Bridget and I arrived in San Francisco in late August, joining Calvary Baptist Church there. We found our first apartment in the Marlesta apartments in Pinole. She succeeded at finding a job as a teller at Mechanics Bank. I found one at the Big Five sporting goods. We rented the multipurpose room at Ohlone Elementary School in Hercules. We printed brochures and hired someone to paint two street signs. Our first service we set for Sunday, October 18, 1987. We copied flyers as an invitation for that date.
My wife and I moved into our first apartment. Both of us started working about thirty hours a week. Our missions support would cover only part of the immediate expenses of the new church. I knocked on the first door next to Ohlone School and started covering the town of Hercules with the gospel. For the first month and a half, I invited everyone to our first service.
After arrival, I heard people use the terminology, North Bay. I thought Hercules was North Bay. Early I wanted a name that included a larger geography, so I chose “North Bay Baptist Church.” No one told me, “Hercules isn’t North Bay.” It wasn’t. Hercules is East Bay. Despite that, we still used that name for the first year and a half of our church. We designed a logo with the name.
At least 100 people promised to come for our first service. I was too ignorant not to know how unlikely that was. I expected it. Bridget’s uncle and aunt, who lived down in Santa Cruz, would drive up. We had one family from the sending church who lived in Hercules. They would come. Until that first service on October 18, Bridget and I attended all the services at Calvary Baptist Church in San Francisco.
Every late Saturday night, I set out two wooden portable handmade signs in front of the Ohlone school. I also did this for the very first service. One was larger that sat near the street pointing toward the parking lot. The other sat closer to the multipurpose room, visible from the parking lot, pointing toward the multipurpose room. It was a sandwich board style with the same image on both sides, hinged and propped up against each other.
My wife and I were paying for the multipurpose room in a public elementary school by the hour on Sunday. We rented it for five hours in the morning and two hours at night. This time allowed for us to set up and take down every week. The school had a piano and a podium. We brought a table in front of the podium.
I hung a banner behind the podium that said, “Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth,” which was the scriptural theme from the beginning of our church. In the back we had a table with literature and offering plates. All the tables had table cloths. The front table had some kind of flower arrangement on it. This was a ritual every Sunday.
The philosophy I held for the building was that God built the church through His Word. Such a building, good or average, would not stop someone with a true motive from visiting or coming. Even though 100 people promised to come the first Sunday, 7 came.
As you read this, having 7 new people come to church might sound good today. I really did think they would all come. One family of four, the one that lived in Hercules from the sending church, came the first Sunday. We had several others, family and people traveling from other churches, but only the seven invited who said they would come our first Sunday.
What would happen next? I folllowed up on the seven and the 93 or so others who said they would come, but didn’t. From that point, I could start telling the story of those who came, those who stayed a little while, and those who were with us for years. Some from that first year are still in the church. No one from that first Sunday stayed. A couple kept coming off and on that first year, then they were done. The work had begun though.
That first Sunday I started preaching through John and my first sermon was in John 1:1. I continued that series on Sunday mornings until I was done. Every sermon was typed with a manual typewriter on regular typing paper.
I believed preaching was most important to the founding, strength, and continuation of our church. Long term, I believed it was most important in every way. Jesus told Peter, Feed my sheep. I didn’t have many sheep yet, but I knew this church would grow from evangelism, yes, but also from exposition of scripture.
People had personal computers in 1987. I knew one person with a computer at that time. It wasn’t until later that first year that I bought a used IBM Selectric with a removeable ball. The first half of that first year I typed a bulletin every week on a manual typewriter. All my flyers were literally cut and paste. That’s where the terminology, cut and paste, came from. Each letter was cut from a sheet of stylish letters and then pasted. We really have it good today when it comes to laying out printed materials.
My wife and I were working, so we had regular work hours at the bank and the sporting goods store. We lived in an second floor single bedroom apartment in Pinole. We bought a used bed, used mattress, used sofa, used kitchen table, used chairs, and a used lamp. I think all our furniture cost us two or three hundred dollars total. When I wasn’t at work, I jumped into the Dodge Omni and went door to door. Sometimes my wife came with me. We started covering every house and apartment in Hercules, moving out concentrically from the building where we met.
During the first year, up the street from Ohlone School I rang a doorbell with my wife and preached the entire gospel to a man, I remember, named Brian. I know his last name too, even though this was the last time I ever talked to him. Why? He prayed a prayer. He made a profession of faith. My wife was with me and afterwards, I asked her, “Do you think he really got saved?” She said, “No.” We argued a little bit, but the reason I still remember it is because Brian didn’t really receive Christ.
I had evangelized for years, since I was a teenager. I preached to hundreds of people. Nothing compared to what I was doing in the San Francisco Bay Area. I felt like I knew little to nothing about what I needed to do. I began studying evangelism, reading my Bible, studying books, and listening to recordings. How would a church start without anyone hearing the gospel and receiving Christ? That was why we came to California.
To Be Continued
Recent Comments