The Dome

Well, things were growing at Northfold New Testament Church and so was my family. Dar and I now had a houseful of munchkins. Our two boys, Aaron and Nathan, and our new little girl Callie were filling the Buhl house with all kinds of new, noisy, and wonderful experiences. The church needed a building to house all the new people and I can remember the late night elders meetings praying about a solution to that problem. The most economical of all our options was a geodesic dome that would annex our existing building and so the dome was built. I have a painful reminder of my participation in helping with the construction. I was using a sledge hammer to drive a stake into the ground and while holding the stake with my left hand I proceeded to smash the webbing between my thumb and index finger with the hammer and so I experienced the opposite of no pain, no gain.

The dome was literally assembled by the congregation. It brought us all together. It was a lot of fun. We were pioneering a new work and we were over-joyed with God's presence in our lives. It was an exciting time because what we were doing wasn't as common place back then as it is now. The break from traditional church style as well as a traditional looking building was kind of rare at the time and often looked at with skepticism.

The initial time spent in the dome was hallmarked by an up surge in worship. I led the worship most of the time during the services and the congregation had a huge appetite for praise and worship music. They loved honoring God this way and enjoyed the worship experience. It made my job much easier because the air of expectation was so high and the Lord received our praise with great gratitude. The Spirit was present much of the time and so things would happen spontaneously during our worship. Northfold was a worshiping church and I sensed all the while that we were touching the heart of the Father. Pastor Ron's teaching style on Sunday morning was low key, cutting edge and inspirational. The dome was nothing more than a better place to assemble. It seated about 400 and it was usually filled on Sunday's. In hindsight, I really don't think that the building itself ever became an obstacle between us and the Lord.

All was well at the dome for a good while but hell was about to break loose. We didn't know enough about spiritual warfare at the time to prepare ourselves for the eventual onslaught of attack that would shake our most foundational beliefs and test our loyalty. The next part of our journey was not going to be smooth. In fact, our will to go on was about to be tested.

There is one invaluable lesson that I started to learn from the Lord during this time and it had to do with God's basis of promotion. God promotes out of faithfulness more than any other virtue. Talent is good to have but can be deemed worthless if there is no commitment. We often call these heavily commited folks "over achievers". God calls them faithful. Our congregation at the dome was about to get it's first real test at faithfulness.

Next up.....

We Lose a Loved One....