Home and Youth Pastor at Mountair Christian Church
In November of 1972 I headed back home to Colorado. Within a day I had not one, but two jobs. I was hired to be a Child Care worker at DaVita cottage at the Colorado Christian Home. “The Home” began in the early 1900’s as an orphanage, started by the Christian Churches of Colorado and Wyoming. I have very distinct memories of coming up from Pueblo to have Christmas parties with the kids living there. I went to college at Phillips University with a number of former residents of “The Home”.
This was the time in the evolution of care that orphanages were on the way out, but inpatient treatment for abused and neglected children was on the way in. CCH was fully engaged in that process. Suzie, who was my wife at that time, and I were hired to work in two separate units. She had eight adolescent girls in her cottage and I had the same except for boys. We were able to work the same shift cycles which made our coming and going much easier. You would work during the week with a partner. You were expected to do everything from laundry to cooking, including the shopping. Having shared responsibility made it very doable. Here is the kicker: every third weekend you showed up on Friday afternoon and for 48 hours you had the entire cottage on your own.
This was the hardest job I ever had. Some weekends could be relatively uneventful, while others were dangerously chaotic. To say it was an unsafe work environment by today’s standards is an understatement. Mind you—these very damaged but beautiful kids knew how to push every button. On Monday morning I would often leave there exhausted and emotionally spent. However, at 23 years of age I didn’t know how to say it. The good news was, after every three week marathon you got three days off—hello skiing, backpacking or sleeping.
Now for the second job—Youth Pastor. The other two Sundays I ran a youth group at Mountair CC. These kids were a piece of cake. “Okay Kids, today after church we are going to take a float trip down Bear Creek”. Or “Hey everyone it’s Casa Bonita Time”. The difference in having a home and family that loved and cared for you, versus the kids at CCH was day and night.
The Senior Pastor there was a man named John Henry Cain. There was never a finer gentleman. What he lacked as a preacher he made up for as a person and pastor. He could not have been more supportive of me. It was there that I began to see myself doing some kind of ministry. It was also in those two years, that I knew I was not cut out to live in the crucible of working directly with those who had suffered so much.
This all took place over 50 years ago. The Colorado Christian Home became the Tennyson Center for Children. It is still located in the same place and reinventing itself even one more time. Mountair Christian went from being in a peaceful post WWII neighborhood to trying to survive in a crazy, dangerous neighborhood that no one could have imagined.
My year + at CCH exposed both my greatest strengths and weaknesses, and my two years as a youth pastor gave me many great memories—and occasionally even now I hear from “kids” in that youth group and they say “Do you remember when”? So much of ministry is just that—making memories that become holy.
Onward and Upward,
Mark
Lyfting Me Up 