Everything Changes

Everything started to unravel the day Darryl told us he was taking a hike. He had been asked to return home to the church (First Assembly of God) in which he grew up in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. He had already seen from his experience with Phil and me that you can “go home.” It was explained to him that this was an opportunity to eventually become the pastor, because the senior pastor there was getting ready to retire. That’s a whole other story that I’ll let Darryl tell.
However, Darryl’s leaving meant the death of the “Dream Team.” It was a great nine year run. But, as they say, “All good things must come to an end.” For me, it was the end of a very good thing.
With all the stuff Earl Creps had put into my head, with Darryl’s departure, with major staff modifications, and my own growing discontent with the “status quo,” it was inevitable that things would come to a head. To Phil’s credit, he recognized it for what it was.
A staff disagreement over changes that were being made, some not for the better and I had a melt down. This could have gone a lot of different ways, but Phil saw what was happening. He called me in one day, and we sat down and talked like we had so many other times. When “stuff” happens, like it always will, it really helps to have a mutual respect and a sincere love for one another.
We talked about the church. We talked about the stuff we were reading. We talked about the changes and the clashes.
He said to me, “You know, I’ve been doing things this way for a long time, almost 30 years. And I don’t think I’m ready to change everything. Because that is what it would take.” He said, “But I’ve heard you say so many times, ‘If I ever pastored a church… I’d do this or that.’” He told me, “Plus, you know how much I love this church and all of its people, many of whom would have to be dragged through this kind of change.” And then he added, “But what if you did it? What if you started something new based on the stuff we’ve been reading? What if you planted a new church and we helped you?”
I was stunned. Was he serious?
What’s really interesting about all of this is that before I ever came back to Carbondale, Phil and I started talking about planting a church some day. In the late 80’s, inner-city churches were the cool thing to consider. So we had talked about that. In fact, the youth pastor before Darryl had left to plant an inner-city church in Oklahoma City. But, up until then, I had never thought about it being me. And I don’t think either of us could have anticipated that it would be this kind of church.
I left his office that day with my head spinning. I had said, “Are you serious?”
He said, “Yes, very serious. Go talk to Vicki, pray about it, and then let’s get back together and talk some more.”
So I said I would.
Almost immediately the wheels started turning. I wasn’t sure where it all was coming from. I started talking about the culture of a church and its core values over programs and doctrine. This was long before I read about it. I started thinking about the failure of preaching to achieve any appreciable change in behavior. And I started asking what a church would look like and feel like that would embrace all who walked through its doors.
From before the beginning, the seeds were planted that would become Agora. But there were still several steps to be taken and more questions to be asked before we discussed anything as drastic as a launch date.

Associate Pastor of Music

I told you earlier that when the tornado hit, we did a lot of soul searching and rethinking as a church and particularly as a staff. We had time to think about what we were going to do when we got our newly reconstructed building with twice the space as before. We evaluated our strengths and looked honestly at the potential that was there.
Finally we decided that one of our strengths was our great staff relations and the talent that was contained therein. Phil, Darryl, and I were at times the three musketeers, the three tenors, or the three stooges, depending upon with whom you talked. We evaluated our strengths individually and collectively and looked at the giftings of the congregation as a whole. As a result we decided to do some restructuring.
We decided to change our titles to reflect a more unified and balanced pastoral approach. Darryl and I would both be associate pastors. And we decided to play to our individual strengths. Mine was music. And the giftings of the church as a whole included an incredible amount of musical talent. So I became the Associate Pastor of Music, and I took over the entire music program.
Darryl was the Associate Pastor of Students. And we let Phil keep his title as Senior Pastor.
Eventually we added Mike Atkinson to play the straight man. Not that he wasn’t really quick, really smart, and really funny. He was. And is. It’s just that we needed someone who could handle the business side. The three choleric sanguines needed a melancholy to balance us out. He became the Associate Pastor of Administration.
I really didn’t ponder it for very long, but I did wonder if I had been demoted. I decided quickly that it didn’t really matter. I was having a blast. I enjoyed the new challenge of a stellar music ministry. So I just put my head down and broke into a full sprint.
We had so much talent. In fact, while we were still at VBI, the orchestra would rehearse on Sunday afternoons. I had nearly 30 instrumentalists. One day the music guy from Victory came by to sit in on our rehearsal. We were a church of 500 people with an all volunteer orchestra of nearly 30 by then. While he had a handful of musicians in a church of 10,000. He was flabbergasted.
I could have been satisfied to stay there for a long time to come. But then came that Earl Creps guy and another tornado. Not a wind of destruction this time, but a wind of change.

Who Gave You the Keys?

At the risk of overstating this, I have to say that coming home in 1992 to work in the church in which I grew up was the coolest. I could not have been more stoked. And working side by side with my cousin, friend, and “brother” Phil was almost too good to be true.
That’s not to say that it was without challenges. We had our work cut out for us when we got there. But we survived the transition. And then, in little more than a year, we even survived another transition—our first staff change. That modification in personnel necessitated our becoming interim youth pastors, which we had done before.
However, the guy Phil hired to step into that position could not have fit in any better with us. Even though he was 15 years younger, Darryl Wooton was and still is the man. In no time, we were known as one of the best teams in our region. The church flourished, and people wanted to hear from us the secret of our success. They asked for our advice on pastor and staff relations. We didn’t have much to tell them except, “We really love each other, and we love working together.” Apparently, that’s not all that common. But our years together will always be remembered as some of the most fun I have ever had in ministry.
We were having a blast. In fact, we joked about the inmates taking over the asylum. Phil remarked once that it was such a dream, and we were still such “kids” on the inside that we were expecting at any moment one of the elders to storm into our “staff meeting” over Chinese food at “Golden Palace” and say, “What do you boys think you’re doing? Who gave you the keys to this place? Give those back. We’re going to need some adults to take over here.”
But that never happened. They let us be in charge. And that could have continued until I retired as far as I was concerned. I think I could have been content to stay there for a long time.
But then the tornado hit.

It Started with a Tornado

Whitney was ticked. Her mom had cried wolf so many times before, she was certain that the storm would pass without a tornado. She had never even seen one. So why did she have to climb down these stairs some 20 feet below the church’s sanctuary for a stupid false alarm? She was certain that she was the only 15 year old in the city being subjected to this.

To prove her disgust she found a place to sit on some old ceiling tiles away from the others. How her mom had sucked the youth pastor and his family into her nightmare she didn’t know. But she wouldn’t have to wonder very long.

Whitney, along with her two sisters Emily and Natalie, had taken refuge underground with their mom Vicki Taylor—my wife and three daughters. Joining them were Darryl and Faith Wootton and their daughter Lindsay. It was Monday night, May the third, 1999, and a huge storm, which had already left death and devastation in its path, was roaring up the I-44 turnpike toward West Tulsa.

My wife Vicki had already heard the reports of destruction south of Oklahoma City. She had even seen video clips of the toothpicks that had once been the bedroom community of Moore. Halfway between Tulsa and Oklahoma City, the Tanger Outlet Mall in Stroud was also left in shambles. They were not taking any chances.

Mom’s phone rang.

“Hello!”
“Yeah, Susan, we’re in the basement of the church.”
“Okay, we’ll stay right here until we hear otherwise.”

The call had come from a family friend whose husband was the prominent local weatherman. Chief meteorologist Travis Meyer and his team at KTUL, the ABC affiliate, were tracking the storms. Without alarming them, Susan wanted to make sure they were safe. She knew what was coming. Her husband and his people just down the road at the top of Lookout Mountain were taking cover themselves.

To ease their own tension, the adults tried to make casual conversation. But the talking was interrupted by an ominous radio prediction. It was Travis.

“Take cover, now!”

Then, suddenly, Whitney’s frustration turned to fear. The lights went out and the door to the basement started to vibrate violently. It only lasted a few seconds, but it seemed like forever. It was as though the air was being sucked out of the room. And the darkness was absolute. Now she regretted being across the room from everyone else. She couldn’t remember ever knowing blackness this black.