Business as Usual

We had a ton to be excited about. We had survived the tornado. Our square footage was twice what it had been before the destruction. And in spite of what the “experts” had told us, we were debt free. Plus we had grown from a church of about 450-500 to more than 800 and were still growing. It was heady stuff.
People would ask us, “What is the secret to your success?”
All we could say was, “Okay, you start with a tornado…”
We didn’t have a clue.
Most of you probably don’t know this, but when “preachers” get together—and when they don’t—they talk to and about each other. Sometimes they like to act like they’re happy for your success. (They may be.) But they also ask goofy questions like, “How many you runnin’, Doc?” It’s a question about church attendance, which translated means: “Tell me you’re not doing better than I am!” Followed by the moniker “Doc” which translated means, “You and I both know you don’t have a real doctorate, but in case you earned one when I wasn’t looking I’m sure it’s not the kind that helps people.”
Anyway, when you’ve had explosive growth, humility is important. Especially when you don’t have a clue what caused it. The news of our success was about as welcome to the preacher party as a hooker.
But success is a blessing and a curse. Here’s what we found out. It takes a bunch of effort to meet the expectations of 800 people. And it takes a lot of staff. And it takes a bundle of “ministries” and programs. And, it doesn’t take long to become totally exhausted.
Here’s a little something I’ve discovered. I’ve discovered that when I’m exhausted, I have a tendency to begin to contemplate the cause of my exhaustion. Something like this:
“What in the world am I doing?”
What I was doing was what was expected of me, or so I thought. Was I trying to compete with other churches our size? Was I trying to grow the church through my own effort? Nobody had asked me to do it. I just didn’t know any other way. It seemed it was just “business as usual” in the modern church.
But it wasn’t long before I began to question “business as usual.”
All of the church growth materials we had read instructed us to create vision and mission statements, something we had never done. Now I understand why that is necessary. When you hit the wall, it really helps to know why you’re killing yourself. In other words, when you know your purpose, it puts everything into perspective. I can survive almost anything if my purpose is important enough.
It was not.
In fact, I don’t think I knew what my purpose was. We never got around to writing down, let alone publishing our vision. So, whatever mission I had made up in my own head was not worth this. This wasn’t “mission impossible.” It was mission imperceptible. The best I could figure, our reason for being, my reason for working 6 and 7 days a week was to perpetuate the machine.
That was not enough.

Long Range Plans

Part of the process of deciding to rebuild and committing to stay on the same property was drawing up plans that would maximize the potential of those 10+ acres upon which Carbondale sits. Given the land we had, what is the largest size to which we could grow there? As the ideas were developed, our architect sketched out a three-phase plan.
The first phase was for the short term. This would answer the question: What will get us operating on that property again in the shortest amount of time? The second phase was a medium range plan that would get us up to the larger, more expanded size that we felt we needed as soon as we could afford it. And the third phase was the long range plan. It was the plan to construct as much building footprint, with the required adjoining parking, plus whatever infrastructure necessary in order to maximize the property.
The long range plan would include a new “sanctuary.” And that would determine just how big we could get without buying more property. Early on, it was discovered that we could likely build between a 1,200 and a 1,500 seat sanctuary and the accompanying meeting rooms, office space, and parking on that land.
Plus, we got the privilege of building a retention pond for about $85,000. This was made a requirement by the city and was officially called a “privately funded public improvement” or PFPI. In other words, we got to pay for fixing the city’s problem with drainage in our neighborhood. You can drive by and see that lovely monstrosity today. It was built before almost anything else.
This may be more than you need to know, unless you plan to build anything within the Tulsa city limits. Then it’s good stuff to hear. But here’s some more advice to go along with the above. We learned that you can fight City Hall. But you will lose.
Eventually we decided to opt for phases one and two, immediately. What’s an extra two million dollars among friends? But the third phase, the long range plan is still in the works even today.
Once the rebuild was finished and we had moved back onto the property, the details of the third phase started to take shape. We continued to meet with the architects, Paul Meyer and Gary Armbruster of Meyer Architects in Oklahoma City.
One night in the middle of all of this “long range” planning, I could not sleep. I tried everything. I tossed and turned—more like: flopped like a fish. I gave up, more than once, got up and read thinking that would make me sleepy. When that didn’t work, I tried reading the “begats” of the Old Testament. Even that didn’t work. I tried praying, begging God to kill me, tell me what he wanted, or let me sleep.
I finally decided that God was trying to get my attention.
“C’mon, God!” I pleaded. “All my friends get these elaborate dreams with deep meaning and obvious application to their current circumstances. Why can’t you do that for me? At least I would get to sleep!”
But no, not for me. Beside the fact that all my dreams are stupid, I finally surmised this was supposed to be some kind of direct encounter. I’m a little dense at times. At last, I gave in.
“Okay, God. What is it you want to tell me?”
Now, you would think that would be all the capitulation that God would need. And that he would just spit it out. I mean, believe me, I was all ears. But no. We were only half way through the night. And this was going to take all night.
I began my humble contrition by kneeling in the den by the couch upon which I had been sitting to read. No need to bother Vicki any more than I already had. She had mostly slept through my flopping anyway. I stopped begging and just shut up. Although, every now and then my brain would involuntarily scream, “What?!” In the deafening silence, I was trying to find a comfortable position from which I could hear the voice of God. In the process, I tried every position in the Yoga book and a few others I made up. Finally I ended up on my knees with my back arched over and the top of my head on the floor like a contortionist Muslim praying toward Mecca hell.
I wish I could tell you that I emerged from that horrible night with a lovely, illuminating, and Divine Word. I wish I could tell you that after that night everything changed. But none of that happened. However, while waiting to hear something really important, I couldn’t stop thinking about that stupid “long range plan.”
Specifically, the phrase that kept coming back to me was, “What will the church look like in 10 to 20 years?” So, I kept straining like a constipated man to come up with an answer to that question. And the only answer I could come up with was formulated out of the context in which we were already operating.
“Perhaps we ought to build something more like a theatre instead of a church sanctuary,” I thought. This was in keeping with our new emphasis on music and elaborate productions. So I envisioned a full production stage with fly-in scenery walls, multiple curtains, catwalks, and a sophisticated array of sound and lights. I even dreamed of an orchestra pit on hydraulics that would raise and lower into a basement rehearsal room. Some of those ideas actually got incorporated into the new sanctuary plans.
It never occurred to me back then that it was the question. The question was all I was supposed to take with me that night. I almost developed an aneurism trying to come up with an answer. But my answer was not the point. It would still be several more years before I would ask that question in a different context.
What will the church look like in 10 to 20 years?

No Real Change

During our exile we did a lot of soul searching. We asked tons of questions. We visited other churches. We read books—on leadership and church growth. We were scouring the landscape of our Christian subculture for a new way to approach “doing church.”
I wish I could tell you that the tornado provided us with a complete paradigm shift. It didn’t. Look, we learned a lot. It was an incredible leap of faith to more than double the square footage of the previous facility. It took a real miracle to emerge 20 months later debt free. (The fundraising “experts” told us it was impossible.) In our wildest dreams we couldn’t have imagined growing in numbers while in the wilderness. But in the end, we opted for…let’s call it continuity.
It’s not like we didn’t make some changes; we did. We updated our “look.” We did away with pews and hymnals. But the changes we made—to our facility and to our focus—were more about doing what we were already doing, only better. That and, we made a determined effort to center on our strengths: especially excelling at hospitality, preaching, and music.
Finally, the toil and the perseverance paid off. We were going back. The first service in the new building was electric. There were people everywhere. It was so promising that we started a second Sunday morning service the next week. In a very short period of time we doubled in numbers.
So the legend and the legacy of the tornado were stated as “the best thing that had ever happened.” And Carbondale became the phoenix that arose from the ashes (or the piles of twisted metal as it were).
I don’t mean to sound cynical or to take away from the success that we had. But after a bunch of years of working in churches, and after what I had read and what we had experienced, it seemed to me that church growth was more about good marketing to and recycling of dissatisfied “saints.” In fact, we benefited greatly from the demise or decline of some other churches. That was good timing. I mean you hate to grow for that reason, but we didn’t turn them away.
I didn’t know another option, but my perspective would be forever marred by this. It was obvious that the Church—the universal, big “C” Church—was not really growing at all. At least not in Tulsa. And if Tulsa was any indication, not in America either. But our church—little “c” church—was. I became less and less okay with that. I didn’t know what to do about it, but the seeds of discontent, disillusionment, and deconstruction were already planted in my little brain.

Living in Exile

The next 20 months were our 40 years of wandering in the desert. And yes, we were often wondering while we were wandering—wondering what was next. I attended more meetings during that time than in all my previous life put together. We had meetings with the insurance people. We had meetings with architects. We had meetings with city employees and local television news crews. We even had meetings to prepare for our next meeting.
One of the first things anyone wants to know after a disaster is: “Are we insured?” We were. However, we found out pretty quickly that we were grossly underinsured. Just to rebuild what was destroyed was going to cost far more than our total coverage. And getting a check cut for the full amount meant that we would have to prove how much our losses were. So, we all donned masks, grabbed a micro-cassette recorder, walked back into the deteriorating building, and began verbally inventorying everything in the place except the mold. Mold was growing exponentially while we were discussing the future.
After some more meetings, it became apparent that rebuilding only what was there before was unacceptable. Prior to the tornado we had already started having meetings on how to expand our footprint. We badly needed more space.
And, here’s another thing we learned in a meeting. Did you know that you have to get a permit to tear something down? Even if it’s already a pile of rubble? Even if it’s a giant petri dish threatening to overtake the world with mold spores? That seemed to me to be unusually cruel. Demolition couldn’t even start without cash and the approval of an overpaid city bureaucrat.
In the days ahead, we would meet as a staff and reevaluate everything. It was going to be a long time before we could rebuild and move back home. It was going to be a while before we even knew what we were going to build. So we had to figure out how to make the most of our exile. There would be no “business as usual.”
Immediately we felt like we were starting over. We were literally working from the ground up. So we asked hard questions beginning with, should we rebuild? We honestly asked that question, of God and to one another. Then, if we do rebuild, do we stay on the current property? What do you have to have to be a church? Do you even have to have a building? Do you have to do Sunday school? What is “Christian Education?”
The questions kept coming. Is it necessary to have separate meeting places for adults and youth and children and babies? (Babies, definitely babies.) And what if we don’t have those luxuries? If we can’t do everything we were doing, will everybody leave and go somewhere else? Were our “programs” holding the church together?
The tornado that destroyed the building created a storm in our souls that blew “normal” completely off of our map.

Coming Home

By the time my plane landed in Tulsa on Wednesday evening, a temporary home for our church had already been established. Pastor Billy Joe Daugherty of Tulsa’s Victory Christian Center had shown up at Pastor Phil’s house early on Tuesday and offered the use of Victory Bible Institute (VBI) for the duration of our banishment. The insurance man and a builder or two were also there that morning. Everyone decided that it could be as many as 18 months before the destruction could be reversed. (It would take 20.) But, Pastor Daugherty didn’t flinch.
Vicki and the girls picked me up at the airport and drove us directly to VBI, our new, albeit temporary, locale. When we arrived, the regular Wednesday night service was already in progress. Of course there was nothing regular about it. Everyone—adults, youth, children, and babies—was gathered in the large auditorium. Pastor was in the middle of giving comforting words and a preliminary explanation of how we were going to proceed in the days to come. We had been abruptly evicted from our home. And as appreciative as we were to have a place to meet less than 48 hours after the storm, this was not home.
As Vicki, the girls, and I walked hand-in-hand into the meeting, the congregation stood and applauded. Having done nothing to deserve such a greeting, we understood the ovation as a show of support, not just for us, but also for the men who had remained behind to complete the job in the Dominican Republic. It was like that moment on Thanksgiving Day when your cousins that you haven’t seen in a while finally show up at Grandma’s house. We were all just glad to be together.
That night and in the first few days afterward, everyone put up a tough, positive, unified front. But inside all of us were scared. Our world had been shaken. And none of us had any idea how this would play out. Personally, I had no clue that this was only the beginning for me.
The next morning I had the opportunity to see what was left in the tornado’s wake. In spite of the descriptions I had heard, I could not possibly have imagined the devastation that remained where our building had once stood. It was horrifying. The second floor was without ceiling or walls. The nursery sported a new open air skylight, and the property was strewn with piles of twisted metal and broken glass. Only the sanctuary and the gymnasium survived.
In addition to the church building, thousands of dollars of damage had been done to our home which was on the same property. My family spent the first few nights after the tornado in a hotel room while repairs were begun. Even though the house had avoided a direct hit, there was significant work to be done. For example, pressure from the tornado’s proximity caused damage to my aluminum garage door that looked like a baby elephant had been trapped inside and had repeatedly crashed into it trying to get out. As a result, one of our cars was trapped in the garage while the other one received a $10,000 pounding from the storm.
The next few days we tried to salvage our personal possessions and whatever documents and equipment we would need in order to carry on. That may sound easy. It wasn’t. With only days to ponder our future, we had to prioritize what we got out of a rapidly deteriorating building. Then a disaster restoration company came in to rescue everything that was salvageable. But anything they took to inventory and store would not be available again until we rebuilt.
What a mess!

The Dominican Trip

Go back a couple of days before the tornado. In fact, go back further than that. Go back a little over seven months. In late September, 1998, hurricane Georges hit the Caribbean, causing hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars worth of damage. Ten countries were adversely affected—more than any hurricane in over thirty years. For example, in the Dominican Republic, dozens of churches were destroyed along with the homes of hundreds of people. It was a mission to help them rebuild that small country that caused me to miss all of the excitement in Tulsa on that eventful evening in May of ’99.
Although I was the assistant pastor of my home church, I was just one of the guys on a work trip to help the Dominicans. Fourteen of us left that weekend—days before the tornado—to spend a week helping to reconstruct churches destroyed by hurricane Georges. It is ironic that while on that mission our own church’s building would be destroyed by an Oklahoma tornado. God or Mother Nature or Fate or somebody with a capital letter name has a rather odd sense of humor.
We put in one whole day of work on that Monday. Having split into different crews, some of us were mixing concrete, some were laying block walls, some were setting rebar to strengthen the walls against future storms, and some of us were simply gofers. I tried my hand at a little bit of everything. Every job was important and every one of them was really hard work. And it was hot. By the time the first day of work ended, we were all exhausted and ready for bed.
When I woke up the next morning, every muscle in my body was aching. I have worked many jobs over the years that required hard, physical labor. I just hadn’t done much lately. My lily-white hands were grateful for the cheap cotton gloves I had worn the day before. No doubt, they saved me from some ugly blisters. Despite the pain, I was ready for our second day. Little did I know what had happened back home in the middle of the night.
At midday on Tuesday, May 4th, I was on a water break talking to our mission leader Ric Shields when his phone rang. (Did I mention it was hot?) Thinking it was the probably the local missionary calling, I turned to go back to work. Seconds later, Ric called me back over. The call was from home, and he proceeded to tell me what had happened the night before to my family, to our home, and to our church building.
He informed me that the church had been badly damaged and that our home—a church-owned parsonage—had been damaged badly enough to displace my family. I would be heading home the next day; the arrangements had already been made. The rest of the team would stay behind to complete the mission. But, my family and the church needed me back in Tulsa. And although I finished the day, I was anxious—anxious about leaving everyone else behind, about the trip home, and about what I might find when I got there.

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.