On the 10th anniversary of Chino Valley Family Church

Pastor Lee Shaw,  August 13, 2018

In the summer of 1981, Jacque’s & my path crossed at a restaurant in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I had just spent the last four years in Guatemala where I graduated from High School in Quetzaltenango and was involved in full-time evangelistic ministry with my parents among the native K’iche’ and Mam Indians. Jacque had just spent a year in Huancayo, Peru with her parents, helping to construct an orphanage, came home to Texas to graduate from High School and had just finished the summer as a camp counselor on the Omega Ranch in western Kansas. It was my last day at that job and her first day to start. We were introduced, in passing, by a mutual friend and soon found many commonalities between us. We were both there to go to Bible School in Broken Arrow, both of us had lived on the mission field with our parents, both had a desire to serve in ministry and both had a love of the Great American West. We soon became engaged and in our dreaming and planning for our future together, we had come across several editions of the Arizona Highways Magazine from the late 70”s and early 80’s. We flipped through them, page by page, and afterward we looked at one another and said, “One day we will move to Arizona!” We tucked those magazines away, not knowing that it would be July of 2005, the month we celebrated 25 years of marriage, before we would finally pull into Chino Valley, Arizona. It took us many years of life lived before that dream came true! We served 4 years in Honduras with Tom & Wanda Shaw at Tree of Life Ministries; we helped started a Church in Palm Bay, Florida called “House of Prayer” with founders and still current pastors, Ken & Betsy Delgado where we served as Senior Associate Pastors for 12 years.

We began a Youth Ministry called “Generation Chosen” which grew to be the largest Youth Ministry in that area so much so that we were approached by the Police Department to join with them in providing Juvenile Delinquents with community service at our Youth Church, starting a program together called “Yellow Umbrella” with offices in our Church Building. While serving as Associate Pastor, Youth Pastor and Worship leader at the church, I also had opportunities to travel to Cuba, Honduras, and Guatemala to minister; I traveled to Colorado, Michigan, Idaho, Kansas and other States ministering in different churches and fundraising for missions. During all of this, we had four beautiful children; Rebecca Noel, Amber Nicole, Levi Thomas and Luke Austin. We both worked two jobs on top of ministry to make ends meet. I worked full time at the A. Duda & Sons Ranch in Cocoa, Florida, Brevard County which was a working commercial cow-calf operation. We were a 5-man cowboy crew that worked 4500 head of cattle so we pretty much lived in the saddle. I day-worked on the weekends for a number of ranches in the area, and broke colts for our ranch as well as the neighboring Tucker Ranch. I also built cow whips and contracted many miles of fence on weekends and holidays for the ranch. Jacque started her own House Cleaning business and at the same time ran the Tree of Life Ministry offices to Honduras. She also did temp work for State Farm Insurance in Vero Beach. We went to soccer games, football games, basketball games, skate parks, Choir Concerts and Band Concerts. We paid for piano & guitar lessons, swimming lessons and gymnastics. We celebrated graduations and quinceaneras. We went to concerts and theme parks, church events and conferences. We hosted parties and outdoor picnics, baseball games, and parades. We did things together, as a family, and our four children grew up to become four beautiful people that we are so proud of! In all this I’ll bet you could count on both hands the church services we missed. Our children grew up understanding our values were centered around a church family and serving in it. Along the way we met and made many beautiful friends, we’ve seen beautiful places, been in the most difficult of places, experienced hardships, had great successes, cried tears of sorrow and of joy, celebrated births and dealt with the pain of deaths; those wonderful and sometimes devastating experiences of life that comes and goes for every person.

Twenty-five years is a lot of living and we crammed as much into it as we could. However, in the midst of all these years passing, there still remained a longing and a wistfulness within both Jacque and I. During my childhood we lived in California between ’69 and ’75 and traversed it many times and how I had remembered and loved it. Many times, in the quiet of an evening, when the stars had come out, we would stand outside our house together and look up at the sky and ask the Lord if that dream that we had tucked away in our hearts together so long ago, would ever come true. Would we ever make it out West? Would we ever make it to Arizona?

Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, verse 1, “To everything, there is a season.” One morning, at the end of a hot and humid summer, in 2001, I woke with a start and I heard the words in my head, “It’s time.” I knew exactly what that meant and I turned my head to see that my wife’s eyes were also open. She turned to me and said, “It’s time.” The tears flowed and we held hands because we knew that this season of our lives, rich and full as it was, was coming to a close like a chapter in a book. I can’t really explain it but something inside shifted and we knew that we could go. It took two years for us to move, not because the Lord required it of us but because we wanted to leave our friends and the work we had done with no regrets or undone ends and in July of 2003, we pulled out of Palm Bay, Florida with has much stuff as we could squeeze into the horse trailer.

In Spanish, they have a word, “desvio”. It means “detour”. They use it not just for a detour around a construction site like we use it but as a term to describe someone who is headed in a certain direction but they end up going somewhere else first before they get there; a “desvio”. Like doing something else first before you reach your destination. We decided to do a “desvio’ before we traveled all the way to Arizona. We stopped in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Rebecca had enrolled in Bible School there and we decided to stay there for two years while she attended to help her. She graduated from Bible School the same evening that Amber graduated from High School. Rebecca moved to Australia to attend Hillsong Music School and Amber flew to Palm Bay to continue helping with the Children’s Ministry at House of Prayer. We finally pulled into Chino Valley, Arizona in July, 2005. While in Oklahoma, we meet and became friends with David & Rachel Simmons and they decided to move with us. We literally just picked a place on the map!

There were three circumstances that we were not aware of when we decided to move to Chino Valley. One, was that the Prescott Rodeo and Parade is in July and two, the Potter’s House has their Annual Tent Meetings also in July. Our plan was to stay at hotel or motel for a week or two until we found a house to rent. However, every hotel, motel, bed & breakfast, lodge and house rental was taken in the tri-city area and we had nowhere to go. The second thing was that Jeremy Morris lived here. I had meet Jeremy’s Aunt in Colorado while representing and raising support for Honduras missions at Marilyn Hickey’s church and I had also ministered in his Uncle’s church up in Idaho. I knew they had a nephew in Arizona but not in Chino Valley! The third thing we did not realize was that David Simmon’s dad had done some meetings here at the old Sale Barn that used to be behind the Prescott Airport. He told us to look up Pat & Sally Bates which we eventually did and we realized that they had already spent many years ministering to the cowboy community here and all around, planting seeds and laboring faithfully in this area. Pat & Sally opened their arms to us and provided us with ministry opportunities at “Cow Country Cathedral” off of 1 South and also at the Prescott Rodeo and at Hillside Community Church. She introduced us to the cowboy community and for that, we are so thankful!

The first week we were here, we ended up staying on the floor of David & Rachel’s house. They had rented a home off of Yuma, sight unseen, that they realized, too late, wasn’t ready to be rented. It had dirty water, no air-conditioning and one bedroom had been a home to indoor pets and stunk terrible. We all were in a dilemma! I can’t tell you, though, how overjoyed and thankful Jacque and I were to be here! It was as if we had awakened from a dream to find out that it wasn’t a dream after all! We felt that we had come home at last! We were not at all concerned with where we would live or what we would do, we were just glad to be here. Jacque and I held hands and prayed together for a home in Chino Valley and many of you have heard the story. When David Simmons and I pulled into the driveway of what would become our home on Butterfield Road and knocked on the door, I can still remember how surprised I was when the woman who answered the door said to us, “I know you will think that I am crazy but I am a Christian and the Lord gave me a dream last night that two men in cowboy hats came to my door to rent this house. We are packed and ready to drive out but we stayed because I’ve been waiting for you to come all day!” and then she burst into tears. Then she said, “Are you here to start a church?” This coming from a total stranger! We didn’t think of that at that time. As I said before, the scripture says that “to everything, there is a season” and it continues on to say, “And a time for every purpose under the sun.” No need to get in a hurry! Times and seasons come and go, just like the seasons of the year. Things like this always come together at the right moment. That first year here in Chino Valley we spent settling in, getting jobs, meeting people, getting to know the area, exploring the country around us…we just loved everything about it. We realized that we were in the very heart of the Arizona Ranching Families and soon Lee & David were doing daywork at the Yavapai and the Bar Heart and competing in the Ranch Roping Competitions with Jeremy Morris. At the end of the first year, one Sunday morning we were up and dressed, as were our boys, and I suddenly asked everyone to sit down on the couch. I decided, then and there, to have church in my living room, on my couch, with my family. We called the Simmons and told them to go ahead to church without us but 15 minutes passed and they knocked on our door and said “we’re here to have church with you!” That began our ‘house-church’. David and Rachel helped us start CVFC and faithfully served with us for eight years as associate pastors lifting the load in teaching, preaching and worship. Their love and friendship made the tough times special. In the beginning, we had no intention of it becoming a church or even a bible study. We just wanted to worship together as a family. It did not take long, though, before Matthew & Ruthie Siefert moved out from Ohio and then Lee’s brother and sister-in-law, Nathan & Stacy Shaw moved from Tennessee. Ryan & Ester Richardson traveled here from Florida and eventually Lee’s parents, Tom & Wanda Shaw and my other brother and family, Caleb & Fatima Shaw, all came to help. Each of these families had a season with us and eventually they all moved on to their next season except for Ryan & Ester who have remained faithfully with us as Associate/Youth Pastors. Eventually, our girls moved back. Rebecca returned from Australia and married Bruce Robertson and they are now the Worship Leaders and help in the Children’s Ministry. Amber moved back from Florida and helped to establish our Children’s Ministry and then our Youth Ministry before continuing on with her journey. Levi and Luke were both an integral part of the youth leadership and Youth Church and both were in Music Ministry, playing guitar and drums for many years. Both faithfully served in the Kids Church, as well, every Thursday evening.

On August 13, 2008, we became Incorporated with the State of Arizona and shortly afterward received our 501(c)(3) non-profit status. It is this date that we consider our church to be established as the State approved our name to be “Chino Valley Family Church”. Our first building was lovingly termed “The Squishy Building” because the maximum occupation was about 35 people but we crammed as many as 50 into it every Sunday. This is the building next to MDI Financial. Bruce Eldredge had fixed up half of the building for an Events Room and so he had also purchased 50 chairs and 11 tables for it but when we moved, after 8 months of being there, he sold us the chairs and tables and closed the Events Room. We moved from there with our new tables and chairs to our current building at 718 S Hwy 89 but we rented only one unit to begin with. Many miraculous circumstances, miracles, divine meetings and connections later, CV Family Church purchased the whole building along with the Manufactured Home along the easement road and the Mini Storage Units in the back. We want to thank Dave & Bev Kool, the previous owners of the building, for believing in a work that took 30 years to happen. When they built our building, 30 years before we moved here, back when we were looking through those Arizona Highways magazines and dreaming of Arizona, they said to one another, “One day we want this to be a church. A church along Highway 89 for all to see as they drive by.” Dave lost a thumb during the construction of that building! Years went by and as all those who have lived in this community would know, there have been many businesses of every kind in and out of there. The day that Jacque called the number on the sign to ask about renting a unit, Dave said, “I’m not interested in putting another store front church there.” He had become discouraged; 30 years is a long time to wait and hope! She got off the phone and said “That’s our building! He is going to call me back!” A month went by and Jacque’s cell phone rang. It was Dave Kool. He said “Are you the one that was interested in renting a unit of our building for your church?” Jacque had not given him her number but his friend’s daughter worked at the CV Medical Clinic; that friend had worked with Rebecca for a time and remembered that her parents had a started a small church in the community. She looked up Rebecca’s info that was still in the computer and saw that Jacque worked at Heritage Middle School. She called there and got Jacque’s number and gave it to Dave! Dave wasn’t even sure it was the right person but as he told us later, he was so convicted to call us back and let us rent from him that he had to find us! You know the rest of the story.

It is hard to believe that 10 years have come and gone since then. Once again, lots of life can be lived in that amount of time but we feel, in a lot of ways, our story began that July evening that we drove into town. We feel blessed to have such a beautiful building, but even more so, blessed to have a congregation of such beautiful people and such a beautiful Valley to live in. Our corner of heaven! A place God Calls Blessed!