Jul 16, 2009

Covenant Stories: Joe's Napkin

With Trinity Baptist Church on board to help with financing, we were ready to move forward with the construction of our first building. Before we could build, the property needed a topographical survey, but our land was so covered with vegetation that it was practically impenetrable. Apart from a narrow road down the right side of the property and a small clearing at the back, it was a solid mass of trees, cactus, vines, and thorny plants. A few years earlier, I put on heavy clothing and boots and managed to make my way from the back of the property to the front. It took me an hour, and I spent much of that time crawling. Not stooping, but crawling on my belly. As far as I know, I’m the only person who ever made the attempt. And I only did it once. I did find a massive Juniper tree near the center of the property that day. We now call it “Old Man Cedar.” That tree will have its own story later on.

We consulted a surveying company and were told that we would need to cut a path down the left fence. Then, every 100 feet along the road on the right and the fence on the left, we had to cut a 100-foot lane into the center of the land. There would be 12 of these lanes when we were done. This would allow the survey crew enough points to take measurements and extrapolate the elevation for the entire property. It took 5 of us an entire day to clear the left fence line using a chainsaw, loppers, and my new machete. Having recently lost the distinction of being the only Baptist church in the world meeting in a bar, I was pleased to become one of the very few Baptist pastors who owned a machete, needed it, and used it regularly. Several more weekends were needed before we hacked and cut 100-foot lanes into the brush. We were tired, sunburned, and full of cactus needles, but we got the land surveyed.

Then came the big question. What would our building look like? We had Claud’s vision in mind, and everyone agreed that we should have a fireplace in our worship room. We also wanted to leave the land rugged, clearing as little as possible. And we wanted the building to look ruggedly elegant, with native limestone and a metal roof. There was a little problem though. We had very little money. Even with Trinity’s help, we could only afford about $250,000 for a building. As it turns out, artistic buildings that are carefully blended into the surrounding vegetation are expensive. With a limited budget, what you usually have to do is bulldoze a large space for a parking lot and building and use a “cookie cutter” church design selected from a catalog. We looked at some of these designs but found nothing that matched our vision.

Someone on the building committee at Trinity suggested we talk to Joe Stubblefield, an architect in town who might be interested and who might work within our budget. We met with Joe, and he listened to us talk for about 20 minutes. He stated our problem very simply:

“If I understand it, you have limited funds, so the building needs to be simple. At the same time, you want it to have elegance and fit gently into the landscape.”

Joe came out to the land and walked around on it, at least on the parts where a person could walk. Then we went to lunch at a barbeque joint. Joe pulled out a napkin and made a crude sketch. It looked like this:

“This building would be about 300 feet long and 50 feet wide,” he said. "Your fireplace can be at one end. A rectangular building is about as simple and inexpensive as it gets. That's why mobile homes are shaped like that. And it looks rather boring. BUT, if we were to build a large covered porch jutting out from the side, the building would suddenly gain a lot of personality and be very elegant, in a simple way.”

He drew some more on the napkin. When he was finished it looked like this:

We passed the napkin around the table. While we looked at it, he said, “And I wouldn’t think you’d put this building too close to the highway either. It should be back in the trees where it's quiet.”

Joe’s napkin was like Claud’s vision. Everyone immediately knew that this was what our church should look like. The next week, using our topographical survey, Joe positioned the proposed building near the middle of our property. A man on the Trinity building committee, Bob Parker, agreed to be our contractor. He and I went out to the land with a surveyor’s chain and some orange flags. After some careful measurements, I was once again crawling on my belly through the brush, this time to place marker flags at the corners of the building site. I remember standing about where our kid’s playground is today and squinting hard, trying to see the flags through the foliage.

“Wow!” I thought. “That’s where our church will be.”

Gordon Atkinson

Next week: We decide to clear the building site by hand, turning a half-day job with a bulldozer into a 6-week project.