Pioneers on a joyful path of discovery

A fresh breath of positive change can add an invigorating new dimension to a life, including the life of a church.

The excitement and enthusiasm are contagious as Palmer United Methodist Church sets down stakes in the Country Cutts building at the corner of South Alaska Street and West Cedar. The church meets on the lower level beneath the Blueberry Moose Espresso/Coffee and Cream Café, which provides its small, faithful congregation with the perfect opening to describe itself as an underground church where you can worship, have a latte and get a haircut and massage.

Bright new signs are up, increasing both the visibility of the church to the community and a sense of placement to the congregation. The meeting room has been simply decorated to create a warm, welcoming and comfortable environment where people can relax and be themselves; better acoustics enhance the music team’s ability to draw people into a meaningful worship experience.

All of this might easily have never materialized.

“This past spring, we were going through a process of trying to decide if the church should even exist,” says the Rev. Robert Hicks, who co-pastors the church with his wife, Tori. “But after a great deal of discussion and prayer, our church decided to continue under a new understanding of its life and mission.”

Originally started in 2001 as a ministry of Christ First United Methodist Church in Wasilla, the Palmer church never seemed to fully blossom.

“We were wandering out there in the wilderness, feeling isolated and invisible, and always harboring the hope of some Promised Land ahead (that) someday we’ll have a church building and be settled and really able to minister,” Hicks said.

The group relocated 13 times in nine years. During that process, the congregation realized it wanted to become fully independent as a church for the Palmer community. Since new church communities should become self-sustaining within two to three years, the congregation carried a profound sense of failure and confusion about how to live out its dream.

“We kept asking ourselves, ‘How do we get out of this wilderness loop?’” said Hicks. “And then something happened. We went through a process called The Lazarus Study, which is based on the life of Lazarus in which a community acknowledges a death in order to experience a new birth. With support from leaders in our United Methodist Conference, our congregation realized that we didn’t want to give up on the vision of a United Methodist church in Palmer.”

With nothing left to lose, they felt the freedom to do whatever it took.

“We put together a Lazarus plan,” Hicks said. “We had no standard business-model approach; we just knew we needed to establish benchmarks so that we didn’t exist just to exist. Opportunities began to open up with every benchmark we set and prayed over.”

After setting a goal to become more visible, Stan Guthrie invited them to use the basement of his business. The congregation decided to offer vacation Bible school.

“Within days we received a call from a church in Wenatchee, Wash., that was looking for a place in Alaska to offer a VBS,” Hicks said. “Not only did they provide an outstanding VBS experience, but one web-savvy team member graced us with the creation of an inviting website, which has served to further our visibility. So while our plan was one that made logical sense, what made it come so astoundingly alive was a sense of God’s blessing on it.”

Tori Hicks agreed.

“The whole process of our church’s revitalization is definitely a God-timing thing,” she said. “No matter how much we pushed to have something happen when we thought it needed to, nothing happened until God allowed it to happen.”

“Maybe,” surmises Robert Hicks, “God gifted our church with wilderness experiences so that we would be able to relate to other people who also feel invisible and lost in the wilderness. Maybe we don’t get our original dream of a beautiful church with a steeple on a hilltop. We’re ready to let go and realize we don’t need what we originally thought we did. The dream is actually the people themselves.”

Together, they’ve learned many lessons, the two ministers said.

“Part of the lessons learned in the wilderness loop was that we don’t have to try to control everything,” Robert Hicks said. “We asked ourselves, ‘How could the church work in people’s lives to function as a help and not a hindrance; how could it produce something that flowed with folks’ lives and wasn’t just another pressure amidst an already crowded schedule?’ Our church is not already tied up and prepackaged. Tori and I focus our ministry on the Sabbath principle, where all are invited to participate in God’s deepest rest. Our ministry is shaped in response to one primary question: ‘What brings true Sabbath rest to you and your family?’”

The Hickses see a new spirit and a new sense of ministry in the Palmer congregation.

“Our congregation had grown weary as it struggled with feeling so isolated,” Tori Hicks said. “We were not only off the radar of the Palmer community, we were off the radar of the Methodist organization as a whole. Yet what our church really needed was to realize that God allows wilderness wanderings, sometimes for much longer than we think we need, and is right there with us with every step of the journey.”

Robert Hicks is well aware that walking through the door of a church for the first time can be a difficult experience.

“One of our dreams is to develop a strong family ministry that brings families together instead of creating new ways for them to be apart,” he said.

The church meets for worship at 9:30 a.m. on Sundays on the lower level (accessible by elevator and stairs) of the Country Cutts building, 432 S. Alaska St., Palmer. For more information, call 745-3109, e-mail palmerumc@mtaonline.net or visit palmerumc.com.

Vicki Walsh is a freelance writer who lives in Palmer.