ONE MAN'S REFLECTION ON A HISTORY OF CLOVERDALE BAPTIST CHURCH

CBC’s first service held in new sanctuary - photo from church website

A memorial service for a friend was my reason for entering the brand new facility that now contains the congregation of the Cloverdale Baptist Church. It is commendably well designed, spacious and sensible. Christine and I were there along with friends from numerous activity and interest groups to honour Ted Hewlett and reflect on our memories of him. Ted and Mary have been members of CBC for many years, dating to the ten-year span during which I served as lead pastor there.

Cloverdale Baptist Church being dismantled 

Well, not truly there, but rather in the structure that has been disassembled to make way for the new building and its required parking. In recent months, having intermittent glimpses of the vanishing older facility, my nostalgic memories gave way to thoughtful thanksgiving for all that happened in 85 years.

Cloverdale Baptist Church was a dream that became realized. It began simply enough, as a home Bible study for interested people whose increasing numbers birthed the notion of starting a Bible-believing church with a building in Cloverdale. These pioneers were convinced this was God's idea which he invested into their willing hearts. First, in 1929 several families rented the Liberal Hall in Cloverdale to hold worship services led by area pastors. The Home Missions Committee of an association known as Regular Baptists had been considering starting a church work in the area, and suggested that this fledgling fellowship affiliate with them. The group was formally recognized as a Baptist work on March 10, 1931.

Church leaders and members rose to the challenge with an eager desire to reach their community, so they visited homes and made contacts and extended invitations to attend and over a period of time, people responded to warmth and friendship, believed the good news that was preached, were baptized as new believers and became active members. Church membership grew throughout the 1940's so one acre of land was purchased at 17400-60th Avenue, where the congregation built a new facility and dedicated it to the Lord on October 11, 1962. That building was a catalyst to further growth which included various ministries for special groups, missionaries commissioned overseas, and daughtering other churches. 

Cloverdale Baptist Church, 1981-2015

Then in August 1981 the congregation moved to the present site which then was comprised of 12.8 acres, and there a new 22,500 sq. ft. building with a five acre footprint that included an auditorium seating 550-600 people, ample parking, a gymnasium, Christian education classroom facilities, a smaller chapel/fellowship room and a kitchen. Christine and I came in autumn 1991 to a church of 200 in a building surrounded by bush and farmland. On March 15, 1992 at an Anniversary Service charter members Helmut and Emily Seiler represented the congregation as they put a match to the mortgage certificate for the building as a symbolic gesture indicated the full payment of that debt, and everyone then praised God for his faithfulness in helping this congregation see accomplish this. The following years became filled with a Daycare program, a School of Music, a Skate Church to reach youth, a highly effective youth program, High Power Soccer camps in the community, a Seniors program and growing Sunday attendance. Bush and fields gave way around us to almost overnight housing communities and shopping plazas. 

A full auditorium and visionary people birthed two initiatives. First, in 1995 the launch of a congregation in Murrayville comprised of 50 adults plus their children who volunteered to go with a pastor and $100,000 to begin a brand new work. 

Southridge Fellowship Baptist

Today Southridge Baptist Church occupies a functional new building in Murrayville. Second, because this was a burgeoning area, blueprints were drawn for a new sanctuary seating 1200 people to be added to the existing building using the courtyard as a large glass-topped lobby. Concurrent with that, plans for the seven remaining acres of grasses, included three three-story saleable multi-unit condominium buildings and one similar size subsidized or affordable housing complex. All four buildings would be centred with a vast park area with walkway making it accessible to the surrounding community.

Cloverdale Baptist Church 2015

Some plans belong to God and some are set aside. The latter one was not realized. I concluded my service in 2001. In recent years, new leadership opted to sell seven acres to a developer, and to meet the demands of today with the construction of this new facility. Many new memories will be made in the years to come, yet for many of us, it is appropriate to be thankful for lives that were changed and challenged, and relationships that were deepened and healed because of God's presence and the faithfulness of his people in all of those earlier years.

A Father’s Day Tribute - HE IS A LEGACY. HE DIDN’T JUST LEAVE ONE.

A NEW LEARNING
Here I am sixty-six years of age and I am remembering my father. I’m glad. He was memorable. Such an ordinary man but unforgettable. He is forgotten to the company for which he worked for forty-five years. He is not thought about within the church he attended for sixty years. I call him to mind often. That makes sense. As time passes, I do things that resemble him sometimes. At ninety-three years of age he was gone one evening last May. I miss his face. I miss him. I am delighted to say that.

A small man at five feet six inches in height, my father had three sons each of whom exceeded his stature. Yet as small boys, we saw him as a big man. How pleasurable it is now to recall that even in our adult years he was large in our hearts. He served in the Canadian Air Force during the Second World War. He and Mom operated a post war coffee shop and a gas service station in a Prairie town. Then believing that opportunity existed in the east, Dad and Mom began again in Ontario and Dad took a factory job. Some years after he retired from his demanding physical work in a furnace manufacturing factory he answered this question. “Why did you keep working so hard at that place?” “I did it for my boys, “he said. Life’s purpose and responsibility was not more complex than that for Dad. Three boys grew up, gained and education and made him proud. We gave him daughters in law whom he loved and six grandchildren and they provided him with nine great grandchildren.

He loved our mother with all his heart for the sixty-five years they were together before he lost her to illness. He encouraged and assisted her entrepreneurial career. He was a man of faith and he was content. He was satisfied with the simple pleasures that a small income afforded to him. He never fulfilled two dreams, a trip to Hawaii and fishing in Alaska. Dad always loved ice cream. When I was six years of age Dad and I walked to an ice cream store. We were no sooner around the block finishing our cones when he said to me, “That tastes like more doesn’t it?” We turned around to acquire two more cones. I was ten years old when Dad operated a commercial crane 130 feet off the ground. He spotted me outside the company fence to which I had peddled my bike to watch him. He looked around and then motioned for me to come through the hole in the fence and I scampered up the long ladder into the cabin of the crane to sit with him until closing time. We remember him jingling coins in his pocket. He whistled familiar songs and we knew the world was good. He could yodel but few people were privileged to hear it.

He inspired my brothers and I to be dedicated Dads and we have sought to model faithful fathering to our sons who are now young dads themselves. They are doing it, perhaps better than we did. Thank you Dad. You live on.

(printed in The Cloverdale Reporter June 19, 2009, http://www.bclocalnews.com/opinion/48292882.html)

ARTISTS IN MY COMMUNITY

A NEW LEARNING
Before I retired I frequented local galleries and saw the names of local artists and admired their work. Since then I have perused their websites and appreciated the volume of art that they have produced in recent years. Most of these artists, like me, have worked at other professions while painting on the side and then in retirement, occupied their time with this pursuit.

One afternoon not long ago, I met Darren Perkins, a Langley artist who kindly accepted my invitation to talk. At a Starbucks we sat together and spoke about art, our lives and other artists. Darren is a retired school teacher. In earlier years he and his wife operated a successful pottery business. Darren is a landscape painter and I have seen his work in a couple of shows in recent years. So this was a treat for me to become acquainted with an established artist. (Paintings: above Perkins' Swimming Hole' and right 'Still Point', Gabriola)

In conversation I learned that two of his close friends are former school teachers as well, and they are the celebrated local painters, Jack Turpin and Perry Haddock. Each Thursday the three of them paint together. They share life, critique each other’s work occasionally, and encourage one another in this shared creativity.

I am sharing their respective websites with you in hopes that you will enjoy the displays.


Darren Perkins
Jack Turpin (Painting: 'Pender Island', left)
Perry Haddock (Painting: 'Shore Grasses')


Actually Turpin and Haddock have a show in the Birthplace of BC Gallery in Fort Langley right now. You should visit their work in this attractive gallery owned by Kurt and Brenda Alberts.

The top two images above are used with permission of Darren Perkins and the painting images are copyright of the painter and not to be downloaded without permission of the artist. Jack Turpin and Perry Haddock painting images used with permission of the artists and downloading is conditioned upon permission by respective artists. Toggle their underlined names above for their sites.