Chapter 5:

ANOTHER CANDLE

 

Once I had Theresa and Cassandra settled in Bremerton, I went to Kirkland to meet with the Assistant Superintendent for the Northwest District of the Assemblies of God.

He said, “Ken, we’re wanting to open a new church in Chimacum, Washington, just across Hood Canal. Would you consider starting and pastoring the church there?”

“Sure, I’ll consider it,” I said.

I took some time to pray about this, and I talked with Theresa and several others about it. One person I talked with was my friend Scott Fontenot. We had both attended Hillcrest Assembly for several years, and he and I had been credentialed the same day in 1986, just a year earlier. I trusted and respected him. When he heard about the possibility of starting a new church, his eyes brightened. He had a clear and contagious passion for the idea.

“Why don’t we do a co-pastorate?” he asked. “Let’s go up and look at Chimacum, get a feel for the area, and you and I can build a church together!”

I couldn’t help but agree. So we headed up there and found a beautiful farming community. And then as soon as we got into town, we noticed this huge brick building with a lush, manicured lawn and well-groomed landscaping. It was a Mormon church. Well, here we were, two young, enthusiastic AG pastors confronted with a big Mormon church with an empty parking lot. We couldn’t help ourselves. We drove into that parking lot, got out of the car, and began praying around that building, claiming it for Christ!

We continued driving around after that, looking over and praying over the town. It looked like a great place to live and minister, and at that point, we both seemed to agree that starting a church here would be our next step. But then reality struck as I got home. I continued praying about the plan and became more and more uneasy.

We’re both really young, I realized (which doesn’t strike me as much of a realization now, but it was at the time). Starting a church is a big deal. I mean, I couldn’t even make it as a Youth pastor; am I really ready for this step? Starting from scratch, that’s a big challenge, and as young as we are… It’s going to take a lot of know-how, and Scott and I are both inexperienced. I think this is too soon.

I talked to Scott, and he said he had been feeling the same way. Besides which, he was very active at Hillcrest, and he had just begun StreetLight Ministries in Bremerton. Neither of us felt that the Lord was leading us to Chimacum, so I contacted the Assistant Superintendent to decline the offer.

Soon after that I attended a Minister’s Fellowship meeting in Bremerton, where I happened to see Pastor Jim Hill. I had originally met Jim in the late seventies, when he had first begun as Senior pastor at Neighborhood Christian Center in the middle of downtown Bremerton. Bill Shaw had introduced us back then. I had now heard that Jim’s Youth pastor had recently resigned and moved on to another position, and I went over during one of the breaks and asked him if I could talk to him about that.

“Sure,” he said. “Why don’t you come to my church after the meeting?”

So after the meeting, I hopped into my car and headed across town to Jim’s church. As I drove up, I admired the look of the church: an early-1900s brick building with a big steeple and beautiful stained-glass windows. I parked, then walked in through the big double doors and downstairs to Jim’s office. We began talking, and soon the conversation came to the Youth pastor position.

Jim said, “Yes, there is the Youth position, but I’ve been doing a lot of praying. And in that, the Lord has been showing me a new priority: I need to start working on reaching the children. If I can reach the children, I can reach the entire family. I want to start building a Children’s ministry, a stronger one than we’ve ever had. Would you consider being a Children’s pastor?”

I had never even considered that before. Theresa and I had cared for foster children, and we had Cassandra, so I knew I could handle kids in small numbers at least. The offer sounded interesting, so I told him I’d consider it. I went home and talked with Theresa. After some discussion and prayer, we both felt it was a good decision to take the job. I contacted Pastor Jim and told him we accepted. The church could only afford $300 a month, but that was okay with me; ministry wasn’t about the money. I would just have to find an additional part-time job.

At the same time, Jim also brought on a Youth intern from Northwest College, whose name was Paul. As soon as we met, we hit it off. Paul was a short, skinny guy with a dark moustache and a great personality. It was a good thing we got along well, because we shared an office.

Paul did have this one quirk, though, and it really confused and frustrated me until I grew to understand it. You see, Paul loved to debate, especially theology. I could make a pretty innocuous statement about anything, and he would make a case for the exact opposite view, regardless of which view he actually believed. At other times, without prompting, he would just throw out a view so completely off-the-wall that I thought he must be an idiot. I mean, he’d just said he believed something different an hour ago! I sometimes thought the kid was off his rocker. He would even get the pastor doing it!

But I didn’t have a clue what they were doing; I had never been exposed to real debate. Imagine how I felt: suddenly, after I come on staff, I discover that the pastor holds all of these contradictory theological views, many of which don’t even make sense on their own! So here I was, trying to argue for orthodox Christian doctrine—what I knew was right but hadn’t sharpened my understanding enough to defend. And I just found myself getting angry.

But slowly, it dawned on me. They weren’t really arguing! They didn’t believe these things! What for me had been an exercise in frustration had, for Paul and Jim, just been an exercise in apologetics. As I began to understand Paul’s game, it became fun. Soon, I found in it all the benefits he and Pastor Jim did: the debates sharpened my reasoning, my ability to defend my faith, and my understanding of others. It was an amazing, humbling moment when I realized that Paul, though several years younger, was the one teaching me.

I loved my time at Neighborhood. Not only did I work with outstanding people, but God truly blessed the Children’s ministry there. I saw our group grow from a handful to over 40 who came regularly. We developed a puppet theater with its own stage and cast of characters. We had live theater. We did outreach. We saw kids come to Christ.

One of the biggest blessings that God gave me began when a man from the church came to me and asked if he could help in the Children’s ministry. His name was Rick Long. Rick was wonderfully creative, incredibly funny, and extremely big. He was an amateur bodybuilder and performer. Rick could rip phonebooks in half, break handcuffs, and do all kinds of impressive strongman feats. He even taught me how to do some (though not very well)! The kids loved it.

But Rick had brains as well as brawn. His creativity in the dramatic arts allowed him to come up with some great characters. Our favorite was one that I brought to life on stage: Professor Egghead. The Professor was an eccentric German scientist with a bald head, thick moustache, and wire-rim glasses. Though we soon shied away from the character’s original slapstick conception (with an actual egg on his head), the silly Professor Egghead could always be counted on to make the kids laugh.

 

God chose this time in our lives to bring another blessing: our son, Kenny Ray. Theresa’s pregnancy with Kenny had been pretty uneventful since we left Montesano. However, because Cassandra had required an emergency C-section, Kenny would have to come that way too; most doctors refuse to perform a vaginal delivery after a C-section has been done. So we scheduled the procedure in advance for August 24, 1987, and the pregnancy was uneventful until the delivery. In the operating room, I stood ready to photograph the miracle of birth as the doctor pulled the baby out. Snap, snap went the shutters of my camera, and then I paused, confused, when my son went limp in the doctor’s hands.

A frenzied rush of attendants surrounded one of the tables in the room, with my son in their midst. Unsure what was happening, I moved to get a closer look and discovered that they were performing CPR on my son! His tiny, wrinkly body was turning blue!

When Cassandra was born I had been filled with a peace; I remembered God’s promise not to take a child from me in the same way as Jennifer Ann. This time, I found myself gripped with a bone-deep fear. Time seemed to stretch.

I turned as white as a sheet.

One of the nurses looked at me.

She knew I would faint in a second.

“Mr. Walls, sit down,” she said.

I didn’t respond.

“I said, ‘Sit down!’”

I sat.

Alarms rang.

The frenzy continued around Kenny.

Theresa leaned over.

She asked, “What’s going on?”

Only seconds had passed since the birth.

“I don’t know!” I snapped.

But Theresa felt God’s peace, and she began to pray in the Spirit.

The pediatrician rushed into the room.

Funny, that same pediatrician treated me.

He grabbed Kenny.

He rushed out of the room.

I got up.

I rushed after him.

Outside the operating room, the whole family had gathered with smiles on their faces, ready to see the new baby and thinking everything was fine. The pediatrician and nurses who had gotten out before me sped past them to the Nursery Ward. Before the grins had slid from the family’s faces, I had gone past in hot pursuit.

The chase ended with Kenny in an incubator in the Nursery and me peering through a window in the adjacent hallway. The doctors had hooked him up to just about every device possible. What’s going on? He’s not going to make it! God, why are You doing this? My faith in His goodness was at just about an all-time low.

What I didn’t realize is that they had measured Kenny on the Apgar scale in the operating room. The Apgar scores a child from 0 to 2 in five areas, for a possible total of 10 points: Appearance (complexion), Pulse, Grimace (response to physical stimulation), Activity (limbs’ resistance to movement), Respiration. Kenny had initially scored a 1; he was a dead baby with a pulse, basically. But within five minutes, miraculously, he went from a 1 to an 8, and it was only after he’d more or less stabilized that they moved him. When they wheeled Theresa out of the operating room minutes later, she of course wanted to see Kenny. They were still working to keep him alive (it was a near thing several times), but they did allow her to see him before taking her into her room.

Normally, newborns are brought to mothers very soon after birth, but Theresa didn’t get to hold Kenny for about twelve hours. When a friend of ours, a nurse at the hospital, found out it had been twelve hours, she said, “Enough of this!” She marched out of the room, went into the Nursery, took Kenny (after clearing that it was safe), and walked him down to Theresa herself. Theresa loved him immediately.

 

While this birth was a time of great joy for our family, it also turned out to be the beginning of a great trial. Things seemed to go very well for a while. Kenny was the most adorable baby the world had seen since Cassandra, and everyone loved him. But he didn’t seem to be progressing in his development at the normal rate. Most babies can sit up by themselves at six to eight months old. Kenny couldn’t. He couldn’t perform exercises requiring fine use of motor skills. The doctors postulated all sorts of things: retardation, cystic fibrosis, results of the lack of oxygen at birth, whatever.

In addition to the development issue, Kenny was diagnosed with Hirschprung’s Disease. The US National Library of Medicine (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) defines it as “a blockage of the large intestine due to improper muscle movement in the bowel.” Basically, a portion of his colon was missing the ganglion cells that allowed it to function. He couldn’t have a bowel movement unless stimulated by a thermometer or something. We didn’t know what to do. The only option the doctors could give was surgery.

We scheduled the surgery and dreaded its arrival. We knew that our little Kenny—just a baby!—would come out of that room with a colostomy bag. But the day did arrive, and we got him set up at Children’s Hospital in Seattle. While Kenny was in surgery, though, I couldn’t stand the thought that he might not survive this ordeal. I went down to the hospital’s chapel. I knelt down and cried out to God for nearly an hour. I was so upset! I remembered His promise: “I will not take another child of yours in that way again.” I knew that meant He wouldn’t take a child at birth.

“But God,” I cried, “this is worse! I have memories with this boy! I love my son! Are you now going to take him from me?”

Not long after that, I got up to go back to Kenny’s room, where Theresa waited. On the way, a nurse at the nurse’s station called to me: “Mr. Walls, the doctor is on the phone from the OR and wants to talk to you about the surgery.”

When I picked up the phone, the doctor said, “Mr. Walls, I don’t know what’s going on but… I can’t find anything wrong. We did a final test before we went in, and the ganglion cells are there… So we don’t know what’s wrong.”

You would think I’d immediately jump for joy. My son had been healed! But my faith at that point had been so beaten up that my first response was, Now what? So they brought him back up to our room. Most of the family present were uncertain what to feel. I was moping. Theresa, though, had her boy back. She got down to business making sure his needs were met. Sure enough, his diaper was wet, and she started to change it. He had never had a problem urinating, so it’s not like this was an earth-shattering event. But when she opened the diaper, it was full of feces! I did a double-take and then turned to the nurse.

“Would what they did in there have caused him to have a bowel movement?” I asked.

“No, not at all,” she said.

I turned to Theresa, and we were both beaming. It was a miracle! I don’t think any parents have rejoiced so much at having to change a dirty diaper!

A few months after that, every dirty diaper still reminded us of God’s healing power, but Kenny still couldn’t sit up on his own. The development issues persisted. There didn’t seem to be anything we could do. The congregation joined us in praying for another miracle. Kenny’s very life was a miracle, and we had just seen God do another one. One more shouldn’t have been a problem. And then, during one Sunday evening service, we all stood, praising our Lord, when Rick Long noticed something odd. He nudged me and pointed to Kenny, who was in Theresa’s arms. “It looks like he’s being entertained by angels.” And it sure did: Kenny was looking up at the ceiling, smiling, and reaching as if to touch someone. I knew God had His hand on my son.

A couple weeks later, the miracle arrived. Kenny sat up. The other developments seemed to come almost overnight after that. He seemed to rush to catch up—sitting, crawling, walking, all of it. He just spontaneously transformed into a functional, healthy, active boy. He began to run around like other kids at church. In fact, I remember a time, when Kenny hadn’t yet turned two, that I was up at the front of the altar during a service. I heard snickering start to grow in the congregation. I looked around for the source of all the commotion, and what did I see? There was my son, buck naked, striding down the center aisle of the church! I came to find out that he had wet his pants, so he had stripped out of his clothes in the bathroom and come looking for me. He ran up to me on the platform, and I picked him up and hugged him, ignoring the grins and laughter of the congregation.

I didn’t care. I could only smile and be proud to hold him. This was my son. This was my miracle.