The Gift of People – Page 2

August 13, 2015August 11, 2015

Painting by the Number (continued)

One evening we gathered in the living room of our little home with people seated on chairs, couch and floor. We had worked together and eaten together. Now we were relaxed and spending some time in worship, song, and sharing. Dennis led us, playing a few of our favorite choruses. Judd and John co-led as we jumped into one of our favorite topics. The discussion was one that had become familiar, but this time Kathy recorded what we said. What was the next step? Better yet, what was the big picture that God was painting?

Jane began the discussion in her calm, level voice. “Perhaps, when you look at the gifts represented here, one focus we have could have is a home for emotionally disturbed children . . . or even family therapy,” she suggested, her brown eyes resting on Judd in particular.

Ken, leaned forward in his chair intently. “Or we could be a community that welcomed pregnant women who needed shelter and a place to be loved and accepted.” Ken was also seeing a potential that would possibly meet some of the needs of society and combine them with the gifts of our group and potential of the farm.

After some discussion of these possibilities, Dennis, his blue eyes fixed intently on the floor in front of him, looked up. He slowly crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “What if we offered a place as a community where others could come to discuss and present ideas for feedback?”

Thayne jumped in and expanded Dennis’ idea, “Perhaps we could be a community where we were living and supporting one another. Where we are there to meet each other’s needs . . . an alternative to the “me” generation. We could offer an example of Christians living in a fallen world but exhibiting the consistency of God’s character, meeting emotional needs of acceptance, a place where questions will receive listening, and a place where people can come to regain themselves.”

More and more as we talked, we began to identify, not only gifts, but an expression of heart needs. We would be a community, and together we were molding the shape of what that would look like. All of those gifts and heart needs, a rainbow of colors, began to blend together to create the foundation of God’s “art work.”

It was a rich experience, this “visioning” together as we began to uncover that particular piece of artwork God was directing. We all had our paintbrushes out and we were doing a lot of dreaming and coloring.

Of this group, only Charles and Kay and the Swiharts (including our children’s families . . .Dan and Sara Swihart/Troyer”s and Nat Bascom’s) would be the ones to finally build that permanent community. The rest of this small focus group would paint some lasting stories and pictures here at the farm before they would spread out into the world to create their own beautiful works of art.

August 11, 2015August 8, 2015

Painting by the Number

Whenever God rejects a “wish dream” it is not out of His disdain for our wishes, but it is always that He has something better. In rejecting my wish dreams, God did not hold back His blessing from the farm, its ministry, and its supporters. He had a better plan.

Looking back now I can see that what happened over the years was God’s plan painted in pictures that we could only uncover as we lived under His leadership. His plan was like the old-fashioned paint-by-the number pictures I had done in my childhood. The pictures came to life when I followed the numbers carefully, choosing the right colors to fill in the spaces until the image began to appear: a galloping horse, a cuddly puppy, or a lovely cabin by a stream.

Those early days were exciting as we began to uncover that particular piece of artwork God was directing. We all had our paintbrushes out and we were doing a lot of dreaming and coloring. Sometimes, when we used the wrong color, we had to step back and listen to the Artist again. Whenever we in Wellspring ran into bumps, disappointments, disagreements through the years, the issues could always be traced back to our own personal dreams and visions of what that final art piece would look like.

We did have vision, excitement, and dreams! We had no real idea of the big picture God was painting, but we were eager to see what He would do. That first small rag-tag group anticipated God was going to produce something beautiful . . . and He was going to allow us to work with Him. Not only Judd and I, but all of us in our newly formed group had visions and dreams, and as a community we had to learn to listen. Listen to what each other had to say, what gifts each brought, and what God was saying into all of this. Voices arose, flags raised, and we certainly accomplished a lot.

L”Abri had been our model, but we were wise enough to know quite early in that first year that we would not look exactly like L’Abri. As we looked at the gifts God had given each person in our group, we had a myriad of ideas that led to very interesting discussions.

One evening we gathered around the small living room. The discussion was one that had become familiar, but this time Kathy recorded what we said that evening. We represented a variety of potential, experience, and interests in this living room. Jane, a student at Manhattan Christian College and the leader of the Youth for Christ at Riley County High School; Dennis, the area InterVarsity staff person here at Kansas State University and Emporia State University; John and Ken, graduate students in the Geography Department; Kathy, our recorder that evening, a grad student in Family Studies; Thayne studied in Fine Arts; Lowell a grad student in architecture; Carol a grad student in Physics; Charles a physician at Kansas State’s Lafene Health Center; Judd teaching in the Family Studies department; and then there was Kay, whose wisdom always put a capstone on our discussions; and as always, our children and I. Not present were two professors from the Family Studies area at the University, George and Ken. George was a child psychologist and Ken had many years’ experience in family studies.

What should our focus be? Where were we going to put our efforts?

June 29, 2015June 26, 2015

Authenticity: The “Real I” and the “Real Thou”

At fourteen, a few days before I turned fifteen, I had a crash-bang encounter with the Real Thou…and He spoke directly to the Real I. Having been chosen at the last moment to replace someone on our Youth For Christ Bible quiz team, I had crammed for a week, trying to memorize scripture that we would cover in quizzes against other teams from our North Atlantic District. We were going to represent our group at a large convention in Ocean City, New Jersey. This was a big deal…and I was scared. By the time we got to Ocean City, I was not feeling well. I got worse as the week went on. Except for the evening services, the quizzes were about the only part of the conference that I could attend during the day. Other than that I was in my hotel room, sick. . My only real memory of that week was sitting with the other 2,000 young people listening to Torrey Johnson bring to conclusion his sermon. No words from that sermon remain in my memory. What I remember is that the crowd faded away and I saw Jesus hanging on the cross…and it was for me. The depth of His love touched my very soul. And it was His love for me, that little girl who had some knowledge of who He was and a very little knowledge of who she was. He intimately knew and loved that young woman who was ready to give up pursuing hope; the one who had lost her sense of the adventure of life.

He knew me and He loved me, the real me, with unfailing and undying love. Never again would I have to flounder on my own, never again would I need to search for an identity. He knew who I was and He would reveal that to me in a loving, unfolding way the rest of my life. That knowledge changed my life. I was forever devoted to Him.

I am continuing to learn how that authenticity works. In much of C. S. Lewis’ work, he emphasizes the importance of the “real me” in relationship with “the real Thou.” I am learning about my Creator/Savior as I read His word, as I talk to Him, as I listen for Him, as I watch his creation, especially his creatures. I am getting to know more and more the “real” Thou. And slowly I am becoming the “real” me.

Yes, I am ME. I am the one God created to live out this life in all of its surprises, conundrums, joys, sorrows. Inside this skin. Within the boundaries of my family of origin, with all of the handicaps and giftedness that may entail. In Kansas! On a farm! With my husband (that gift from a God who never changes). With the children and grandchildren God has given. I must take every day as a gift from Him. And then I must live it as the person God created me to be and continues to form me to be. That life will not look like anyone else’s life. It will be uniquely mine. And in that uniqueness, I will be bringing glory to God that only I can bring. I will be uncovering something about the mystery of God that only I can uncover. I am becoming authentic.

The gift of authenticity. The farm gave us as a family a platform where we could practice being authentic, and where we could offer an authentic experience to others.

June 27, 2015June 27, 2015

Authenticity: From “Me” to “Who?”

Children don’t know anything but transparency and authenticity. Their freedom to be themselves is quite compelling. It is only later that they begin to adapt to the social pressures in this fallen world.

I remember in my wise four-year-old mind becoming aware that the thoughts coming in the form of ideas or conversation with others were actually coming from me. I remember the awe I would feel when I would whisper to myself, “I am Me.” Allowing the thought to reach into my very soul, I was overwhelmed with a sense of my own identity, and I marveled at this reality.

But when a child is slowly growing through those formative years, identity can become very confusing, and authenticity becomes less and less automatic. Little by little I began to lose that ownership of my identity. In the next half a dozen years, we moved. A lot! We were always the new kids in the neighborhood, the new students in the classroom. In one of my first grade classrooms (I think I went to three first grade class rooms in three different states that year) the teacher had given us the wonderful privilege of writing on the chalkboard during the lunch hour.

One noon, I had finished my lunch early and had taken my place beside another little girl who was writing on the chalk board. I quietly drew some figures on the board, but out of the corner of my eye I was watching this very sophisticated little girl, this One-who- belonged, write her name. She not only knew how to write her name, she knew how to write it in cursive! Surreptitiously I watched and, hiding my work behind my left hand, I wrote it just like she wrote it, Betty. I went back to my desk that day and continued to practice that special word, Betty. Throughout my school years and into adult hood, any time I doodled, in the midst of the doodling one word was sure to appear. . . Betty. In some ways, this was to mirror the loss of that sense of identity that I had grasped so innocently in my preschool years. I did not consciously adopt someone else’s identity, but I became less and less sure of who was existing at my core, who God had intended me to be.

One thing remained constant, though, in my growing years. The God who lived up there in those beautiful skies, grew to be my companion. In so many ways He showed me His beauty, His kindness, His creativity, His protection. However, He spoke to me most clearly through His creatures. They became His sketch book of every day lessons. “Look dear child at the beauty of the many colors in that rooster’s tail. Watch the tenderness with which that momma cow licks and washes her tiny calf; see the devoted look in those beautiful cocker eyes of your faithful dog Winky as she watches to see what you will do next.” In each creature, I saw characteristics that had been placed by a loving Creator. But there was more! Each creature seemed to be secure in who/what it was. God had created it to be a dog, a cow, a horse, a sheep, and it found satisfaction in being, just in being. True authenticity! I have watched those creatures almost in awe. They are content, unassuming, and real! None of the socialization, none of the pressure that we as humans have experienced in order to fit in, to pretend, to perform.

My natural instinct has been, even as a child, to turn to those creatures that also seemed to accept me just as I was. At the age of four, I would slip out to the dairy barn after the cows had been milked and had settled for the night. In that long old barn, I had birthday parties; I had prayer meetings. With a little grain in my hand, I would walk from stanchion to stanchion, preaching, singing, and entertaining. And they accepted me. They were my adoring audience. I could be free to be me. Later, after we moved from the dairy farm and began the saga of continual moving, my cocker spaniel, Winkie, was the receptor of my tales of longing, my companion on walks, and my nighttime buddy. She loved me unabashedly and uncompromisingly.

By my teenage years, I was becoming more and more a creator of my own self. With deep feelings of not belonging in this world, of watching it as an outsider, I was becoming a young adult. Unlike that little four year old who was thrilled with the “me-ness of me,” the person I was becoming did not like the me I was. I did not like the body I had been given, nor did I not like my history. Instead of accepting my identity, I became adept at covering it, of masquerading it, of working hard to become what I thought I should be.

June 23, 2015June 23, 2015

Praise The Lord, the Drought is Over!

We were in the final day of our first Spiritual Dynamics Conference. Donald Mostrom, author from New England, had come to share his life with us. We were soaked by a sudden downpour as we approached the barn where we had set up old desk chairs, a podium, a small sound system scrounged from friends. It had been raining and now it was pouring rain. I was quite discouraged as I walked with our guest who was ready to deliver his last message of the weekend. However, Dr. Mostrom was exhilarated. “Praise the Lord,” he shouted as we walked up the hill to the barn that Sunday morning, “the drought is over!!!!” I looked at him in disbelief, but also relief.

Forty to sixty guests had come to spend the weekend. Some had stayed in town, others at the farm in tents or in the granary where, after sweeping and hosing it down, we had set up cots. Dr. Mostrom, had the privilege of sleeping in the farmhouse in Sara’s bedroom while she bedded on the floor of our bedroom.

After all our careful planning and preparation for this conference, it had rained the whole weekend. We had planned some exciting and fun times, such as a trail hike, Frisbee golf in the pasture, a volley ball game in the front yard. But for most of the weekend we huddled in the barn.

We also were limited in what we could do in the barn. At this point in our history, there was no kitchen in the barn, so we supplied all of the meals from the farmhouse kitchen. The young families who attended the conference had small children, and we had carefully planned child care for them in the living room of the farm-house. The bathroom in the basement served as the main bathroom for the conference. In fact, the entire tiny house had become an extension of the conference.

By Saturday morning, we were almost wading in mud in the kitchen, mud that was dragged in by all of the necessary traffic. By noon of the second day the basement had flooded. From the bottom of the steps to the bathroom, we had set up an improvised “bridge” created from an old wooden ironing board that had been stored in the basement. (Creativity flourishes when there are few alternatives.) The living room nursery was cluttered and dirty, but dry.

Don Mostrom, the author of Intimacy with God (1983), had been invited to be our first guest speaker for several reasons. Our first year together we had studied The Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal by Richard Lovelace. We were challenged. As we read Lovelace’s acknowledgments, we discovered that a certain man, Don Mostrom, had been one of Lovelace’s primary mentors. After the Bascom family traveled to New England to attend a Peniel Bible Conference, they came back renewed, refreshed, and desiring to hear more from Don Mostrom who had been the key-note speaker. We were thrilled when this man from the East Coast agreed to come to our poor, humble farm to join us for a weekend and share his thoughts from a book that he was working on at the time, Spiritual Privileges You Didn’t Know Were Yours.

We were deluged that weekend, but not only with rain. We had found joy in working together as a young community. We had studied together, planned together, and were now working out the individual gifts of each member. From cooking to nursery, from creating song sheets to leading the singing, from registration to clean-up, we each used our gifts. Our children had been assigned their own important tasks: Derrick was to park cars, Dan and Derrick created the Frisbee golf course and blazed the trails for hiking; Sara at seven years old was appointed “the chief smiler”which she did with total sincerity. And together, our community had been sitting at the feet of a spiritual giant as he challenged us and encouraged us with spiritual blessings from God’s heart.

It is not always in the physical comfort of our surroundings that we find the presence of God. He was there as we waded to the bathroom, as we mopped the muddy kitchen floor, as we sat huddled in the barn instead of doing all of the fun activities we had planned. Grace and abundant joy in the presence of the others who had gathered with us. This was an unwrapping of his presence in community. Yes, in the midst of the mundane the sun was shining. Thus, the exclamation “Praise the Lord, the drought is over,” was the capstone that crowned our weekend.

Don Mostrom "driving the bus" in a Down on the Farm fun night. — Don Mostrom “driving the bus” in a Down on the Farm fun night.

June 20, 2015July 6, 2015

The Beginnings of True Community

This group now calling itself Wellspring, was becoming a true community of like-minded people. One of the couples who sat with us during the discussion that evening was Charles and Kay Bascom. God creates community, and I fully believe that he brings together those with gifts to accomplish his purposes. Through the years, Charles has served in an unofficial capacity as “pastor” to our little community, and Kay has been the model of gracious love, hospitality, wisdom, and a true support to her husband.

I remember working with Kay setting up the farm for that first Spiritual Dynamics conference. As we were winding up our preparations in the house Kay turned to me with a twinkle in her eye, “Ah, Nancy,” she said in hushed tones, “we are standing on tiptoe to see what God is going to do now.”

Kay and Charles have walked with us all the way: from the inception of the small group, to the naming of the group, to the incorporation of Wellspring. In the early years on the farm, they purchased several acres from us and together with their sons (actually while Charles was doing a summer stint in Sudan) built their log home.

They had stepped into our lives with their rich history of walking with God. In their early married life, Charles and Kay “stood on tiptoe” watching God work in their lives in north-eastern Kansas. Charles became the beloved “country” doctor in a community where they immersed themselves into the lives of the people. As Charles doctored the physical bodies, and many times the souls of those communities, Kay led Bible studies. Together they watched God change lives as they also poured themselves into the ministry of Young Life.

On tiptoe, along with their young family (Johnathan, Tim, and Nat), they responded to God’s call to serve in Ethiopia. Charles and Kay watched the work of God flow from their lives as they loved the people in the country they loved dearly.

Forced to leave Ethiopia for an extended period of time because of the Marxist revolution, the Bascoms moved to Manhattan. Our family arrived in Kansas shortly after the Bascoms arrived from Africa, and we immediately were drawn together by a mutual vision and commitment to serve God through hospitality: hosting an ongoing discussion of how we can address relevant social, ethical, and lifestyle issues in our community. Although these L’Abri type discussions were a major focus of our early years of ministry on the farm, and the focus was to extend far beyond . . . to hosting sundry events, ministries, and outreach over the years that were to come.

Our family was privileged to observe Kay and Charles and their family, our role models here in our little community, as they welcomed old friends from around the world to stay in their home (any and all the time); walked through culture shock with the many internationals that call them their “adopted parents”; wrote and taught The Messiah Mystery, a study that systematically brings to light the Christ of both Old and New Testaments. They have modeled family, faith, and gracious hospitality for our family.

After the revolution in Ethiopia was over and the country had settled to a more peaceful existence, both Charles and Kay have had opportunities to go back to their beloved Africa, working for a time in southern Sudan with refugees (Charles) and later in a hospital in southern Ethiopia (both). Kay, with her heart for written expression, has put into book form some of the personal stories that came from the “amazing saga of the church in Ethiopia” in her book entitled Hidden Triumph in Ethiopia.

Lovers of God’s nature, a typical Bascom day will end with Charles and Kay (graciously inviting whoever may be visiting at the time) taking a quick drive up Kitten Creek Road to the top of the flint hill pastures. As they watch one of the beautiful Kansas sunsets in the west, their voices will blend together in a hymn or chorus of praise to their Father. And this is the essence of our friends, Charles and Kay . . . standing on tiptoe to revel in the handiwork of their Creator. These are our neighbors, our co-workers here on Kitten Creek Road.