We Give, We Receive, and God Takes Care of the Details
Written by Steve Nofel is Co-Pastor of the Montezuma Valley Presbyterian Church in Cortez, CO.   
Wednesday, 31 March 2010 17:41
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From Easter of 2008 until September of 2009, our Montezuma Valley Presbyterian Church in Cortez, Colorado, declared a “Year of Jubilee.”  We dedicated 18 months to the study and focus on the six “Great Ends of the Church.”  Those historical statements took on life and breath and changed us forever.

We entered into our focus on the second “Great End,” just as summer of 2008 rolled around, and it was time for that great annual event every congregation calls: Vacation Bible School.  It was through the Bible School ministry that we were both on the giving and receiving end of the second “Great End.”  At the time we renamed it: ShelterED, NurturED, and SHARING in Spiritual Fellowship with the Children of God.  And it all started with a tragedy.

In May 2007, three young men broke into our church through a window in the sanctuary.  They stole mission money collected by the Sunday school children, stole and later burned pew Bibles, and left satanic messages on our walls and pulpit Bible.  The caring and outreach from the members of our congregation and community, and from Presbyterian congregations all over the country helped hold us up during that dark time.

Coincidently, the break-in and vandalism took place while my wife, Kim, was attending the Great Plains Wee Kirk Conference and I was preparing to leave for the Mountain States Wee Kirk Conference the next week.  The outpouring in both Sioux Falls and Denver was a true example of the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God. 

Several months later Paul Helphinstine, a young pastor from First Presbyterian Church in Johnson City, Tennessee, called us from out of the blue.  Paul said something about a youth mission trip and asked if there was anything they could do for our church and our community?  “I’m sorry Paul,” I said, “but we are all cleaned up from the vandalism.  We have cleaned and repainted walls, and even dedicated our new pulpit Bible.”

There was a silence and then Paul asked, “What vandalism? We hadn’t heard about that at all.  I saw your church on the PC (USA) web site, and discovered your mission goals matched ours.”  Over the next several weeks we made plans for the Johnson City youth to come to Colorado to lead Vacation Bible School for our congregation, to do some cleaning and painting at our church, to visit and work at mission agencies in Cortez, and to spend time at two of our congregation’s mission church partners.

The group from Johnson City arrived on a Saturday.  They had come to minister to us, and minister they did!  They worked at the Presbyterian / Methodist Church on the Ute Mountain Reservation.  They worked at the soup kitchen in Cortez. They helped pass out food at the Cortez food pantry.  They worked at our mission church up in the mountains in the boom and bust mining town of Rico.  And every night they led our Bible School.

At the same time, we grasped the opportunity to minister to them!  Every night, after the kiddies went home, different members of our congregation had supper ready for the Johnson City folks.  They ate well! It was a hoot being around the table with people who lived, laughed, loved, worshipped, and served Jesus from half a continent away.  By the end of their week with us, we all realized that the “Shelter, Nurture, and Spiritual Fellowship of the Children of God” goes two ways.  We do give of ourselves and we do receive.  And God takes care of the details!  And it doesn’t end when a mission trip is over.

For the next year, our Cortez congregation and the Johnson City congregation kept each other’s members on our two prayer lists.  We mourned and celebrated with them when Pastor Paul received a new call, and we made plans for partnership for a second year.  Pastor Gary Arner brought the group back in June 2009.  At first glance it looked like simply a rerun of the previous year’s sheltering, nurturing, and care.  The youth group did many of the same activities.  Of course, there was more to it than that.

Many of the same young people made the trip for the second year, and they remembered and made our younger children feel very special by calling them by name after not talking to them for a year.  Some of the youth who were new to Cortez were able to experience exciting and tiring ministry in fellowship with others.  Our folks spent more and more time after dinner praying and visiting with the “group.”

When they returned home, Pastor Gary sent us a collage of pictures along with an incredible epistle.  He wrapped up this whole shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship thing just beautifully:

“We arrived at your doorstep two years ago having found you through a listing on a website, knowing almost nothing about you, save that you, like we, seek to know, trust, honor, love, and obey Jesus.  Through that mysterious Holy Spirit led unity of purpose and after a mere dozen days of contact over a two year period we find ourselves to be affectionately and inexorably united with you.”

“We write to encourage you in the good works that you are doing to love and serve Jesus.  From eighteen hundred miles away we can see your light shining brightly.  We give thanks for you and we pray for you.”

“Finally it is my personal request of you that you regularly pray for our youth…pray that their faith may be secure and ever strengthening.  Pray that they may know the hope, peace, love, and joy of Jesus everywhere and in everything.”


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