My second stop on Monday was at the Newark, SDA Church in Ohio where Pr. Tom Hughes is turning the tide and direction of the church. Tom is a fan of bikes for sure and serves as a chaplain for the Christian Motorcycle Association. He has worked hard to make the Newark Church increasingly loving and open to all who come. They have a lovely sanctuary and although the workers could happily use more help you will not find more dedicated and committed workers anywhere. The first pic shows Tammy (Pathfinder and Youth Leader), Leon (Head Elder and a hospital chaplain), and Lynda (who does a whole lot of everything else). As always it is a challenge to steer the direction of a long established church, but I can see lots of good indications in process here.
From there I went on to the Dayton area to stay overnight with Monte and Norma Sahlin. Monte is best known as the research guru for the Adventist Church and has been an enormous help to me in this project. I met his daughter, Melissa, and her husband, Gianluca, who is the pastor of a church nearby and the Agora project, which is a bookstore, teaching center, church, outreach and ministry that is doing some exciting things. Their attendance has doubled over the past couple of years and, again, the key is building relationships outside of the church proper. This is a neat young couple and God is really blessing them, and others through them.
I just had to include a couple of pictures of Monte's library. He has about 10,000 volumes down there and I've seen a lot of school libraries that could be envious of what he has available. We had a great time talking about his research and my project. In fact we talked until nearly midnight and then picked it up again around 6 a.m. Sleep is highly overrated don't you think?
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