialed with the Assemblies of God, but he gave his blessing to the ministry God had planned for me and Kim.

Once again, a weight lifted from me. I glorified God because He had gone before me once again and had prepared the heart of my friend Les to forgive me. Les and I were reconciled, and I had his blessing to continue ministering to God’s people. Praise the Lord!

Pastor Dale and I went back to Bremerton, and we enjoyed a wonderful time ministering there together. The church had been renamed Living Waters Fellowship, and it thrived. Dale and I worked well together and continued to grow in friendship. I was his right-hand man at work, and we hung out together at home. He said if he ever left Living Waters, that he would like to co-pastor an independent church with me. That became our vision: one day, when God allowed, we would leave to plant an independent church together.

Chapter 25:

THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT

IT WAS THE WINTER OF 2007, and Dale had been pastoring Living Waters Fellowship for four years. One weekend of that winter was particularly rough. We had had a good deal of snow and ice—enough that I’d had to call Pastor Dale on Sunday to say that our family couldn’t make it to church. But then the weather had suddenly warmed on Monday, and torrential rain came, creating lots of flooding in the area. That day, I was out driving my Rocket Coffee van, making milk deliveries. I started getting bogged down in floodwater, and when I got out of it, my brakes started having trouble.

I pulled over and called Dale, saying, “Hey, my brakes are acting funny. I’ve still got to finish this delivery to the Newberry Hill store, and I’m afraid when I come back down the hill, I won’t be able to stop. Could you come pick me up and help me finish this?”

Of course he said, “Sure, I’d love to help you with that!” without a moment’s hesitation and rushed out to help me finish the delivery. He was the kind of guy who’d give you the shirt off his back as long as he had one, and for me, he’d probably even go out and buy one. I can’t count the number of times he went out of his way to help me.

So we loaded the milk into his vehicle and took off. We were both a little freaked out by the floodwaters in Silverdale and having to find alternate routes to get around them, but we were still having a lot of fun laughing together.

Now, I had just started trying to lose weight and get in shape, so I had started eating a heart-healthy cereal. Dale turned to me and said, “Tell me about this cereal you’re eating.”

I later found out, when I listened to his sermon from the previous Sunday (the one we’d missed because of the ice), that he had been having chest pain. He had woken up in the middle of Thursday night the week before with severe chest pain, but when he prayed about it, it left. At the time, though, I didn’t know anything about that. He was very private that way; he didn’t like to trouble anyone else with his health issues. He especially didn’t like to put too much on me. He was always concerned that I had so much going on with business and life in general, and he didn’t want to worry me. So I didn’t know until later that he’d been having pains.

He had recently tried all kinds of diets, and he’d gotten stronger and lost a lot of weight. So I thought he was just wanting to try something new, maybe to help control his blood pressure, which I knew he had been struggling with, and I didn’t think much about it. We kept talking and finished up the delivery, and I had a great time with my best friend.

About three in the morning, the phone rang. It is always a scary thing to get a call that early in the morning. I answered, and I heard the voice of Paul, one of our elders, the husband of the woman who had confirmed the anointing on my life several years before.

Paul said, “Ken, Pastor Dale has had a heart attack, and it doesn’t look good. You need to get to the hospital right away.”

I jumped into the shower, jumped out, got dressed, and ran to the car. Kim stayed home because she had just been released from the hospital not quite a week before, after a surgery to remove kidney cancer, and she was still recovering. Then, a few miles from the hospital, I had a panic attack. I managed to pull off into a parking lot, and I called Kim. She kept talking to me to calm me down while I drove the rest of the way to the hospital.

When I finally arrived, I noticed Dale’s car parked very oddly—he had just pulled off to the side; he didn’t even make it into a parking spot. I found out later that he had been on the phone with his son that evening and had been saying, “I just don’t feel right; something doesn’t feel right.” When he had gotten off the phone, his chest had started hurting, and he had run to the car and driven himself in as fast as he could. When he had gotten to the hospital, the pain had been so severe that they had taken him to the Cath Lab, where he went into cardiac arrest.

I went in through the Emergency entrance and started seeing people from church—the board members, the Youth pastor, and many others. Tina was in the room with Dale, and they allowed me to come in and see him as well. By then, he was already in a coma on total life support, giving no response. It didn’t look good. We were all there the rest of the night and all that morning, keeping a vigil, praying for a miracle.

Later that day, the doctors came up with a last-ditch plan, one surgery they could try that might save Dale’s life. A valve in his heart had blown out, and they would try to repair it and get everything functioning properly. While they planned for that, I had to leave in order to take Kim to her follow-up appointment for the cancer surgery. So I kept tabs on the proceedings by phone as the day went on. The latest I heard was that the surgery had worked: the valve was repaired, and blood was flowing again. His life was saved!

Kim’s appointment went well, and I dropped her off at home while I headed back to the hospital to rejoice with everyone that God had worked a miracle—Pastor Dale would live!

But when I arrived at the hospital, everyone was crying.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“He’s not going to make it,” they said.

“But…” Stunned into silence by their response, I couldn’t even finish my thought.

“He was too far gone; they can’t bring him back. He’s not going to make it.”

I leaned my head against the wall and started sobbing and pounding the wall with my fist. The wife of one of the elders—a woman who is like a second mother to me—came over and put her arms around me, trying to comfort me.

“I thought it was going to go the other way,” I said.

“I did too,” she said.

The family was taken down to the Intensive Care Unit, and I was asked to come along—I was family. Our Presbyter, Pastor Ray Jennings, was also there and had been with the family all day. Pastor Jennings put his arm around my shoulders; he knew Dale had been my best friend. Tears rolled down Tina’s cheeks, though she tried to hold it together. It was no use, grief overcame everyone.

Soon we heard the staff wheeling Dale in from surgery. Fresh tears welled up when we saw them pumping air into his lungs as they brought him to us, trying to keep his body functioning so we could say goodbye. But while they were forcing in oxygen, the air in his body started coming out in disturbing groans, and his daughter cried out.

“Just let him go,” she wailed, her head on his chest. “Let him go! Don’t do this to him anymore; let him go!”

So they stopped squeezing in the oxygen, and it wasn’t long before his body expired. Dale was gone. He had died. Inside, I felt that I had too. My best friend, my brother, my partner in ministry—he was gone.

I was numb.

The hospital staff was amazed to see so many people from the church show up. They church members kept coming in to say goodbye to the pastor one by one or in small groups. One group would leave, and another would enter soon after. They had truly loved him. I merely sat there the whole time, stunned.

Dale was gone.

Dale’s unexpected death added heartache onto the pain and stress I had already felt that winter. I remember that whole time as a blur. I lost my best friend, Dale, a bare two weeks after I had lost a cousin in Afghanistan. Taliban forces had ambushed his unit and shot him in the back. My cousin and I had been very close as kids. Although we’d grown apart over the years, I cherished the memories of time spent with him.

I dealt with grief over his death while worrying about Kim, who was then in the hospital for her cancer surgery. I sang at my cousin’s funeral the day she was released from the hospital.

Kim’s cancer had been completely unexpected; she had gone to the doctor for a checkup of a separate issue, and it was a miracle (“an accident,” they said) that they had found it. I counted another miracle in that they had found it in early stages. I observed another miracle when they were able to remove only the cancerous portion and reform her kidney so that it still worked. Kim’s cancer really tried my faith. In the midst of seeing God’s hand at work, I struggled with the physical pain she felt and the pain I felt at the thought that He might take her. Cancer is a scary thing, and worrying about her life—on top of the other close deaths—really tested my spiritual resolve.

If that weren’t enough, my dad passed away two weeks after Dale. He had gone to the hospital with breathing problems before Dale’s crisis and was upstairs there while I was downstairs in the ICU with Dale. Dad had a ton of problems, including asbestosis, mild emphysema, and blood in his lungs. After a short time in the hospital, it looked like he would soon recover. But he didn’t. I remember having a conversation with him about Pastor Dale’s death while it looked like Dad would still be okay. Not two weeks later, he was gone.

The Sunday following Dale’s death, I agreed to preach the service at Living Waters, and it was one of the hardest services I have ever preached. The church was packed; everyone came—everyone but Tina. The next week, we had the funeral at Port Orchard’s Christian Life Center. The building was filled. One of the AG elders led the service. I led worship, sang, and served as a pallbearer.

After the graveside committal, we had a reception. Pastor Jennings talked with me there.

“I’m assuming you’ll fill the pulpit,” he said.

I was still not an AG-credentialed pastor, but here was the Presbyter, assuming I would take on leadership of the church. Of course, he assumed it because I was the Associate pastor and I had served that church for several years now. But his assumption showed that he supported me.

“I don’t know,” I said, “I’m not sure what is going to happen.”

“Well, if you need any help, if you need anything from us—like an Interim pastor or anything—you just let us know.”

“I will do th—” I started to say. But right then, one of the elders of our church (a man who seemed to have control over much of the church) walked up and interrupted me.

“No,” he said, “we’ll be okay.”

Wow, I thought. What’s going to happen here?

After the funeral, I tried to resume life as normal, but I just couldn’t. My dad was still in the hospital, so I had to deal with stress about that, and I felt like Dale’s death had just cut me adrift. I floated along with no direction. What now? kept going through my head. My best friend and confidante had passed away, and I no longer had his guidance.

I felt like I had been riding on Dale’s coat-tails in ministry. On my own, I had screwed up and lost everything. Sure, that was years ago, but the consequences still remained. The Lord cleanses us from sin, but that doesn’t mean our lives can go on as if we’d never sinned.

One of the consequences was my lack of credentials with the Assemblies of God. Yes, Pastor Jennings had implied that he and the Assemblies supported and affirmed my ministry at Living Waters, but that didn’t mean that I could count on them for leadership or oversight. When I was with the AG, I knew the system. I knew who I could approach for guidance, I knew how to go about finding ministers to assist me, and I knew what to do when I was without a ministry position. Without that organization, without that spiritual leadership, I felt lost.

Kim and I still had Rocket Coffee, of course. Both of our shops were doing well at the time, so I wasn’t relying on the church for income, but I still didn’t know what to do. Should I fill the pulpit, or should I leave? If I did pastor the church, Living Waters would have to leave the Assemblies of God, and I didn’t want that for them. I knew nothing would be the same without Pastor Dale there anyway; every day I spent at the church would be another reminder of his absence. Without Dale, I felt I didn’t even know who I was anymore—his friendship had become such a huge part of my identity.

But I kept serving the church, trying to maintain all of the ministries we had begun. After preaching that first Sunday, I assumed I would take a larger role in the church, carrying on the pastor’s work at least until we found a replacement. I decided that I couldn’t become the pastor; I didn’t want to cut the whole church adrift from the AG, like I was. But I could at least maintain their direction, stay the course until a new captain could be found.

Pastor Dale’s death didn’t change the fact that there were power struggles in the church; there had been struggles for years. What it did change was the balance of power. Without his God-given, denomination-supported authority to lead the church, no restraining influence prevented certain members from rising to fill the leadership void in their own way. In particular, one of the elders began to assert his authority, and I felt shoved aside.

During Pastor Dale’s time at the church, I had many opportunities to preach. After his death, it seemed I hardly had a chance to preach at all. It crushed me. I had a heart for this church, and I desired to lead them through the grieving process. And I had a gift for preaching! I couldn’t help the church bear its burden, and I couldn’t even use my gift. This elder quashed my efforts at leadership.

He wouldn’t even allow us to seek help from an Interim pastor—something I felt we truly needed. I had never dealt with a church losing a pastor before; I needed someone with experience to help me comfort the congregation. I had never lost a best friend before; how could I direct others without someone to help me find my direction?

That whole time, something at the church just seemed odd. It felt like we were trying to pick up the pieces and move on, but we couldn’t. We were trying to walk, but our legs kept getting tangled up. And as hard as that time was for me, I couldn’t imagine how hard it must have been for Dale’s wife, Tina.

At the same time, I was still dealing with my dad’s health crisis. In the preceding weeks, I’d spent a lot of time at the hospital with him. He couldn’t do much while on the BiPAP machine—he couldn’t even eat—but he was glad of the company. He had become quite depressed from being there so long, especially when they kept getting his hopes up that he might be able to go home. At the time of Dale’s death, he’d been in the hospital for about three weeks, but it still looked as though he would recover.

About a week after Dale’s death, Dad took a turn for the worse. So the doctors decided to intubate him and put a tube down his throat to breathe for him, seeing if he might heal once these more drastic measures were taken. They moved Dad from pulmonary care to the ICU. Soon after, I was walking down the stairs to see him, and I became overwhelmed with fear. Everything went into a fog. I felt detached from my body. I got weak, my heart palpitated, and I thought I might pass out. It was a panic attack. I couldn’t help thinking about walking this same direction to see Dale, his body still functioning on life support, praying for that miracle to save his life. I ran back up the stairs and out to my car.

I’m still plagued by guilt that I couldn’t make myself go into the ICU to see my dad—even though he was unconscious at that point—until after he died.

A few days after they moved him to the ICU, I was driving my Rocket Coffee van, running an errand to Cash&Carry for my business, with my son Matthew. As we drove down Sixth Street in Bremerton, my cell phone rang. It was Dad’s doctor.

“Ken,” he said, “I just checked your dad this morning, and his heart is very weak. I need to ask you this question so I know how to proceed: if your dad’s heart fails, do you want us to resuscitate?”

After a few moments of frantic what-ifs flying through my mind, I said, “What are the chances of his survival?”

“It’s not good, not good at all. His lungs are badly damaged, and his heart is really weak. It would just be prolonging the inevitable.”

I knew my dad wouldn’t want that. He wouldn’t want to be just lying there, kept alive by machines, if recovery weren’t possible. Plus, I knew that if God were going to heal my dad, He could perform that miracle just as easily without the machines. I’m not sure if that thought actually entered my mind then—I was so overwhelmed with the pain of all the recent losses and the near certainty of the next one—but I do believe it.

“Well, I know my dad wouldn’t want to be on life support. If it does stop,” I said, “don’t resuscitate. Let him go.”

Did I make the right decision, I wondered.

“Okay. I’ll call you back if anything happens,” he said.

I made it to the parking lot of Cash&Carry; it hadn’t been more than a couple of minutes. Before I could even get out of the van, the phone rang. The doctor again. “Ken, I went straight to your father’s room after we talked. By the time I got there, his heart had stopped.”

“So is he gone?” I asked.

“Yes, he will be in a few minutes.”

“Okay, I’ll be right there.”

I couldn’t help myself; I broke down crying there in the parking lot, in front of my son. My dad was seventy-five, he was overweight, he had smoked heavily earlier in life, and his health had remained poor after quitting. He had smoked for many years, and although he’d quit while battling colon cancer years before this, the damage had been done. In his later years, his breathing had become labored and raspy. It was terrible to hear him that way.

His death wasn’t totally unexpected; I had thought I was prepared for it. One day, I had thought, I would show up to his house and find him dead. I guess I really wasn’t prepared. I think all death is that way: you can think you’re ready to deal with it, but when it happens, you realize you could never have been ready. After losing my cousin, after losing my best friend, now I had lost my dad.

I called my wife and my mom because I knew I couldn’t go in to see him by myself, and they said they would meet me at the hospital. While I waited for everyone in the reception area, an elder from the church walked up. Apparently, word of my dad’s passing had spread, and we were on the prayer chain. The elder walked in with me to see my dad. He lay there, still hooked up to everything, still with the tube in his mouth, but he was gone. I stood, numb, staring at him.

Guilt flooded through me because I hadn’t been able to come see him in the ICU. And then I started questioning myself: Could I have done more to save him? Did I make the right call? All sorts of thoughts bombarded me as I tried to figure out if I’d done anything wrong. The healing had been in God’s hands. The Lord could have chosen to heal my dad with the gift of life, but He had chosen to heal him with the gift of death.

Kim walked in, and the elder left us. I knew this would be hard for her; she and my dad had been close. She laid her head on his chest and said goodbye. And as we stood there, looking at my dad, I once again felt lost.

I wondered if he might have known he was dying. He’d never really had a good relationship with my sisters, but they had come to visit him before he had gone to the ICU; it was a special moment in all of their lives. He had even started crying. At the time, I thought his reaction might have been due to some of the drugs he was on, but now I think he knew he was dying because my sisters were there, reconciling with him. After all, they never talked; he really had no relationship with them, but here they were, talking to him.

At some point, the doctor entered. I’ll never forget his kindness. Doctors go through this all the time, and for some, death just becomes a part of business. This doctor wasn’t like that. He put his arm around me and said he was sorry, and I could feel that he really cared. His response made it easier to deal with the pain; it helped me realize someone else hurt as well. But I still felt empty as we walked out.

My dad and I had had an interesting relationship. Since my parents’ divorce (when I was fifteen), he had never been a real father figure. So I never again had a father to look up to. He was a good man, but he could never handle that responsibility. When he left, I went searching for him to make him part of my life, but he never again took on the “father” role.

I thought my dad was an awesome guy: he was fun to be around, he was friendly and kind, he was the type of guy who’d give you the shirt off his back. I’d always told people he reminded me of Burl Ives, round and jolly. But as far as being a father—giving advice, mentoring, and being a safe haven—he couldn’t cut it. A friend? Sure, he was a great friend. But I wanted a father. I needed a father. There was an emptiness in my life that he never filled. And as I grew older, our roles reversed. I became a spiritual leader, even to him. I gave him advice, rather than the other way around.

When death comes for a loved one, you tend to set aside problems in your relationship and remember only the good things. At least, that’s how it happened for me. I realized just how close we had been. Though he had not been a father to me, he had been a friend who was always there in my life. Up until I had to force him not to do anything because of his health, he would always come down to our coffee shops, just to say hi. He ran errands and made deliveries for me, just because he could. He would go buy milk when the girls (our employees) ran out. He’d pay for it out of his pocket, and when they reimbursed him, he’d put the money in their tip jar—“tilt jar” as he called it. (He talked a bit like Archie Bunker.) Naturally, they loved him.

People knew him all over town, and it always brought smiles to their faces when they saw him driving by in his purple—almost pink—car. He’d gotten a bad paint job, not realizing that the color would turn out the way it did. But instead of getting upset, he embraced it. He loved the uniqueness of his car, with that crazy, flamboyant color. He filled the back windshield with stuffed animals of that same hue. He even got a baseball cap to match it!

And I would never see his smiling face again. But I know I will see him in heaven one day, and that thought always brings a smile to my face.

There had been so much death in my life, so much emotional stress, I wasn’t even sure who I was anymore. I certainly didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing.

I’d been through a major fall that had almost destroyed my life, but Christ had redeemed me and totally brought me back. Kim and I were part of a church, ministering, feeling like we were actually doing what God wanted us to. And then, tragedy struck. My faith in the Lord’s presence never wavered, but I felt directionless. Sure, God was still there, but where was “there”? How would I get “there” to find God? What did He want me to do, and how?

Well, the first thing I had to was bury my dad. I expected to find about $10,000 in his bank account. He had been getting payments from his insurance because of his asbestosis, and he had his retirement income from the government. Ten thousand would have been enough for funeral expenses. But, to my surprise, I found only $2,500 in his account. He’d squandered it all! The remaining funds wouldn’t be enough to cover the burial. I didn’t have any money to do it; all of my funds were tied up in the coffee shops.

So we went to the funeral home to ask what they could do for us. All we could do was cremate him and put the ashes in an urn. I still have the urn in my house because I couldn’t afford to bury him anywhere. He would have liked that, though; he liked hanging out at my house. I think if he would have known that his remains would end up in a jewelry-box-shaped urn on a mantel behind my couch, he’d have gotten a kick out of it.

He’s in heaven; I do believe that. His heart was for the Lord.

We had a memorial service at Living Waters. My sisters were there, and my uncle came all the way from Texas. My uncle was also a pastor. He had been Secretary Treasurer for the AG’s Arkansas District for a time. He had retired, but I asked if he would preach the service, which he did. I led the congregation in worship and acted as MC the rest of the time. It surprised me that, in the midst of all her pain at losing Dale, Tina wanted to play the piano for this service. So for my dad’s memorial service, she played piano as I led worship in the church her husband had pastored. That action spoke volumes about Dale and Tina’s relationship with Kim and me.

After Dad’s memorial service, with all the pain of the last few months, I still felt conflicted about Living Waters and my calling. I wanted to leave. After all, my ministry was being stifled. I couldn’t preach; I couldn’t lead; I couldn’t do much of anything. I felt rejected, like I wasn’t being used, like I wasn’t even needed. But I had promised one of the board members that I wouldn’t leave until we found a pastoral replacement. That process took about a year.

I think now that I’d been looking too much at Dale to get me to where I needed to go in ministry. I mean, we’d had plans for the future. If Dale had ever resigned from Living Waters, he and I would have started a church as co-pastors. We’d had plans to go to New York and visit a church he’d pastored. We had all sorts of plans. Now all those plans were gone.

Another tragedy was yet to come. Ken, my brother-in-law, who had been the Best Man at my wedding, had cancer. He’d been fighting various kinds of it for several years. He had been in remission for a time, but things started to get worse again. The remission had been a short-lived success. Cancer never fully released its grip on Ken, and he died that January—one more cherished relationship that ended in that winter of discontent.

After I had seen four deaths—my cousin, my best friend, my father, and now my brother-in-law—in two months’ time, I’m sure people thought I would snap. They’d say to other people, “How is he still going on?” I tell you, it was only by the grace of God. But we did keep going on.

Kim and I trudged through that year at Living Waters, and in the midst of it, God still did some tremendous things. But we knew it was time for us to leave. The church seemed to continue smoothly for a time, but then things began breaking apart. In my opinion, it happened because we’d never brought in an Interim pastor, someone with an external perspective, who could reassure us that it wasn’t the end of the world. The one elder basically controlled the church and wouldn’t allow an Interim pastor. It frustrated me because this man was a businessman, not a pastor. He was essentially running the church, but I didn’t feel he was called to that responsibility. I didn’t feel that he was called to be accountable for the spiritual health of that body.

One by one, family by family, people were leaving the church. It got smaller and smaller. And it fractured. Instead of us all uniting together, factions formed and dissension sprang up. Their treatment of Tina Smith was evidence that we’d gone wrong somewhere. She had been doing secretarial work for the church and had taken some time off after Dale’s death, but when she came back to work, all of her stuff had been removed from the office. Everything had been taken out, and no one had even talked to her about it. I was the only one who even talked to her. She had been removed, and they felt it would be best if she weren’t even a part of the church. So much for the church caring for widows!

Chapter 26:

ON FIRE FOR GOD

I WANTED TO RUN; I just wanted to leave. I was tired. I couldn’t handle what was going on there anymore. An opportunity arose with a group of people who had left Living Waters. One of the women who had been in our congregation had formerly been a minister and an evangelist. She and some others had left to begin a new church, and we prayed for them when they left. Well, they approached me and asked if I would preach some revival meetings for them. At the time, I wasn’t being used at Living Waters, and I had mentioned to them that I’d be available if they needed someone to preach a service now and then, so I accepted.

The revival started in a small building near Poulsbo. It wasn’t long before we’d packed the place out and had to move to another building. The Spirit was moving, and I felt that this was where God wanted me. Preaching there also kept my mind busy; it distracted me from painful emotions. We had planned the revival for four days, but the crowds kept coming, so we extended it through the entire week. Then we extended it another week.

Toward the end of the second week, we were looking for another venue. A pastor from downtown Bremerton approached us and asked if we’d hold the revival in his church. We moved there, and the irony struck me. The building where his church was located was the same building that had housed Neighborhood Christian Center when I had pastored there—the same building where I had fallen. (Neighborhood had since moved to a new building in Bremerton’s Manette neighborhood and changed their name to New Life Assembly.) I found it ironic that here I was, preaching a revival in the very same church where my moral failure had taken place. The whole time we were there, the Spirit of God moved. It felt like coming home, like the ultimate restoration.

On the last night that I preached at that revival, when I gave the altar call, an older gentleman (late fifties or early sixties—older than I was) came up to the front of the church. As I began to talk with him, the Lord gave me a word for him: “The Lord is saying, ‘The time is now.’ Do you know what that means?”

“Yes,” he said. “I was a minister, and I had a moral failure. I haven’t been behind the pulpit in twenty years.”

The echo of my own story hit me like a ton of bricks. And suddenly, God revealed His plan, how He had redeemed me and redeemed my sinful actions. The deepest desire of my heart had become a yearning to minister to ministers, and here I could do it! I had come full-circle. God had brought me to the place of my failure and used me for His glory—showing me once again how His grace is always sufficient.

I knew God had given me the desire to protect pastors from making the same mistake I did. I knew He wanted me to help restore those who had made that mistake. That was why I had written my first book, Falling off the Mountain. But this was the first chance I had had to really fulfill that desire in person. I rejoiced in God’s wisdom and love!

“The call of God is without repentance,” as He had told me time and time again—my failure never nullified His calling. When I returned to Him, it was still there. When you’re called, you’re called for life. The calling may take a different form, as it did for me. I don’t preach the same way I did before my fall. I don’t minister in the same ways or even to the same people. But I have realized it’s not about me; it’s about God. That is what His calling is all about—glorifying Him in victory or in failure. The calling may take a different form after failure, but God still calls and expects obedience to that call. He still called me, and He still called this gentleman. And I spoke this truth into his life at that moment.

He began weeping. Then I started weeping. We knew this was God. I knew that God was, here and now, shining His favor on me, giving me acceptance and completion. What the enemy had meant for evil, God had turned around for good. And I was in awe that He would even use me—period—let alone in a revival, ministering to a pastor, one who had fallen in the same way I had but hadn’t yet come back to God’s call. I met with that gentleman later and gave him a copy of my book, and we talked further, which greatly encouraged him.

He made me think, though: what about the ministers who walk away from the call? They have a sin in their lives for a time, but when they come back to Christ, they ignore the call—they never come back to ministry. I wonder what we do with them. Several denominations have a policy that ministers who have sinned must go through an established process of repentance, which generally includes a time of probation. I went through this myself with the pornography issue. But if the ministers don’t go through this process, they’re kicked out of the system. It’s an understandable policy; there have to be consequences for sin, especially for those with the responsibility for the spiritual health of others. But if these ministers don’t follow through with that process, they’re gone. We don’t touch them.

It’s exactly the situation that had happened in my case. That’s why I had such a hard time feeling accepted in an AG church. That’s why, even after I’d made my repentance clear, Les Welk, the Superintendent of the Northwest District, had to tell me that I still could not be re-credentialed with the Assemblies of God.

This failure of ours has become a real burden on my heart. We don’t have anything in place to help these men; we don’t run after them. I’m often brought back to the passage in Matthew 18, when Jesus gave the parable about the 99 sheep who stayed together and the one who wandered off. He talked about leaving the 99 to go after the one. That one sheep was also a part of the fold. Sometimes, we think of that sheep as a non-believer, but it wasn’t. How could the sheep leave the fold if it hadn’t been a part of it in the first place? That one sheep was one of His sheep. The Shepherd went after that one and brought him back. There was a lot of effort made in finding that hurt, lost sheep. And that was one thing I had felt was missing from my situation: no one had come after me. You can call my attitude “playing the victim,” or call it whatever you want; the fact remains that it didn’t happen. No one came for me.

And it breaks my heart that no one is running after those who wander away. In fact, a minister once said to me (and it grieved me), “I am tired of chasing after the sheep.” I don’t ever want to have that attitude. There are so many lost and hurting sheep out there. How can we not chase them?

It was the same way with that former pastor I met. It wasn’t as though the man had been hiding from God, or living in sin, or anything like that. He had come back to the Lord; he had witnessed to people; he was living as a Christian. But he had never come back to God’s calling for him to minister. He had still been a wandering sheep for twenty years. This is the sad truth I’ve discovered about most of those who fail as I did. They run away. They avoid their calling. If they come back to the faith, they are so broken that they become ineffective. They feel like damaged goods. They hold so tightly to the belief that they’re the chief of sinners that they lose hold of the fact that Christ’s blood makes us saints. So their belief that God can no longer use them becomes a reality—only because they believe it!

And, unfortunately, people look at them that way. There are a lot of sins that people can overlook. But when it’s something so grievous, like adultery, especially if you’re a minister, you become taboo. You are leprous.

I carry a burden for these sheep because I am one of them. By God’s grace, He brought me back into the fold. It’s all I can do to try and reach these other wandering sheep and let them know, as I let that pastor know, that Christ does forgive, Christ does accept us back again, and Christ does restore. And when Christ restores, he fully restores! I think we often forget that.

So with all these thoughts in my head, I wrote a letter to Les, and I asked him this question, not in an accusatory way, but a thought-provoking one. “What do we do with these men who have wandered away? What do we do with them?”

He wrote me back and thanked me for that letter. It had caused him to think and ponder that question himself. And I think we’re all still wondering how to answer that question.

I still ministered at Living Waters. The revival had only ever been a temporary, “guest speaker” kind of role. I had told the board that I would continue until they found a new pastor, and I stayed true to my word. As I said earlier, the whole process took about a year. I participated in the interviews for the pastoral candidates, and we finally came up with one we wanted the congregation to vote on. When we voted him in, I saw it as my release from the church. I now had the freedom to move on, and I did. My wife and I were asked if we would join the church that had held the revival service, so we did.

We went there for a time, and things were good. We enjoyed it. That church afforded me the opportunity to preach a lot. I preached almost every Sunday night and some Sunday mornings. But the church wasn’t really growing. It was okay, but I still felt lost. I still didn’t know what I was doing or where I was going. But I was here for now, so I tried to help the ministry prosper. Kim and I took the kids who were still at home to this church with us, but they didn’t like it much. It was too small, though they did find some good fellowship and play a good deal of volleyball.

Then the new pastor, Tom, came to Living Waters. I had met him in the interview process, of course, and led worship with him when he came to preach, but he had apparently really grown to like me in that short time and was really looking forward to working with me. I’d had no idea. So when he got to the church and realized I was no longer there, it really bothered him. I didn’t know that at the time, but I did know it was very hard for me to be in that church. Every time I sat in that sanctuary, all I could see was Pastor Dale preaching. And if I preached, which was difficult, I didn’t have him sitting there with an encouraging smile, cheering me on. I found it so surreal to walk into that building and not see him, to be there and not to hear his laugh or his whistling as he walked through the hallways.

But after Tom came, the Lord dealt with me a little bit—and with my wife. We started to feel like we hadn’t left for the right reasons. Many people were still confused as to why we’d left at all. Rumors had started around giving all kinds of wrong explanations. I had said ahead of time that we would stay until a new pastor was voted in, but we started to feel that leaving had been the wrong thing to do.

We decided we ought to go back to the church and work with Tom, and try to help him for a time. He was struggling there. You try coming in as a new pastor after the previous pastor has died. It isn’t easy. It doesn’t matter how good the pastor actually was, if he dies while ministering at a church, he takes on Icon status. He becomes a larger-than-life figure of legendary proportions. And that had happened with Dale.

So Tom came in and tried to make his mark there, but it was difficult. We decided to go back and help him if we could. We stayed for some time, but the church was struggling. It was dwindling, the power struggles still happened, and all kinds of factors contributed to Tom’s difficulties. Those power struggles really irritated me; I can’t agree with trying to usurp God-given authority. Tom did the best he could. Sure, he was no Dale Smith, but nobody could be.

I mean, it was even hard for me to sit there and watch him because I felt my best friend should be there. I sat there in church, fighting all these emotions, these idyllic dreams of what the future could have been, these demons of the past. I had loved going to church when Dale was there. We laughed together, we were partners in ministry, he was like my brother, and everything was fantastic. And now I had to look at some other guy up there where he should be.

So it was a challenge, every time I went to church. I had to fight the tears in the pew. I didn’t want to be there; I didn’t find any joy there. Those were the kind of thoughts in my head. But I realized that I was putting too much stock in Dale as a source of joy—he wasn’t supposed to be that. Those were my struggles while Tom pastored, but I supported him.

Yet I still didn’t know what I was doing in ministry. Even while we went to Living Waters, we didn’t really do anything. We were just there as a support for Tom. I became his sounding board, which I saw as another expression of my desire to minister to ministers. But I didn’t know where God was ultimately directing us to go.

At least Kim and I still had our business. Rocket Coffee was prosperous, even lucrative, at the time. Our shops experienced their heyday in early 2008, and the success went to my head. Honestly, I couldn’t get work off my mind. I started micro-managing. Even in church, I’d be thinking and worrying about how our shops were doing. As soon as church ended, I’d get on the phone. I’d be on the phone with one shop or the other five times a day if I wasn’t there in person. I wanted to be the biggest thing in Kitsap County. It was all about making money and getting bigger; that had become my focus. So God had to intervene.

Sometimes God can intervene with just a feeling, as when I felt I needed to go to the living room and pray when He wanted me to leave Declare the Word Fellowship. Sometimes, though, God has to intervene by teaching us hard lessons. Sometimes He has to take away what He has given if we start holding onto it too tightly. So He brought Kim and me to the decision to close on Sundays. We felt the Lord really wanted us to close on Sundays, not because it was a sin to be open, but because He wanted us to make a statement—to make it clear that we were committed to honoring Him in every aspect of our lives. I think He also wanted me to realize that He is the one who provides, no matter what the circumstances.

The day after that decision, the landlord at our Newberry Hill location doubled our rent. Soon after that, the economy tanked. We lost almost 50 percent of our business, practically overnight. It was insane. So all of a sudden, on top of all my struggles in ministry, I had to fight off the IRS in the business world because I couldn’t afford to pay them. Our businesses had been lucrative. They were doing very well, and suddenly, the profit dried up. I felt I had no choice but to liquidate one of the locations. Newberry Hill was the obvious choice, and we took a loss on it, just to scrape by. We kept the Kitsap Way shop, trying to run it with full staff, but that didn’t work. Soon, we had to cut hours, and I took on more shifts. That didn’t work, either. Ultimately, I had to lay off all my employees except for one.

Then one day, when Kim and I were working in the coffee shop together, Scott Fontenot came by to see me. The last time I had seen Scott, we had been in the hospital with Dale in the ICU, and all our focus had been on Dale. I had talked to him on the phone a time or two since, but we hadn’t really connected. Partly, I had been a little afraid to get close to him. I was afraid of what he thought of me. We had ministered together before—back when I was Children’s pastor at Neighborhood, he was the head of StreetLight Ministries in Bremerton, and he had asked me to be the VP. We had worked together there; we had sung together; we had a lot of history.

Scott had come to Hillcrest Assembly when I was in my early twenties. The first time I saw him, he had long hair and a beard. He was an ex-punk rocker and an ex-drug addict with a young wife and young kids. He became one of my best friends during that period of my life.

He was the Presbyter of the Olympic Section now, in addition to the pastor of Hillcrest Assembly, and I still carried some hesitations when seeing again people who had known me before my fall. Even now, I carry those hesitations. Like I’ve said before, Christ cleanses us from sin, but we still have to deal with the consequences.

So Scott showed up at my coffee stand and asked if he could talk to me. Scott had been through a lot recently: he’d undergone brain surgery and had a stroke during the course of it. He had been dealing with a lot of physical issues while trying to pastor the church. He told us about all the things he had been going through, and as he talked, he became very emotional. I looked over at my wife—she has such a big heart—and I could just tell her heart was breaking for this man. Finally, Scott got around to asking me if he could meet with me in private for a few minutes to talk to me about something else.

I agreed and led him over to the adjacent building, where our office was, and we sat down. He explained to me how they had begun this ministry at the church called Celebrate Recovery. Celebrate Recovery is a national ministry started by Saddleback Church, with pastors John Baker and Rick Warren. Scott told me that they’d had a young lady leading that ministry at Hillcrest. It had been going well for a time, but it had dissipated and disbanded. The lady who had led it ended up relapsing, so the program had fallen apart and the attendees had started going to other churches. But Scott had a heart for those folks. After all, he’d come out of addiction, too. And Hillcrest has always been a part of ministry like that—reaching out to people with real, tangible problems.

Scott said to me, “I really want to have a pastor to lead this ministry, someone who really has a heart for that. Because of what you and Kim have been through, you know bondages—you know life-controlling issues.”

It was true, of course. I’ve already written about our adultery and my porn addiction. In addition to that, my wife had been a teenage alcoholic. We had all of these life-controlling issues in our past, and God had brought us through them. And now, here we could revel in a new victory, as Christ once again redeemed our past for His glory. He had caused us to prosper in business, then allowed our business to slump in order to bring our focus back to Him. And we really did focus: my hunger, my drive, my desire was all for ministering to people again. And He opened the door to fulfill that desire by bringing Pastor Scott to us.

The Lord had changed my heart all around. My wife had always possessed a heart for the broken, the homeless, and the hurting. I had thought I did too—but from afar. But God had now changed my perspective and changed my heart, mostly in subtle ways. For example, one day I was driving along Kitsap Way in Bremerton, and I saw a man standing on the side of the road, holding a sign. When I saw him, I thought, Man, I don’t have any money to give him. But then I thought, But there is something I could do. So I turned around, drove back down the road to my coffee shop, and got him a mocha.

When I got to the area where he stood, I pulled to the side and started walking across the street to him. As I walked toward him, he looked at me and kept saying, “You’re gonna be blessed! You’re gonna be blessed!”

It was as if he knew what the Lord was doing in me. I got over to him, and he was all smiles. We started talking, and he gave me his name. Now I had a name.

I see homeless people all the time, but I don’t have names. Sometimes it seems like if we don’t know a person’s name, that person doesn’t exist. Without a name, there is no connection. Now I had a name.

And once I had a name, it changed my perspective. Once I knew his name, I started seeing him as a person, not as what we might call “a bum.” I saw him in a completely different light.

As we ended our conversation, he reached out and said, “Can I pray for you?”

I thought, Wow, I came to bless this guy, and here he’s blessing me.

I don’t think that situation was intended simply for me to bless him. I think it was intended for me to learn something by receiving a greater blessing—and a blessing from someone I didn’t expect to receive it from!

He grabbed me by the hand, and he began to pray. And I mean earnest, heartfelt prayer, not “Now I lay me down to sleep” stuff! I walked away from that encounter with a blessing and a name—the name of someone I’d seen standing on the side of the road. As I look back, I can see how that encounter, that moment, changed my life.

In another case, we had one gentleman who would often come by one of the coffee stands. He wasn’t truly homeless; he did have a place to stay most of the time. But he was handicapped and sort of down-and-out. Whenever he came by, I would simply give him a free drip coffee. But one day when he showed up, the Lord laid on my heart: “Ask him his story.” So I did, and we started talking. And I started to see this guy as a real person.

God maneuvered me into these situations more and more, and it changed me. He changed me. I started looking at people—especially the broken people—differently, taking an interest in their stories, in who they were, what their lives were about. I didn’t know He was preparing me for something. But He kept bringing me back to what he had told me before I resigned from Declare the Word: “I did not take the call of God from your life, but your ministry will not resemble what it was before.”

So now, here was Scott Fontenot, talking to me about Celebrate Recovery. He said, “I want to know if you and your wife would consider coming on staff at Hillcrest so you can pastor Celebrate Recovery.”

I found it ironic. I’d done a good bit of growing up at Hillcrest, but I no longer had credentials with the Assemblies of God. Yet I was being asked by the Presbyter of the Olympic Section to come on staff at his church. It just blew me away.

I thought, You’ve got to be kidding me!

We walked back into the coffee shop and talked with my wife about it, and then Scott left to let us consider the offer. When he left, Kim and I looked at each other, and we both felt peace. We intended to pray about it, of course, but it was almost as if we knew right then what God was saying for us to do.

So I had a couple of meetings with Scott about the possibility. He asked me to attend his church a couple of times, so we did. But all of that seemed like a formality; we knew we would accept, and we did. Scott eased us in. We began attending, and he started announcing changes that were coming. And then he introduced Kim and me as the new pastors of Celebrate Recovery.

We decided we would start with an eight-week series called “Life’s Healing Choices.” Pastor Scott would preach a sermon series on that topic, and on Wednesday nights, we would show a video of Rick Warren’s teaching on the topic and have discussion groups afterward. This series would allow us to segue into the Celebrate Recovery ministry.

When most churches start Celebrate Recovery, the leaders go down to Saddleback or find another way to participate in some training for the program. Scott handed me manuals, and that was about the extent of our training.

And I thought, Wow, Lord, this is way different than what I’m used to. I’ve got no problem preaching a sermon, and I can head a ministry, but I’m not really used to trying to figure things out on my own.

At the same time, we also launched a Saturday night service as a type of bridge, thinking that maybe it would be a more comfortable atmosphere for those attending Celebrate Recovery, in order to bring them into the church body. Then, in the course of the series, Scott decided he wanted me to preach part of the sermon series, instead of simply leading the Wednesday night groups.

During the first Sunday service that I was supposed to preach, I could not keep my eyes dry. As I looked around the church, I thought, God, this is just unreal. Nine years after my fall, I’m on staff at an AG church that I grew up in—and I’m preaching! In the Presbyter’s church! It doesn’t get any weirder than this.

Even when I was an evangelist, I never expected to be asked to preach at Hillcrest Assembly. When I was in good standing with the AG, I never expected to come to my hometown and preach at Hillcrest Assembly. But here I was, sitting in Hillcrest Assembly, about to preach. I couldn’t help looking around in awe, fighting the tears, so humbled at the greatness of God. Lord, You are so good. And I don’t deserve this. I felt so humbled to be allowed to preach anywhere, but God had brought me full restoration.

I preached the sermon that day, and God moved. It was an awesome experience. Then we started the Celebrate Recovery group with the same “Life’s Healing Choices” theme on Wednesday night. The place was filled! People really responded, and even I began learning things about myself. I’ve said this many times to the group: the longer I’m in Celebrate Recovery, the more I discover how messed up I really am. And it is true for all of us. The longer we’re there, the more we learn, the more we realize our shortcomings. We discover the hurts, habits, and hang-ups we’ve carried all our lives, and we learn how to deal with them. Everyone has those issues. Some people ignore them, and some people put them in a book for the whole world to see.

I got to work with people who were incredibly broken down—a lot of their problems are self-inflicted, true, but a lot aren’t. I mean, I’ve heard some testimonies that sound like they’re straight out of horror novels. Others sound like cop shows. I’ve met people who have been meth addicts, coke dealers, and alcoholics; people with eating disorders and sexual addictions; people who are hurting and desperate for Christ’s love. I’ve seen all of these people together in one building, and on fire for God. He really does do amazing work in our lives.

For example, I started a men’s Bible study soon after coming to Hillcrest. I was talking to the guys there, telling a fictitious story to make a point. I started to use one of the elderly gentlemen in our group as the subject of the story, pretending he was an alcoholic (he wasn’t, and we all knew that). Another man, Dennis, who has now become a really good friend of mine, spoke up and said, “Or you could just use me.”

“What?” I said.

He started sharing about the many issues he’d dealt with in the past, and I said excitedly, “Really?” He busted out laughing. I sounded like I was overjoyed that he’d been an alcoholic, a drug addict, and all sorts of other things. It wasn’t that I was happy for his struggles, but I thought, I can really use this guy.

He gave his testimony, and it was powerful. He had never given it publicly before, but it was so articulate and so real that it ministered fantastically to every man in the room. His story made it seem like he was a professional speaker, though he never had been. Public speaking, he said, wasn’t his thing. But we were all amazed as he spoke. I certainly—and I’m sure most of us—would never have guessed any of that stuff had been in his past; he’s a transformed person. In fact, he told me that since he gave his testimony that night, his life has been transformed even more, and I’ve noticed it. You can see the brightness in him because he has shared his life with people who are broken and hurting.

That is what has been so good about this program for Kim and me. Not only do we get to minister to others, but we also do a lot of self-examination. We discover things about ourselves—anger, bitterness, resentment—that we thought we’d let go years ago. We hadn’t really let it go; we had just buried it.

But there are heartbreaks in this ministry as well. I have seen people on the brink of success cave in and fall away. Those are the hard times. You see the enemy still has a grip on a person’s life, and maybe you won’t see that person again. Those are the times that are extremely painful. When I first took this ministry on, Pastor Scott warned me that it was going to happen and that I couldn’t blame myself. Sometimes, it’s hard not to. What could I have done differently? What could I have done better to keep that person straight? But all we can do is be there.

This whole journey for me has been about self-discovery, about finding who I am in Christ. Am I Ken Walls the Adulterer? No. I’m Ken Walls, a child of God who was broken and is restored. That’s who I am.

I preach with a lot of transparency now, in ways I never would have thought I could before. I used to think I had to put on a certain image when I got behind the pulpit. That’s out the window now. I thought I had to play the game, had to perform. I don’t have to do that. I just have to be real, be who I am. I share stories in front of the church that I never would have before. I’m vulnerable up there, and I’m vulnerable face-to-face—I am who I am.

I no longer believe I have “arrived” anymore, as I did earlier in ministry. I believe I’m on a journey. And I have a long, long way to go. “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace to me was not without effect” (1 Corinthians 15:10 NIV). Every time I step behind that pulpit to preach, or step up behind a music stand, or stand to teach in a Celebrate Recovery meeting, it’s a new experience for me. I no longer feel worthy to be there; I feel honored.

God keeps me humble by giving me those opportunities to minister. I know where I would be without His grace: I would be dead. I was on a mission to destroy myself, and I almost completed it. But God’s grace held me back. He loves me, and I know that. I know that when I die, I will be with Him in Paradise. I know that the things I did in the past are forgiven—they are erased. I am not marked as an adulterer to the Lord; I am His child.

It has taken me a long time to understand this, but I think I finally get it: when Jesus looks at us, He doesn’t look at our sin. He looks past it, at who we can become, because He covered our sin on the cross. That doesn’t mean that He ignores our sin. Sin certainly brings consequences; I’ve seen that firsthand. A big consequence is that we can’t effectively serve God while we’re in sin. We aren’t open to Him when we’ve turned from Him, so we can’t be as effective in what He calls us to do. He can still use us in spite of ourselves, but the sin keeps us from the completion, the fruition, and the gifts that God has for us. God may still bless others through us, but we will not be blessed by it.

But His love never wanes! Even in the midst of our sin, He’s right there, prodding us through His Spirit to bring us back to Him. The Bible tells us that no one can pluck us from His hand. It’s so true. No one ever can take us out of His hand; we can only jump. So often we jump from His hand, and we run away. But He’s always there to take us back, to accept us, and to cherish us. And I know that. I know the far-reaching mercy of the hand of God. I tell people, “You know, we talk about being plucked from the miry clay. Well, I was pulled from beneath the miry clay.”

Jim Cymbala of The Brooklyn Tabernacle wrote a book called Fresh Faith, and I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently, even preaching about it. We need a fresh faith. I can’t live on yesterday’s faith—when I was nine years old and got saved. I can’t live on tomorrow’s faith—when only the Lord knows what will happen tomorrow. I need a fresh faith for today.

And I need a faith that believes in the impossible. I am a product of the impossible. I’m sure there were people who claimed—maybe some still do—that I could never be used by God again. Perhaps there are people who deny that God is using me right now, where I can see Him working. It may be that some people believe I could be saved, my spirit restored, but that I would never be able to minister again. They might reject the idea that I could ever be used by God again. I probably would have rejected it myself back in my youth, thinking there’d be no way I could ever find myself where I do find myself today.

And I would have been right: because I believed in doing things in my own power, I couldn’t have imagined the extent of God’s restorative power. There is no possible way I could have come back from where I was in my own power. “But by the grace of God, I am what I am.”

He brought me back to Himself, and He’s using me and my hurts to reach those who are hurting now. At the same time, though, He’s using them to teach me, to help me see the world differently. I can’t see people the same way I used to. I can’t see a homeless person as “just a bum.” I now get the opportunity to minister to those who have no home, the opportunity to interact with them. And it’s still not my comfort zone. I’ll be honest; I’m often uncomfortable. I don’t always know how to relate. My wife, on the other hand—it’s amazing how she has no trouble interacting with anyone. She has no fear when it comes to relating to any person. I feel like a child in that area. But I’m learning.

There are so many days when I feel so inadequate. “God, I can’t do this. These people could chew me up and spit me out.” The people I work with have experiences so different from my own. I don’t know about addictions to alcohol or addictions to drugs.

But I do know about addictions. And God reminds me that addictions are addictions. I can relate; I do understand some of what they’re dealing with.

But there are still times when I say, “God, I’m just not cut out for this job.” That’s the Old Man coming out. It’s the old insecurity and the fear of failure rearing their heads again. So I require a fresh faith every day because those things don’t go away on their own.

I also require a hungry faith, a faith that wants more. A hungry faith is like Pac-Man. He keeps running, questing for more, chomping down every bit he can get to, digesting as much as he can. Rucka-rucka-rucka-rucka-rucka, all through life. That’s the kind of faith that we need! “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6 NKJV). Jesus said it all there.

The enemy still tries to attack; he goes for our weakest points. His lies and deceptions try to corner us just like those ghosts in Pac-Man, and, like them, he’s always using the same tactics. All of those discouragements, insecurities, and impure thoughts come from his same old lies that we’ll never be enough, that God would never want us.

That’s why we have to keep our eyes on the cross. The Bible tells us that when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Lord will raise up a standard against him (Isaiah 59:19 KJV). And the Lord has shown me what that standard is: the cross of Jesus Christ. In order to escape the flood of the enemy, we have to run to that cross on the hill—it’s our higher ground.

That is the most important truth I’ve discovered on this long, painful journey: all my reliance must be on Jesus. I can’t do anything by myself. I can’t run my business. I can’t pastor a church. I can’t utter any words from my mouth unless Jesus is there. If He is not in it, it is worthless.

I didn’t get that when I was younger. I thought that I was something special, that God was lucky to have me, and it affected my ministry. Christ has said that His Word will not return void, so He was still able to use me for the benefit of others. But now when I speak, I know He’s in it because He changes me as well. So I don’t want to be the old Ken Walls ever. I want to be the new creature that God has created. I can’t look back on the past and say, “What if?” I have to press on, focused on the cross.

It’s like I share with my Celebrate Recovery group: “The only reason we look to the past is to celebrate how far we’ve come. We don’t look to the past to dwell on it in misery, saying, ‘Look what I did.’ When we look back, we can only say, ‘Look where I am now.’”

When you climb up a mountain, you look down to see where you’ve come from, and you admire how far you’ve come. But if you keep looking that way, you’re going to fall. You have to look up; you have to look where you’re going. Every step is important, and you have to watch where you put your feet each time. You have to stay focused—knowing exactly where you are, where each foot is placed, where each hand is holding—so that you don’t slip.

Appendix:

CLIMBING AGAIN

By Kenneth R. Walls

IN THIS SPIRITUAL JOURNEY you and I face as believers, if indeed you are a believer of the Lord Jesus Christ, there are mountaintop highs and valley lows. We long for those high points in our walk with God as we trudge through the marshy valleys. If you are like me, you get so tired of looking up, because it feels like that is all you ever do. If only you could grab a hold of a jagged rock and pull yourself up so you could change the position of your neck! It would be nice to look down on something, anything, for a change.

So the higher you move up the mountain, the more you find yourself looking around at all the sights and sounds, your eyes drawn down toward where you came from, admiring all the accomplishments you made along the way. You become distracted and forget to look up. Then suddenly, you lose your step and begin to slip, slide, and tumble back down the mountain, all because you took your eyes off the goal.

The Apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 3:12–14,

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (NKJV)

We are so easily distracted. We lose our focus on the goal ahead, often with disastrous results. The Apostle Peter experienced what could have been fatal results after losing focus. In Matthew 14, Jesus was walking to His disciples on the water. Peter, after realizing it was Jesus, wanted to join Him on the sea. Jesus told Peter to come. All was well while Peter’s eyes were on the Master, but as soon as he became distracted by the elements around him, he lost his focus on Jesus and began to sink. Had it not been for the loving, merciful hand of the Master, the end result could have been death.

In my previous book, Falling off the Mountain, which was published in the fall of 2005, I wrote about my own disastrous fall from the spiritual mountain peak due to a moral failure. But through the grace and mercy of the Lord, I was restored, and Christ has taught me how to climb again.

Since the book’s publication, I have been asked several times if I would write a companion book detailing, through what the Lord has shown me, how to begin the climb back up the mountain. What you hold in your hands is that book.

The journey to renewal is painful at best, as we are faced with the reality of our own human frailty. We feel lost, dirty, empty, and alone, lying facedown in a pool of guilt from the sin we have drenched ourselves with. We slowly climb to our feet and open our eyes to a world of darkness. Confused, we grope around, trying desperately to find something or someone familiar, still not realizing what led us to this place.

When you are at the bottom of the mountain, I know firsthand how hopeless and alone you feel. The worst part is that you feel separated from God. Let me assure you, if you are in this situation, He didn’t walk away. You did.

Jesus said in John 10:27–28, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand” (NKJV). All believers love the truth of this passage and agree that no one can snatch us out of the hand of the Lord, but oftentimes we become so distracted with our own lusts and desires that we jump. And we fall hard.

With that fact in mind, let me take this time to remind you that even though you jumped, His hand is still near to pick you back up. All Christ asks is that you turn your back on the sin in your life and come back to Him.

God spoke through the prophet Jeremiah, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11 NKJV). As you prepare to read the remainder of this book, grab hold of that Scripture and let God make it real to you.

Perhaps you have perceived God’s thoughts toward you as full of anger up to this point. You think He has washed His hands of you. You’re a cast-off, finished.

“What good am I to the Lord anymore?” you say.

You are precious to Him, friend.

The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 8:31–39,

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: ‘For Your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.’ Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (NKJV)

It is imperative that you understand, before you turn another page, that the Lord is right here with you, even as you read this, guiding you every step of the way upward—toward a greater victory in Him. You may feel alone, but you’re not alone.

In the following chapters, we will make the journey one step at a time back up the mountain, this time not looking back. The Psalmist cried out in Psalm 17:5, “Uphold my steps in your paths, that my footsteps may not slip.” And Psalm 18:36 says, “You enlarged my path under me, so my feet did not slip” (NKJV).

The journey isn’t easy, but make this your cry: “Lord, do not let my foot slip!” With God you will make it, stronger than ever. May God bless you as you read this book. Remember God’s words through the prophet Isaiah: “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand” (41:10 NKJV).

Step 1: No Finger-Pointing

Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;

You shall cry, and He will say, “Here I am.”

If you take away the yoke from your midst,

The pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness...

—Isaiah 58:9 NKJV

Whenever we are faced with a difficult situation in our lives, especially when it has become known by our peers, it is easy to fall into the trap of finger-pointing. I don’t mean to sound clichéd, but misery loves company. If we can take some of the heat off of ourselves or try to justify our actions, all the better, right? Wrong!

Repentance is not accompanied by excuses. Repentance stands alone. Even if your sin involved others, let me repeat: repentance stands alone.

The first step to truly coming to that place of repentance—the first step back up the mountain—is to be able to confess before the Lord: I have sinned. No justification, no excuses. I have sinned.

When the Lord first called me to write Falling off the Mountain, He let me know within my spirit, sternly, that I was not to allow any justification or finger-pointing on any page of that book.

I have had individuals comment that they felt I was too hard on myself; I should not have taken all the blame. But there was no one else to blame. Oh, I could have tried to come up with my own lame reasoning, but that doesn’t remove the guilt of my sin. Only Jesus can do that. There is never any excuse for sinning.

I was asked, quite some time after I had repented and begun my journey back up the mountain, if I would talk to a minister in my local area who had been involved in an inappropriate situation. My first question to the men who approached me was, “Has he admitted that he has sinned?”

They answered, “No, he has not.”

I had to tell them that if he was not willing to admit that he had sinned, there wasn’t anything anyone could say or do to help him in this sad situation.

First John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (NKJV, emphasis mine). Confession begins the cleansing process. If you are in sin, you must accept that no other step toward spiritual growth can occur until you sincerely confess to the Lord and accept the responsibility of your spiritual failure.

When we truly, humbly, confess our sins, the towering protective walls of pride we have built around ourselves begin to crumble. Fair warning: when they fall, they let in the darkness of guilt, and brokenness soon takes the place of the pride. Brokenness is painful, yet it releases healing to the soul. King David experienced this brokenness following his adulterous sin with Bathsheba, which led to murder.

We see David’s expressive prayer of repentance to the Lord in Psalm 51:1–17.

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your lovingkindness; according to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight—that You may be found just when You speak, and blameless when You judge.

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom.

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me hear joy and gladness, that the bones You have broken may rejoice. Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and uphold me by Your generous Spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted to You.

Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise. For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a contrite heart—these, O God, You will not despise. (NKJV, emphasis mine)

There is one thing missing in this Psalm: during this transparent prayer, not once did King David point the finger at any other person involved in the sin. Not once did he try to excuse his actions. He knew in his heart that he had sinned. He blew it!

The king, revered and feared by many as the great king of Israel, was now reduced to a blubbering heap, lying prostrate on the chamber floor, faced with the reality of his human frailty as he cried out to the infinite God Almighty for mercy and grace. David was now in the position where God could begin the restoration process, because the king now had a broken spirit and contrite heart.

The word contrite means: sorry, remorseful, repentant, regretful, apologetic, penitent, ashamed. David was truly remorseful at what he had done, and very ashamed. Perhaps he was even shocked at the magnitude of the sin and crime he had committed.

I would venture to say that even before his encounter with Nathan, after the dust had settled from the murder of Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, that David had begun to feel some remorse. Remorse alone, however, is not repentance.

Something had to happen to get David’s attention. His sin had to be exposed. For some, the simple realization that they have displeased the Lord will drive them to their knees in repentance. For others, they have hidden for so long behind a deceptive mask that it takes exposing their sin to bring them to that humble state. David was the latter; for him it took a prophet of God.

Second Samuel 12:1–7a tells the story:

Then the Lord sent Nathan to David. And he came to him, and said to him: “There were two men in one city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had exceedingly many flocks and herds. But the poor man had nothing, except one little ewe lamb which he had bought and nourished; and it grew up together with him and with his children. It ate of his own food and drank from his own cup and lay in his bosom; and it was like a daughter to him. And a traveler came to the rich man, who refused to take from his own flock and from his own herd to prepare one for the wayfaring man who had come to him; but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.”

So David’s anger was greatly aroused against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this shall surely die! And he shall restore fourfold for the lamb, because he did this thing and because he had no pity.”

Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man!” (NKJV)

In Nathan’s parable, Bathsheba was the ewe lamb. David had been exposed. As painful and humiliating as it must have been for David, he must have experienced a sense of relief. No more masquerade: he now had to deal with his sin, and God could deal with David.

David was now center stage, spiritually disrobed—standing alone, fully exposed. There was no one around he could point a finger at who might possibly shield him from taking the total blame. And thus, the reality of the agonizing prayer of Psalm 51: “Have mercy on me, O God… Wash me thoroughly from my sin...” (emphasis mine). The king now accepted full responsibility for his actions.

It never matters who else is involved. What did you do? Admit it. Don’t justify the reasoning behind your action. “Oh, it wasn’t that big a deal.” “Everyone is just blowing it all out of proportion.” “I’m just misunderstood.” These are classic excuses that only keep us bound in the bog we fell into. Don’t make this tragic mistake.

Remember: the first step in renewing your relationship with the Lord and beginning the trek back up the mountain, is to take full responsibility for your sin, which includes confession. This acceptance and confession starts the process and opens the dialogue we so desperately need and desire with the Lord. Psalm 66:18 says, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear” (NKJV).

Step 2: Total Submission

Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil

and he will flee from you.

—James 4:7 NKJV

Why do you and I, as believers in Christ, fall into sin in the first place? Is it because we are not properly educated in the Word of God? I don’t believe this is the case, for many of us who have taken the leap off of the cliff, performing a triple somersault into a murky pool of sin, were reared from birth in Christianity. Very rarely can we play the Ignorance card and say we didn’t know. We knew what we were doing.

There are two main reasons we fall into sin. The first reason: we do not follow James 4:7. Much of the time when we quote this verse, it’s rattled off quickly from our lips. “Resist-the-devil-and-he-will-flee.”

It sounds great, doesn’t it? But in our own strength, we can’t resist. We do not, in our finite existence, have the ability to take on the devil. Satan doesn’t recognize you and me as anything threatening by our own merit. The devil doesn’t cower in a corner because the mighty Ken Walls has walked into the room.

In Acts chapter 19, there were seven sons of a Jewish chief priest named Sceva who were trying to exorcise demons out of someone by the Jesus whom “Paul preaches about.” The demon in the individual responded in verse 15, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you?” (NKJV) If you know the rest of the story, you’ll remember that it ended disastrously for those seven boys: they were pummeled, stripped naked, and sent running.

Why did it happen as Acts records? Didn’t they use Jesus’ name? Yes, but they used the phrase “Paul’s Jesus.” They had no relationship with the Lord. And it isn’t that the demons recognized Paul’s might—they recognized Jesus in Paul.

So often, we leave out the key ingredient of James 4:7, the ingredient that enables us to resist the devil: “therefore submit to God.” We fall into sin and are unable to resist Satan’s influences because we simply do not submit to God. The sons of Sceva could not see victory in casting out the demons because they did not submit to the One who has the ultimate authority over demons and all created things.

All sin begins and ends with submission. We yield to the flesh by submitting to it. Remember, temptation is not the sin. You are not in sin because you were enticed by the enemy. You have no say in whether you will be tempted, but you do have the choice of what you do with the temptation when it comes. Do you turn to the sin and follow through with what your flesh wants to do, or do you follow the Scripture, “bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5b NKJV)? It is hard to conquer sin without proper submission.

Submission is the foundation of our faith. Upon our spiritual conversion, we made a decision in our heart to submit to Christ—the way He loved, the way He lived, the way He served. Paul wrote to the Philippians, “For to me, to live is Christ” (Philippians 1:21a NKJV). To live is Christ! Each morning when we wake up, opening our eyes, breathing in and exhaling, placing one foot and then the other upon the cold floor should remind us that “this is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24 NKJV). Every thought, every action should be thought or done as unto the Lord because life is all about Him, not about us.

This brings us to the second reason we fall into sin. Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (NKJV). All sin has its roots in pride. Satan rebelled against God and was cast out of heaven because of pride. Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command because of pride. We turned our back on Christ, sinning because of pride.

We yielded to sin because it was what our flesh desired. “This is what I want to do. It is about me.” Then, we fell hard and wondered how we got there. We fell because our wants took center stage.

Sometimes you and I walk around like little Nebuchadnezzars, wanting all the credit for our so-called success. In Daniel 4:28–30, King Nebuchadnezzar walked about the palace, pompously declaring how great a Babylon he had built by his own mighty hand and for the honor of his majesty. In verses 31 through 33, the hammer fell:

While the word was still in the king’s mouth, a voice fell from heaven: “King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: the kingdom has departed from you! And they shall drive you from men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. They shall make you eat grass like oxen; and seven times shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever he chooses.”

That very hour the word was fulfilled concerning Nebuchadnezzar; he was driven from men and ate grass like oxen; his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair had grown like eagles’ feathers and his nails like birds’ claws. (NKJV)

It took seven years, but God got Nebuchadnezzar’s attention. The king woke up to the fact that he was but a speck in comparison to the awesome nature of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

We may not strut around as obvious in our arrogance as Nebuchadnezzar did, but it is there, deep inside, destroying what God desires in us. And the Lord cannot allow us to continue in the direction we are moving the ship. In order to get your attention (and mine), God sometimes has to sink the boat and leave us stranded on the jagged reef, seemingly in the middle of a spiritual ocean. We will continually be knocked around by the crashing waves, until we wake up to who He is in His sovereignty and allow Jesus to repair and drive the boat.

God will not share His glory with anyone. The Lord made it perfectly clear in Deuteronomy 4:24 when He said, “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.”

When we walk in arrogance and pride, Jesus cannot effectively use us in the plan He created for us, who are designed for His good work. It is grieving to the Lord, and He must, at that point, remove His hand of blessing and allow the consequences of elevating ourselves to occur, in order that we might see, as Nebuchadnezzar finally did.

We see the king’s response in Daniel 4:34–35.

And at the end of the time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my understanding returned to me; and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him who lives forever: for His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom is from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; He does according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain His hand or say to Him, “What have You done?” (NKJV)

What a complete turnaround for this king! He went from believing he had risen above mere humanity to realizing that he is reputed, along with the rest of us, as nothing.

It is common, as far as our flesh is concerned, to desire recognition—to receive accolades for our many accomplishments. In our mind we know we should do everything as unto the Lord, but we become so obsessed at how we are performing, that we lose sight of the reason we began doing it in the first place.

There was a time in my ministry when I was so caught up on the demonstrative, high-energy services that if I didn’t see God’s power evidenced each time I delivered a sermon, I felt I had missed the mark, and I grew discouraged. The truth was, I had missed it. Not because I wasn’t shouting and strutting across the platform, but because I wasn’t submitting to the Lord. My focus had turned from “What does Christ want to do through this message” to “How can I perform it to stir things up and raise the spiritual decibel level.” What I had forgotten was, Christ does not need my help to spiritually move, nor does He need to move according to my agenda. We must remember it is all about Christ. It is not about us. We have been given an awesome privilege to serve Christ.

Christ didn’t choose us because we’re talented; He gave us the talents because He chose us. And if we think we, on our talent alone, can move the ministry bus God has called us onto, we are sorely mistaken. It is like trying to run an automobile down the road on battery power without the alternator kicking in. Pretty soon the battery is going to run down, and we’re going to find ourselves stranded on the side of the road.

We need to take our eyes off of ourselves and raise them to the One who created us. Psalm 25:15 says, “My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for He shall pluck my feet out of the net” (NKJV). It is all about changing our focus.

Embrace the words of Psalm 121:

I will lift up my eyes to the hills—

from whence comes my help?

My help comes from the Lord,

who made heaven and earth.

He will not allow your foot to be moved;

He who keeps you will not slumber.

Behold, He who keeps Israel

shall neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper;

the Lord is your shade at your right hand.

The sun shall not strike you by day,

nor the moon by night.

The Lord shall preserve you from all evil;

He shall preserve your soul.

The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in

from this time forth, and even forevermore. (NKJV)

Step 3: Change Your Obsession

Let my mouth be filled with Your praise

and with Your glory all the day.

—Psalm 71:8 NKJV

Ask yourself this question: what drives me? What is the one thing, when I open my eyes in the morning, that moves me to get out of bed and into the day?

Now ask yourself this question: what is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning, and the last thing I think about when I close my eyes to sleep at night?

If we are truthful with ourselves, there is always at least one thing that seems to consume our thinking. To some the motivation is money. “How can I increase my portfolio today?”

To others it might be public perception: “What are others saying about me?”

Some are continually consumed with relationships around them: “Am I liked?”

Then there are those who simply worry.

Unfortunately, as I look back on my life, I can see myself in each of these scenarios at one time or another. What a pathetic existence it was, always worrying about what people thought!

As a pastor I concerned myself with questions like, “Is my method of ministry pleasing to the congregational eye?” As a businessman, “What do my customers and employees think of my business savvy?” I was consumed with being the best. I could never measure up to what I felt I should be.

This mental battle only leads to an implosion. Everything collapses inward. Suddenly, even the simplest tasks now become difficult. You lose your focus because you have so many spokes pointing in different directions and no stable hub to attach them to.

The definition for a hub is elementary: “the central part of a wheel, as that part into which the spokes are inserted.” Look at this next definition: “a center around which other things revolve or from which they radiate.”

What is your hub? Christ wants to be our hub, desires to be our hub, and needs to be our hub. Without Christ as the centerpiece, there is no stability. There is no clear vision and no sure-footed step back up the mountain.

As I mentioned earlier, the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Philippi, “For to me, to live is Christ” (Philippians 1:21a). To live is Christ! Every breath breathed, every step taken, is for Christ. Paul also made this statement to the people of Athens when talking to them about the one true God: “For in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28a NKJV).

I knew when I came back to the Lord, after my tumble down the mountain, that I couldn’t settle for just a partial existence in Christ. It had to be all, obsessive, even to the point of being fanatical.

We as humans, especially as believers, tend to be afraid of the label fanatic. It seems too over-the-top, strange, or unusual. My response would now be, I hope I am defined that way. The definition for fanatical is simply, “excessively enthusiastic about a particular belief, cause, or activity.”

We need to stop being so afraid to be extreme when it comes to the things of Christ. Ask yourself, is He my “all in all”? If He is, you are a fanatic, fully consumed with a love for Jesus. This type of heart keeps you far from the edge of the cliff.

First Peter 2:9 says, “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvellous light…” (NKJV)

This fanaticism cannot be simply a decision of the mind: “I think, therefore I am.” You need to immerse yourself in Christ! Take the plunge. It is a lot softer diving into His pristine body of living water than falling off of a cliff onto the jagged rocks below. We need to lift up our hands over our head, close our eyes, and dive into the river of God.

I love how Ezekiel describes it in Ezekiel 47. In the vision, an angel appeared to Ezekiel, taking him to the door of the temple of God. Ezekiel saw water coming from under the threshold, flowing toward the east. The angel took him around the outside to the outer gateway that faces east, and there was water running out on the right side.

Verses 3 through 9 read like this:

And when the man went out to the east with the line in his hand, he measured one thousand cubits, and he brought me through the waters; the water came up to my ankles. Again he measured one thousand and brought me through the waters; the water came up to my knees. Again he measured one thousand and brought me through; the water came up to my waist. Again he measured one thousand, and it was a river that I could not cross; for the water was too deep, water in which one must swim, a river that could not be crossed.

He said to me, “Son of man, have you seen this?” Then he brought me and returned me to the bank of the river. When I returned, there, along the bank of the river, were very many trees on one side and the other. Then he said to me: “This water flows toward the eastern region, goes down into the valley, and enters the sea. When it reaches the sea, its waters are healed. And it shall be that every living thing that moves, wherever the rivers go, will live. There will be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters go there; for they will be healed, and everything will live wherever the river goes.” (NKJV)

We cannot expect to go anywhere in our walk in the Lord if we simply stand at the river’s edge and peer in, watching the current as it passes us by. It always seems safe observing from what feels like a protective distance: there are no challenges, no expectations, and certainly no failures. Suddenly, you notice in the corner of your eye a small pool of water, surrounded by rocks that are not allowing the current to move it; it is the perfect spot to hide out undisturbed.

But this spot is unchanging, stagnant, and stagnation is where the spiritual decline began in the first place.

If you look around in our churches today, you’ll see an enormous amount of complacency, an enormous amount of stagnation. And coming from many of our pulpits, there is a lack of substance. Plenty of pomp and theatrics are being hurled your way, for sure, but you won’t find enough meat to stick to your spiritual bones.

In recent days, while in prayer, the Holy Spirit has moved me to become a pursuer of God. So often, we sit around, expecting God to move and waiting for those spiritual goosebumps, and when we feel a certain way, we call it a move of God. I have had many of those moments, but as soon as I was out of the atmosphere that produced them, the goosebumps left and everything returned to normal. Where was my experience? It was gone as fast as it had come. Why? Because the experience was external.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I love the external manifestations of the Holy Spirit. But the external without a deep rootedness in Christ is a recipe for disaster. We need more spiritual depth in the Body of Christ, a greater hunger.

Instead of waiting for Christ to move, we need to make our move to get closer to His throne. Pursue Him, grab the hem of His garment in your desire to be as near to Him as possible. We need to have the passion Mary did, sitting at the feet of Jesus, anointing His feet with costly oil, captivated by every word proceeding from His mouth, and unaware of any other movement in the room—just her and Jesus.

As we embrace this passion, we echo the words of the Psalmist in Psalm 42:1–2: “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” (NKJV) This thirsting is a continual striving to appear before the Lord, to remain in His presence and hang on every word Jesus has uttered. And this heart’s desire is to please the Father.

There is a passage of Scripture we believers love to quote because of the promises and hope contained in it. Jeremiah 29:11 says, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” The church eagerly rallies around this passage, and understandably so. It is a wonderful passage of hope and encouragement. The idea that we are on the Lord’s mind is enough to make us say, “Wow!”

But as wonderful as that Scripture is, we tend to ignore the two verses that follow, which are equally as powerful. These two are necessary in order to grab hold of what the Lord truly has for His children. Jeremiah 29:12–13 says, “Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart” (NKJV, emphasis mine).

Let’s take a moment and really discover what is going on here in this letter from the prophet Jeremiah. He writes to the Jewish exiles taken captive to Babylon in 597 BC. Jeremiah prepared the people for a lengthy stay in this land, instructing the people to live normal lives, build houses, marry, and seek the peace or well-being of the city where God had placed them by His providence. They would not be returning to the Promised Land for 70 years, even though false prophets were predicting a short exile. The Lord had called them to wait with patience, much like He has called you and me to wait for our deliverance in the Lord’s return.

So in verses 11 to 13, God reminds the exiles that He is thinking about them. He is looking out for them and working for their good. And if He is thinking about them, they should be thinking about Him. They don’t need to worry about themselves; they simply need to seek Him. We need to change our thinking from me-centered to Christ-centered. We need to ask, “How can I be effective for the Lord? How can I plant seeds and reap a harvest of souls?”

This reminds me of the parable Jesus spoke in Matthew 25:14–30.

For the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country, who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them. And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability; and immediately he went on a journey.

Then he who had received the five talents went and traded with them, and made another five talents. And likewise he who had received two gained two more also. But he who had received one went and dug in the ground, and hid his lord’s money.

After a long time the lord of those servants came and settled accounts with them. So he who had received the five talents came and brought five other talents, saying, “Lord, you delivered to me five talents; look, I have gained five more talents besides them.”

His lord said to him, “Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.”

He also who had received two talents came and said, “Lord, you delivered to me two talents; look, I have gained two more talents besides them.”

His lord said to him, “Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.”

Then he who had received the one talent came and said, “Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed. And I was afraid, and went and hid your talent in the ground. Look, there you have what is yours.”

But his lord answered and said to him, “You wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sown, and gather where I have not scattered seed. So you ought to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I would have received back my own with interest. Therefore take the talent from him, and give it to him who has ten talents. For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (NKJV)

Up till now, selfish pride was the motivator. It drove us to desire what would bring us pleasure. The focus was on us. Now it is time for a paradigm shift, to focus on being about the Father’s business and growing in our personal relationship with Christ—not being unprofitable servants, but profitable ones.

The more we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus and His will, the more we will keep away from the selfish desires of the flesh. Hebrews 12:1–2 says, “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight [bondage], and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking [fixing your eyes] unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (NKJV, emphasis mine).

Remember what Jeremiah 29:12-13 said, “Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” When we become fixated with Christ, loving Him and seeking after Him, we put ourselves in the position to hear Him and know Him more.

Step 4: Pass It On

Then I will teach transgressors Your ways,

and sinners shall be converted to You.

Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,

the God of my salvation,

and my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness.

O Lord, open my lips,

and my mouth shall show forth Your praise.

—Psalm 51:13–15 NKJV

In the movie Pay It Forward, young Trevor McKinney, troubled by his mother’s alcoholism and fears of his abusive but absent father, is caught up by an intriguing assignment from his new Social Studies teacher. His teacher, Mr. Simonet, charges Trevor to think of something to change the world and put it into action. Trevor conjures the notion of paying a favor not back, but forward—repaying good deeds not with payback, but with new good deeds done to three new people.

Trevor’s efforts bring a revolution not only in the lives of himself, his mother, and his physically and emotionally scarred teacher, but in those of an ever-widening circle of people completely unknown to him. While this fictional movie develops a secular concept, its theme mirrors the truth of how you and I should respond to the gift bestowed upon us following our repentance.

King David saw this truth and relished the possibility that God might use him to herald the testimony of the Lord’s redemptive nature. Look at how The Message words the king’s plea: “Give me a job teaching rebels your ways so the lost can find their way home. Commute my death sentence, God, my salvation God, and I’ll sing anthems to your life-giving ways. Unbutton my lips, dear God; I’ll let loose with your praise” (Psalm 51:13–15).

Think about it: if you were to walk down a path, and turning wrong, you stepped off into a deep hole, once you were rescued and recovered, wouldn’t you want to warn others coming down the path about the danger that lies ahead? Wouldn’t you proclaim how you were saved from lasting harm? You would be so amped that you were still on your feet, moving forward, that you couldn’t keep quiet about it.

A short time ago, I was doing something very foolish, something I now regret and have learned from. I was texting while walking. (I wonder if there is a support group for that.) I had just received a text message on my cell phone from one of the pastors at my church. Instead of waiting to respond, I decided to answer her in the process of heading down a flight of stairs. If you knew me well, you would know that for me, to walk and talk at the same time is sometimes a challenge. As you can probably imagine, the result was disastrous. I didn’t even complete my message, and I was airborne, heading for what I thought might be a hospital stay.

As I lay at the bottom of the stairs, I assessed the situation, not moving. In the nearby room, a friend of mine had heard the commotion; he came running. Bending down, he frantically asked if I was alright. Noticing a cheesy grin on my face, he stepped back and in disbelief, said, “Man, are you for real—you’re smiling!”

All I could think to tell him was, I was smiling because I was still conscious. What a relief to know that, after that horrific fall, I was still walking and breathing and living to tell about it!

Such an event, spiritually, if we have truly repented, should catapult us to shout from the rooftop about the goodness and greatness of the Lord; His mercy, His grace is amazing!

Look at The Message translation of Job 33:26–28.

Or, you may fall on your knees and pray—to God’s delight! You’ll see God’s smile and celebrate, finding yourself set right with God. You’ll sing God’s praises to everyone you meet, testifying, ‘I messed up my life—and let me tell you, it wasn’t worth it. But God stepped in and saved me from certain death. I’m alive again! Once more I see the light!

We were knocked down, sidelined for sure, but now! You see, we can’t forget about the “but now!” So often, we focus on the knock-down, which shades our eyes from how God wants to bring victory in our life now.

If a prize fighter focuses on the past round, where he was almost knocked out, his thought of failure will cripple him for the remaining rounds, taking his focus off the prize and setting him up to fail.

This is why Paul declared in Philippians 3:12–14, “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

As I come to the close of this book, I am reminded of a song I have come to know in the past couple years by Phillips, Craig & Dean. The chorus of the song describes in simple words how I feel about and understand grace, now that I am on the upward slope of the mountain. The words of the chorus are these: “Your grace still amazes me. Your love is still a mystery. Each day I fall on my knees. Your grace still amazes me. Your grace still amazes me.”

I still at times reflect upon the past, but only for this purpose: to rejoice on how far I have climbed by the grace of the Lord. The enemy of our soul has been defeated by the power of Christ’s name! I encourage you to press on and only look back occasionally, just to see how far Christ has brought you.

His grace is amazing!

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 - The Fireplace

2 - A Candle Extinguished

3 - A New Candle Lights

4 - Let Your Light Shine

5 - Another Candle

6 - Flickering Flame

7 - At the End of the Tunnel

8 - The Burn Ban

9 - Rekindling

10 - Strange Fire

11 - Sparks Outside the Fireplace

12 - Fresh Logs

13 - A Brilliant Blaze

14 - Other Fires

15 - Pillar of Fire

16 - Pillar of Cloud

17 - The Fireman

18 - Sparks Fly Out

19 - Outside the Fireplace

20 - The House Burns Down

21 - In the Ashes

22 - Up from the Ashes

23 - Building a New Fireplace

24 - Warm Reunions

25 - The Winter of Our Discontent

26 - On Fire for God

Appendix - Climbing Again

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 - The Fireplace

2 - A Candle Extinguished

3 - A New Candle Lights

4 - Let Your Light Shine

5 - Another Candle

6 - Flickering Flame

7 - At the End of the Tunnel

8 - The Burn Ban

9 - Rekindling

10 - Strange Fire

11 - Sparks Outside the Fireplace

12 - Fresh Logs

13 - A Brilliant Blaze

14 - Other Fires

15 - Pillar of Fire

16 - Pillar of Cloud

17 - The Fireman

18 - Sparks Fly Out

19 - Outside the Fireplace

20 - The House Burns Down

21 - In the Ashes

22 - Up from the Ashes

23 - Building a New Fireplace

24 - Warm Reunions

25 - The Winter of Our Discontent

26 - On Fire for God

Appendix - Climbing Again