Probably no one really knows when the idea originated to
establish a Seventh-day Adventist church in McDonald, Tennessee, but
by 1975 a nucleus of members, predominantly from the Ooltewah
congregation, were seriously combing the community and its environs
for a suitable building site. Their convictions had received an
unforeseen impetus by the untimely death of their pastor, William
Draper, who had hardly completed arrangements to conduct
evangelistic meetings in McDonald before he died of a heart attack on
a Sabbath morning in February, 1975.
The Ooltewah church members anticipated that ultimately their
plans would lead to a new congregation in McDonald. Their pastor's
death saddened them but did not stop them. Shocked into the conviction
that life was indeed fragile and that they had no time to delay, they
temporarily postponed plans for evangelistic meetings and proceeded
immediately to their final objective--a church in McDonald.
Other influences were also at work to add emphasis to the
group's dreams. Adventist families were moving into the greater
Collegedale area in large numbers and causing strain on area
churches. The Collegedale congregation had little room for
expansion. The Apison church was already following the example
in Collegedale by holding two services each week, and the nearby
Standifer Gap church was also full, but it was the Ooltewah church
members who took the lead in exploring the feasibility of
organizing another smaller congregation. Their own church had
originated only six years previously in 1969 when they saw the
need to branch out from the 2000-member congregation in Collegedale.
The need in 1975 was even more acute. Ooltewah membership
approximated 400 and the Collegedale list was even longer than in
1975.
Their search for a building site ended when one of their own
members, Allen Hawkins, made a fifteen-acre plot available on McDonald
Road. On October 23, 1976, they met to confirm their intentions in
writing. "Recognizing the need to build up the interest of our Lord in
the McDonald area," their statement read, "we hereby dedicate ourselves
under God, to the establishment of a sanctuary as a place of worship
for the people of that area and to provide a church home for the
overflow from surrounding churches." Fifteen couples signed that
simple document. The names of Bill and Myrtle Hulsey were first on the
list. For them
this experience was not new. They had also been the leading
promoters of the move from Collegedale to Ooltewah.
The fifteen families demonstrated their commitment by meeting
frequently to lay plans and to launch a building project. Meanwhile,
Adventists in Collegedale and the surrounding area were also focusing
on Cohutta, Georgia as another potential location for a congregation.
During the summer of 1977 Desmond Cummings, president of the
Georgia-Cumberland Conference, convened the pastors and head elders
of the local churches to encourage them to support these
projects. Because the Ooltewah congregation had taken the
initiative in
supporting the McDonald Road site, they committed the resources
of their church - - treasurer, church board, and pastoral leadership - -
to serve as the parent organization for the proposed project.
Events moved rapidly in favor of McDonald Road. Many Adventists
noted that new homes were sprouting up along Tallant Road east of
Collegedale and northeast into McDonald, many of them
Adventist-owned. No one had carried out William Draper's plans to
conduct evangelistic meetings in McDonald, but demographic trends in
eastern Hamilton County were a leading influence in shaping the
notion of a community church instead of one born directly out of
evangelism.
The editor of THE SPIRE, the monthly church paper of the
Collegedale church, commented upon these ideas in his November, 1977,
edition. "It is generally admitted that most of the members (of the
Ooltewah church) are commuting members," he wrote. "Some fifty
Adventist families now live in the area east of the Collegedale city
limits, and it is hoped that they can favorably impress their
non-Adventist neighbors with the community church concept."
THE SPIRE intended the article as a promotional item for a
general offering on November 19 in support of plans for the new
church. Results demonstrated that the McDonald plan had aroused
considerable attention. On the designated Sabbath Adventists in the
greater Collegedale area contributed more than $60,000 for the
project. When combined with money already collected, the
McDonald Road Church Committee, chaired by Bill Hulsey, had a treasury
of about $85,000. Regarding these circumstances as a mandate, the
committee went to work immediately to develop a set of blueprints
and financial plans to complete their construction.
In the early spring of 1978 the committee blanketed the
Collegedale area with a letter-sized flyer showing two rough
renderings of the church, its location on a small map, and a
rudimentary floor plan with statistics showing the amount of
floorspace at 11,600 square feet and seating capacity of 370,
including choir and platform benches.
"The estimated cost is about $250,000," Hulsey said in an
accompanying note. "With your continued support it is possible
that our borrowing will not have to exceed $125, 000. " Always an
enthusiastic recruiter and promoter, he also provided a coupon on
which interested persons could commit themselves to donations and
membership in the proposed church. Not satisfied with these
possibilities, he even left a line for one to suggest someone else as a
member for the new church.
The building committee tentatively planned to break ground in
the late spring, 1978, but details and red tape delayed them until
August. The Ooltewah church board, acting as the official
decision-making body for the McDonald Committee, approved Fred Krall
as architect and Perry Coulter as builder. On July 31 Hulsey wrote to
all "interested persons in the McDonald Road Church" that the
committee had $90,000 in cash and commitments and another
$25,000 in donations to be made during construction. His
borrowing estimate had risen to $183,000, resulting in a total
estimated building cost of $298,000. "Hope to see you Sabbath
August 5, 4:00 P. M. in the Ooltewah Church," he told them, for
what he described as the last meeting before construction would
actually begin.
"In the spirit of Caleb and Joshua ... we are well able to possess the
land."
From August through February Coulter supervised the
construction crew. As the months elapsed discussions revolved around
organizational questions. By the end of the year the McDonald
Committee had secured enough membership commitments to convene
meetings of future church officers. The conference committee
appointed Amos Cooper, a local minister who had worked in both the
Collegedale and Ringgold, Georgia churches, to be pastor of the new
congregation.
The Ooltewah church board voted Don Crook, another ordained
minister serving as Bible and Music teacher in Collegedale Academy, as
head elder. Other appointments included Wayne Janzen, chairman
of the Industrial Education Department of Southern Missionary
College, as head deacon, Betty Teter as clerk, Allen Hawkins as
treasurer, and Bill Hulsey to chair the finance committee. Before
Sabbath services actually began a full slate of officers was ready
to assume responsibilities in all divisions of the Sabbath School and
other aspects
of church activities. To assist church members with school-age
children, the group pledged themselves to join the Greater Collegedale
School System and also agreed to participate in operating the Ooltewah
Adventist School.
A. C. Becker, pastor of the Ooltewah church, preached the first
sermon in the McDonald church on February 17, 1979. Cooper also had
a message for his congregation. "On this happy occasion we express
our humble thanks to God for His guidance and blessing in the
provision of this house of worship, " he wrote in the bulletin for
opening day, also quoting a short verse to remind his new members of
the source of their blessings,
And now within Thy temple,
Thy glory let us see,
For all its strength and beauty
Are nothing without Thee.
Five Sabbaths later on March 24, Desmond Cummings visited the
McDonald church to organize the congregation officially. The
membership list totaled 289 transfers from six local and 30 distant
churches. Three joined by baptism. The Collegedale church furnished
142, from Ooltewah came 66, Apison gave up nineteen to McDonald,
six came from Cleveland, five from Standifer Gap, and three from
Ringgold.
Cooper's pastorate ended in August, 1983 when he accepted an
invitation to another church in the Georgia-Cumberland Conference. Two
issues dominated the nearly four-and-a-half years he shepherded
the McDonald church: church finances and membership growth.
The congregation that met for the first time on February 17,
1979 soon learned that the mortgage would play a significant role in
determining the size of their operating budget. During the previous
months as the building was going up, so were construction
expenses. Several additions to the original plans also pushed costs
upward. Among the extras were a storage building, air handling
compartments for the air conditioning system, and dressing rooms for the
baptistry.
When Hulsey issued a cost summary in June, 1979 he disclosed
that total expenses slightly exceeded $379,000 and that the
mortgage loan from the Professional Business Men's Association
totaled $234,000. Construction costs had soared about $130,000
above the estimate of a year-and-a-half earlier and hopes to keep
the mortgage at $125,000 were dashed by an additional $109,000.
Offsetting these sobering facts was a congregation motivated by a
spirit of gratitude and a willingness to work. The simple beauty
of the sanctuary was striking. A deep red carpet, a long row of
chandeliers hanging from the steeply angled ceiling, and indirect
lighting glowing along the entire length of the church combined
to produce a restful and worshipful atmosphere. One of the most
attractive features was a row of Sabbath School classrooms joining
each side of the sanctuary. For the first time in anyone's memory
all members of the senior division in a Collegedale-area church
could discuss their lesson without leaving
the main worship area or listening to a teacher shouting to be heard
above nearby classes.
Generally speaking McDonald Road members found worship
conditions worth paying for, and with little excuse to grumble about
their mortgage, they went to work assiduously to pay it off. Monthly
notes of more than $5000 with a five-year payoff proved to be more than
they could handle, however, and shortly they changed their payment
schedule to ten years with payments reduced to less than $3500.
At times operating expenses were difficult to meet, even
with these changes. With full knowledge of these difficult
financial conditions, J. W. Henson startled the church board in
1982 by appealing to members to donate various amounts up to $1000
to pay off the note without interest penalties. A matching fund
from an anonymous source would handle a prescribed portion of the
payments to allow the church to liquidate its indebtedness
considerably earlier than the original ten years. The amount of time
cut from the payment schedule would depend on how many
participated in this plan and the amount of their
donations. Henson presented his plan with a set of flip chart
diagrams, showing that the church had nothing to lose and everything to
gain.
Known as the "Golden Challenge," the idea caught on sufficiently
well to permit the church to become debt free in May, 1985. Part
of the prompting for early payments came from frequently repeated
discussions in finance committees and board meetings emphasizing that
church leaders would have to neglect many legitimate needs of the
church because of the scarcity of funds.
During the Cooper pastorate membership soon reached 350 and
fluctuated at that point, in effect leveling off. While this
number filled the church, the fact that growth did not continue
troubled some members. It is impossible to measure how sensitive
church members were to the fact that the McDonald Road church was a
community organization without an evangelistic territory or a
pastoral district as Adventist pastors commonly know them, but
those conditions dictated that membership would grow primarily
from gravitation from other Adventist congregations. After the
initial novelty of the new church wore off, membership peaked, at
least for the time being. A few members returned to their first
churches.
Social activities during the Cooper era included
church campouts, Thanksgiving banquets in the recreation hall of
Ooltewah church, and Valentine suppers in the McDonald fellowship
hall. Myrtle Hulsey instituted a tradition by organizing the
church into groups that sponsored potlucks following the Sabbath
services. Members may not have had much money with which to
operate their church but they were obviously happy in their fellowship
with one another and were committed to their church family.
In August, 1983 the Coopers left McDonald Road. George Pangman,
pastor of the Peachtree church in Atlanta, succeeded him almost
immediately. The change was dramatic. Cooper, born and educated in
England, was well known and loved for his deep sermons and his
unavoidable habit of tantalizing and sometimes amusing his listeners
with the king's English. Pangman, also well known and loved for
his appealing sermons, demonstrated his simple tastes as a native of
Michigan when he early on let the congregation know that he wanted
everyone to call him George.
Among the leading events of George's pastorate were the
erection of a parsonage, church beautification, membership growth,
the replacement of the heating and cooling system, and the
evolution of an active Pathfinder program, but overshadowing all of
these matters was the dedication of the church.
By mid-1984 it became obvious that payoff of the mortgage
was possible sometime before school would begin in 1985. After
watching the Golden Challenge income carefully and calculating new
donations, the finance committee targeted May as the dedication
date. In spite of their carefully laid plan it was only a surge of
income during March and April that enabled the dedication committee to
carry out their intentions.
The celebration began on Friday night, May 24, with a
musical vesper program. J. W. Henson, who had introduced the Golden
Challenge plan, was Sabbath School superintendent, and Amos
Cooper returned to preach the sermon. Representatives from
the Georgia-Cumberland Conference were Roy Caughron, ministerial
secretary, and Don Aalborg, executive secretary. The climax
arrived during the Sabbath afternoon service when the finance committee
burned the note. Of the original 292 charter members 112
remained.
Everyone was delighted to see the note go up in smoke, but the
joy of the finance committee members was hard to contain. The
ensuing operating budgets showed that the church was trying hard to
catch up on items that had been overlooked, but the heating and air
conditioning system was too large to be treated as routine expense.
Before the final payment on the mortgage three of the six
compressors had worn out and sat idly on concrete pads by the
church. Deacons held their breath each week, hoping that the
remaining three overworked
units would not stop.
Rising costs of energy complicated the situation. During the
early part of the Cooper pastorate the church installed a computerized
energy control system that cost $5000, but even this precaution
against expensive kilowatt hours did not prevent monthly power bills
from reaching $800 and occasionally $900 in the winter. After
investigating possible remedial measures, the finance committee
recommended a gas system.
The first gas unit went into operation in the fall of 1986.
More than a year later the second unit was installed. Again
members who had loyally supported the Golden Challenge reached
into their pockets to finance the new heaters. Their hopes of
lowering energy costs were well rewarded. By April, 1989 the
financial statement indicated that power and gas costs combined were
approximately $1900 under the same expenses for the previous year.
As the church approached its dedication service a growing number
of members began talking about dressing up the grounds with flowers and
shrubbery. For years Nat Halverson had donated his bushhog and his
time to mow the grass. For him his labor was a ministry. Finance
committee and board members watched him with smitten consciences,
however, realizing that they should pay for such service.
With church dedication just ahead of them concerned members
took matters into their own hands, deciding that they, like
members who occupied themselves with other problems, would donate
whatever it took to add color to the grounds. Led by Don West
and Linda and David Brooks, they bought flowers to plant at the
foot of the church sign and in a triangular plot by the parking
lot entrance. The Bill Estep family wore out their own personal
lawn equipment manicuring the church grounds. Passersby regarded the
maple-studded lawn as pretty as a park and occasionally stopped by
to say so. In a final action the board approved new shrubbery
and plants to decorate the end of the church facing the road. A
sense of ministry and dedication had led to another tradition at
McDonald Road.
Housing for the pastor became a serious problem during George's
pastorate. The Coopers already lived in Collegedale when they
joined the McDonald Road church, hence they incurred no moving costs
or spent no time in house hunting. The Pangman family faced a
different situation. Locating in what was available, they lived in
the college subdivision for one year, but then sought housing more
suitable to their needs.
To provide a home for them the board approved a plan to clear
a building site in the woods behind the church. Don Crook assumed the
supervisory role for the project that required a $65,000 loan from the
Professional Business Men's Association and uncounted hours of
donated labor to complete. Well hidden from public view, the
three-bedroom ranch home with a double garage furnished George
and his family the privacy they desired as well as convenient access to
the church. Rent payments by the pastor accounted for at least
half of the note, thus easing the added financial burden for
the church. Reduced interest rates
later allowed the church to speed up its debt liquidation
schedule without increasing the monthly payment.
Youth ministry, always an important item on the Adventist
agenda, was a matter of interest to the McDonald Road church from
the beginning. Bruce Ashton, professor of music at Southern
Missionary College, and his wife, Leila, also a part-time
instructor in piano and voice, became leaders of the combined
junior and earliteen Sabbath School department soon after
transferring to McDonald Road from Collegedale. Working
tirelessly, this couple arranged a steady schedule of Sabbath
afternoon activities and Saturday night socials for which they
paid by frequently pulling the cash out of their own purses. Part
of the inspiration for their commitment derived from the fact that
their three children successively passed through their Sabbath School
department.
During the latter half of the Cooper pastorate David
Steen complemented the Ashtons' activities with a Pathfinder program.
Steen taught biology at the college and soon became chairman of the
division of natural science. Putting his organizational talents to
work, he whipped up an enthusiastic following, in many cases
attracting both children and counselors from other churches. He
applied his acquaintance with the outdoors to the Pathfinders, naming the
club the Hawks with individual units called by different species
of the hawk family. A stuffed hawk mounted on a plaque and
other hawk paraphernalia began appearing
in one of the corners of the fellowship room where the
Pathfinders met weekly.
Parents and other adults came to view membership in the
Hawks as both educational and spiritually rewarding. On several
occasions the club arranged and presented the church service. A
full round of camporees, drills, and trips to conference and
Southern Union meets brought the 50-plus-member club the
reputation as one of the most active and best organized in the South.
Two years into George's pastorate Steen moved to Andrews
University, but not before he took his Hawks to the North
American Camporee in Colorado. With a history of outstanding
accomplishments and a bus that a church member had donated to the
club, Pam and Grant Tuttle took charge of the Pathfinders. If any
substantial modification occurred with this change of leadership it was
the appearance of an even more intensive activity program. In
1989 the Pathfinders were still marching, still camping, and
still playing an active role in the McDonald Road church.
Membership growth was a question that George kept on his mind
continuously. Reared in an Adventist home but experimenting
extensively with what Adventists call "the world" before
returning to college to train for a career in the ministry, he
was especially empathetic with members whose relationship with
the church was relaxed, sometimes to point of dormancy. No
sermon went by without appealing to listeners' need to accept
God's forgiveness. Altar calls did not characterize his
presentations, but members of the congregation lingered long at
the door to talk with him or to make appointments to see him later.
During the final year of his pastorate the congregation
became so large that families, if they came late, had to divide to find
seats. Some returned to the parking lot and drove either home or to a
less crowded church. With membership creeping up to the 450 level
the board began discussions about expanding the seating capacity of the
church. Meanwhile, George proposed two Sabbath services, a
solution to overcrowding that several area churches had
tried.
Attendance at the early sermon seldom reached 65; more often
it was below 50. While this number was less than expected, it
eased somewhat the seating problem in the eleven o'clock
service. Discussions about enlarging seating capacity bogged
down, but it was clear that if membership continued upward the
pastor and the board would be forced either to promote two
services more effectively or find another solution.
It was while coping with the question of membership growth
that George responded to an invitation to pastor the Mt. Vernon, Ohio
church. Following his final sermon in May, 1987 the McDonald
congregation experienced a three-month hiatus with no pastor.
Members of the church and visiting ministers took to the pulpit until
conference president William Geary announced that Don Gettys, pastor of
the Arden, North Carolina church had agreed to fill the opening.
A Sunday morning breakfast hosted by the church elders welcomed
the new pastor after his first sermon. No one could predict what
issues would dominate his pastorate, but it was not long before
the church sensed that membership growth would be a prominent one.
One aspect of Gettys' ministry that attracted new members was his
ability to generate large attendance at the midweek prayer
meeting. Discussions of evocative topics led many to the church
on Wednesday evenings; frequently they came back on Sabbath morning
for more. Usually Gettys devoted the prayer meetings to doctrinal
matters while concentrating on practical applications of Christian
living during the Sabbath sermon.
At monthly board meetings requests for transfers into the church
regularly outnumbered requests from members leaving the congregation.
Large numbers of folding seats accommodated some worshipers in the
lobby almost each week. By the time of the ten-year homecoming on June
24, 1989, membership had mushroomed above 550.
The Sabbath School felt the pinch this growth caused. Members
of the junior/earliteen division began to occupy one of the senior
division Sabbath School classrooms and a large adult class met in the
main sanctuary. The fellowship room, crowded beyond capacity, was
too small to accommodate what it was intended for. At the
December, 1988 board meeting church leaders frankly admitted that
the church was inadequate and agreed to erect a temporary building in
which the youth could conduct their weekly Sabbath Schools.
What began as a $5000 project soon grew to more than $8000.
David Turner and Wayne Janzen led both the fundraising and the
construction. Jim Fore, head deacon, supplied paint to match the newly
decorated trim of the church. The winter was nearly past before Nat
and Margaret Halverson moved their Sabbath School into the new
facility. Although built to be dismantled and moved as the need
arose, it was, as some joked, the most permanent temporary building
in the community. With an eye on future expansion, however, the
board more seriously voted not to erect more "temporary" structures on
church property.
As the church completed its actual ten-year existence in
February, 1989 members could look back on a decade of satisfying
spiritual experience. The December, 1988 tithe report from the
conference indicated that only two other churches paid more tithe than
the McDonald Road congregation, although several recorded a higher
per capita rate. With 550 members it had grown to be one of the
large churches in the conference.
Tempering these marks of material success was the humbling sense
that the church had passed through difficult times with
comparatively little difficulty. Anyone familiar with Adventist
history recalls that the first decade of the life of the McDonald
Road church was also a troublesome era for Adventism at large.
Doctrinal disputes destroyed some churches while financial
controversy in the wake of the Davenport debacle split others.
McDonald Road was not devoid of questions, but somehow members
avoided disruptive effects of infighting that impacted so negatively
on other congregations, some of them painfully close by.
If a single conviction pervaded the McDonald Road church after
the first ten years it was probably the realization that only a
strong commitment to the essential elements of the saving gospel
had spared the congregation from divisiveness. At times the
nominating committee struggled to fill all posts; sometimes funds
for church expenses fell short, but everyone--ladies who ran vacation
Bible schools and led small children through weekly Sabbath
Schools, volunteers who greeted members at the doors every Sabbath, and
members who toiled through tough decisions in finance committee
and board meetings--seemed to
possess one common thing, a devotion to the church that
superseded personal interests.
During the ten years from 1979 to 1989 McDonald Road members
have married their young, buried their dead, and encouraged their
discontented. Together they have played, laughed and cried, and
prayed and worshipped. They have also become united with the
conviction that they are members of a much more important
body--the body of Christ. Adrian V. Boyer, charter member and poet
laureate of the church, probably said it best in verses he composed for
the church dedication in 1985:
There's a Chapel in the Valley...Where God's Chosen find a Place,
And with one accord they worship ... every Sabbath by His
Grace.
Amos Cooper had reminded the members of that first Sabbath
congregation on February 17, 1979 that without the spirit of Christ
the church was nothing. A spirit of accord, derived from a genuine
sense of discipleship, was what Boyer saw in 1985 and what the
congregation in 1989 prayed to perpetuate.