GFC Survivors' History

The original point of this blog was to help me in my personal healing journey, and during the last year or so, I've made a lot of progress—which also explains, at least partially, why I haven't had anything to say for a long time. But I began thinking about Grace Fellowship, and one very curious fact has really jumped out at me. (I ran into Bob Gardner the other day, discussed this with him, and he agrees.) The whole point of Grace Haven Farm, back in the 1970s, was that the culture of the typical church just didn't relate that well with the young people of the day. Church folks wore nice suits, sat in pews, and sang hymns, and none of that appealed to the kids, either those inside the church or those outside. Thus one point of the Jesus People movement was to free the Christian message from those cultural trappings that didn't work too well. Grace Haven was right in the middle of all that, and blue jeans, love beads, dancing in the meadow and guitar music were the nor...

The summer my family arrived at the Farm, Robin Rothaar and Debbie Ankney (now Debbie McKee) began their first session of Kingdom Kampers. Robin and Debbie were long-time friends who taught physically handicapped children in the Mansfield City Schools. Kids who must use wheelchairs or crutches don't get to go to ordinary summer camps, and the two women wanted to give them the camping experience. Inside their non-cooperating bodies, these are still kids. That's difficult for outsiders to see, especially if the affliction interferes with their ability to communicate (cerebral palsy, for example), but the aim was to give them a dose of good outdoor camping fun just like other kids could have. They played games, did arts and crafts projects, went swimming, and had water balloon fights. Of course, all this activity needs a lot of volunteers to help with such things as pushing wheelchairs, and that is how my family got involved. Almost as soon as we were unpacked from the move, my wi...

I haven't given up on this project, even though it's been dormant for about a month. The last few weeks of an academic semester are very time-consuming for a teacher, and I've been grading papers and dealing with all the last-second emergencies that close out a term. I have several ideas for the near future, and one reader has pointed out that a lot of what I've written seems extremely gloomy, so here's a look at what I'm thinking. The 1980s was a very active and interesting time to be at Grace Haven, and looking back I was glad to be there. Because of the diffuse nature of the place, almost nobody got to have a finger in every pie, so my recollections will be very personal and very much conditioned by the fact that I was living on the Farm (and not in town) for most of it. Here are a few topics I hope to cover in the future: The Arts and Grace Haven Arkenstone and Commonlife magazines. Kingdom Kampers Later theological development of the Farm/Church

For me, coming from a big city to Mansfield, it was striking just how many stand-alone "pastoral counselors" there were. Grace Haven had one whose office was in the Lodge (which makes sense, I guess, because there wasn't really a pastor over the whole body). Anyhow, when I look at Google, there are still more than a dozen counseling offices, most of them lining Lexington Avenue. Ashland Seminary seems to be the source of all these counselors—two years (64 credits) and you're a professional. (Most of the courses are three hour "Introduction to" courses, and six of those credits are hands-on practicum hours.) The appeal to the Christian community is obvious. Aside from the Evangelical anti-expert bias, there has always been a suspicion that secular psychologists or psychiatrists would try to talk Christian patients out of their faith (which would actually be a serious breach of professional ethics). Secular mental health profes...

Public praying at Grace Haven wasn't much like prayer at other churches—the most memorable thing about it was lack of content. If someone was sick or had lost a job, you would almost never hear, "Please, Jesus, heal Mary" or "Please help Sam find work." No—almost all of what you would hear was "Thank you, Jesus" and "Praise you, Jesus." Not "Thank you, Jesus, that you will heal Mary" or "Praise you, Jesus, that Sam's future is in your hand"—just "Thank you, Jesus" and "Praise you, Jesus." I've seen people praying this way over a person who was desperately ill with cancer—"Praise you, Jesus"—and it seemed very odd, thanking Jesus that she was so sick. Eventually they did get around to asking that she would be healed, but they spent a lot of time thanking Jesus and praising him that she had gotten so ill. There are a lot of things one might thank Jesus for: n...

Chet When we moved to the Farm, Chet Weigle was introduced to us as the Farm Manager, and it always seemed that he was Hod Bolesky's employee. Perhaps in the old days of the Learners (an era which was ending as we arrived) he had done a lot for the Farm, but when we got there, his role was very quickly diminishing. He lived with his wife and children in a house at the top of the hill, and his basement was the home of Woodville Taxidermy, which, along with teaching at Mansfield Christian School, was his source of income. For the first year or two I was on the Farm, the Weigles were part of the Farm Dinner rotation and got a share of the garden and meat production, but we never saw Chet or the kids at any of the church events. His wife Carol was much more part of things, though, and was good friends with the farm wives. My first memory of an interaction with Chet is quite specific. My family was living in the big farmhouse at the far side of the meadow, beyond the ponds...

In the material that follows, I need to emphasize that I was always very much an outsider at Grace Fellowship. In my 30+ years at GFC, I was never an elder and never served on a committee, so all of my observations are very much the views of an "ordinary church member." This is, in itself, an interesting commentary on GFC leadership. In most churches, a constant question is is how to find people who are willing to fill leadership positions. Whether it's a Presbyterian Session or an Episcopalian Vestry, the membership rotates, and the result is that a large proportion of the congregation knows how leadership works. (And of course, the challenge faced by the pastor and other leaders is to keep those leadership spots filled.) There's less of an "us versus them" feeling about leadership when most of the eligible people sooner or later end up on the leadership council. Grace Fellowship was different. The elders, always a very small gr...