Anar's Brush - True Friends

 

 I was cleaning our patio furniture a few days ago   and got out the tools I would need including a small   hand broom. I call this my Anar brush. Here's the   story...

 Anar Ohlin and I were on a church staff together in   the early 90s. The church had purchased an office   building that we were re-purposing for church use. As I recall, Anar and I were working on a clean up project and he had brought this hand brush to help clean out some tight spaces. I'm not sure how, but this little brush wound up under one of the seats in my car and I did not discover it for quite a while. When I told Anar I found his brush he told me to "keep it," he had another one. I have had it ever since. Every time I use it I think of Anar and his friendship.

We had a rocky departure from this church staff. When Anar found out the circumstances and reasons for this unsettling time, he was quite upset. He became my biggest defender. Even though we were already very good friends, and enjoyed working together immensely, I did not realize how big a friend he was to jeopardize his position in his outspoken defense of me. After we transitioned to another church in Colorado we remained close through phone calls, visits, and eventually emails. (email was just becoming a routine communication method in that time period)

Early in 2004 Anar called me and told me that he was having increasing problems with his heart. He knew that he would probably not live a lot longer with his weakened heart. We reminisced about some of the times we shared together and got caught up with what we each were doing at the present time and how our wives and children were doing. Then Anar got to the main reason for his call. He wanted me to come and play the piano and lead all the music for his funeral. While it would mean a hastily arranged airline flight and schedule changes when the time came, I immediately promised Anar I would be there. In the middle of June  in 2004 I made that flight and played the piano and led the music for my friend. When we arrived back at the church from the graveside service, I had an encounter that laid to rest most of the issues that had contributed to our department from this church staff several years earlier. Once again, my very good friend had been instrumental in being a friend to me.

As you can see, Anar's Brush is starting to get a little ragged. I think that once it isn't useful anymore for its intended purpose, I will hang it in my home office to remind me everyday of what it means to be a true friend.  

An Eight Year Gap

 It has been eight years since my last blog post. Life has a way of changing the time you have available to "cover all the bases." After writing 327 blog posts, life's busyness took over.

In 2013 I started a ministry department for the Illinois District Council that eventually became known as Your Church Admin. Our original goal was to offer church management and accounting software to our Illinois Assemblies of God churches. I would demo the software to pastors and church leaders, develop their software sites, and support their use of the software with phone calls, emails, on-site training, and other support methods. We knew there was a lot of interest in this because a district wide survey had shown widespread interest. What we did not anticipate was the turn the ministry would take in the first summer of operation.

At the on-site training session for one of our first churches, as we approached the end of the session, the pastor said "this is all well and good, and we are excited about the possibilities, but what we really need in addition to using the software is for someone to actually do some of the bookkeeping and accounting functions for us." Our district CFO had joined me on this training trip and as you might imagine, we had quite a conversation on the way home. The conversation with this pastor changed way we looked at the ministry we had begun. Over the next eight years it would expand to be primarily a bookkeeping and accounting service to nearly 100 churches and church ministries and we would process hundreds of payrolls every month. In 2015 I hired my first employee after nearly burning out because of our rapid expansion, and today their are nine employees that work either full or part time for Your Church Admin. Over the next few weeks I'll tell some of the stories of YCA and how God has blessed us as we have blessed so many churches and church leaders. BTW, I retired from this wonderful ministry at the end of February, 2022. Younger and innovative leaders are now moving this wonderful ministry forward.