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The Friendship House

My first attempt at building a Coffee House downtown Lufkin went better than The Friendship House, though eventually it sailed away without me. There were plenty of donations and support, just a glaring lack of outreach to the community. We were given access to an incredible facility downtown on First Street. A man learned of what we were trying to do and opened his doors to us. Kids started coming around from several churches when we opened.

I teamed up with an older man who helped with the business end. He established a formal board of directors, some of which I never actually met. They were not active in the Coffee House itself. He told me it was just a formality. I would soon learn what “just a formality” meant.

We had great meetings, good music, refreshments and lots of fun. My nineteen-year-old zealous self tried and failed to get people to go out spread the Word of Christ. Nevertheless the place was hopping on the weekends. There were squabbles on occasion. A group of folks called The Agape Force was part of our effort. I actually lived with them for a while. They got into an argument one night after our meeting was over with a few Baptists. Baptists were smokers and The Agape Force people were very anti-smoking. Did Jesus condone smoking? That was the discussion. Everyone was fussing outside the door of our building. I forgot to lock the door. It was a simple, stupid, common mistake. But it was not a good thing to do since the owner had a photo, watch and jewelry store adjoining the space we used and only a piece of plywood nailed over a doorway prevented entry into the store from where we met. Uh oh.

I learned what “just a formality” meant the morning after the argument. My older supervisory friend showed up at the house where I lived and informed me that the board decided to “let me go” because I had been irresponsible. Well, duh. I was nineteen at the time. How about they participate a bit more but no, they canned me and put in some charismatic twit who drove the whole thing into the ground. Never mind the place would not have existed had I not given a whole lot of blood, sweat and tears to it. It had been, in fact, the mission I believed God was sending me to create when I left the Air Force. I felt like Noah might have felt if God had kicked him off the boat before it sailed. But life goes on.

Still believing I had a mission in life I continued to make decisions that ultimately came around to bite me in the ass. The Friendship House was my next venture.

As I said, I had briefly lived with a group of Christians who called themselves The Agape Force. They were part of a ministry/outreach from Houston. The Agape Force was a residual of the Jesus Movement, kind of a quasi-organized “church” of Jesus People. These folks were basically hippies with crosses around their neck living communally in an old house. I moved somewhere else not long after I was canned from the Coffee House. The Agape Force eventually evaporated into one of those places where great ministry ideas go when reality crashes through. In other words, the bills came due and nobody had any dough. I know that place well, but I get ahead of myself.

My wife and I had been married almost a year when I became aware that the old Agape Force house was empty. It was, in fact, virtually abandoned. Homeless people had messed it up pretty bad. I got a brilliant (!) idea: Why not fix it up for the rent and open a Christian Coffee House kind of place? Why not indeed.

I went to the owner of the house, a local attorney, and gave him my proposal. Six months’ rent to make the house livable again and use it for a ministry. Excellent. My wife and I moved into the old place, trash heap and all.

The house itself was actually rather amazing. It was very old, built in the era before Electricity. Walls were solid. Electrical wiring went around the baseboards in conduit. I knew how to do wiring so I quickly got the electrical system in shape. My wife and I moved into one of the two upstairs rooms. The other upstairs room was used as a chapel. The house had a separate apartment in one end and a friend, Chris, moved in there to be part of our effort.

I fixed up the plumbing, which included cleaning a toilet that had been used without water to flush it for quite a long time. Sweet. We never did have a hot water heater but made do with heating water for a bath. Some church friends provided us with an old electric oven. We cooked on a Coleman camp stove. Our life was so rugged then! But we persevered. For the first few months I worked as a technician at a manufactured housing air conditioning and set-up company. I drove a service truck. We installed and repaired air conditioning systems, tie-downs, a bit of plumbing and a few other things. My wife was actually still in High School half a day and worked for a doctor as a nanny part-time. We had food to eat and a few bucks to spend on the house.

Once we had the place cleaned up a close buddy of mine, John, and I brought together some other folks and opened The Friendship House. There are photos somewhere but that was a long time ago. The Friendship House was located on a quiet Lufkin street. We started having meetings on the weekend, music and ministry. We even got a full feature in the Lufkin Daily News, Society section. For a time we were moving forward and I was happy.

The leadership of The Friendship House was a loose conglomeration of folks from various churches in the area. We all agreed on the basics of Salvation (The Born Again in Christ idea) but there wasn’t so much agreement in other areas of doctrine. We had Baptists and Pentecostals who of course never agree on the workings of the Holy Spirit. Baptists also tended to be a bit more likely to live “loosely,” doing things like smoking or uttering the occasional bad word.

Eventually I quit my job and went to work full time trying to build and promote The Friendship House. For a few months things were great. But then financial problems showed up. The staff squabbled about doctrine and smoking and what we needed to buy and whatever else. At some point the stress of what I was doing overwhelmed me and I had a bit of a toxic episode. It was not pretty.

I’ve never shared this bit of my history before. I’ve always said The Friendship House failed due to doctrinal arguments and not enough donations, and it is true these things were major factors. But the night I went to the chapel upstairs and fell on my face before God in a rather dramatic fashion may have put off a few people as well. To be honest, I’m not sure what the hell happened. All I know is that Chris moved out and everybody else took off and my wife and I were left owing rental on the house with no way to pay it.

There came the morning when it was all done. I took my box of business cards and ceremoniously burned them on the lawn and swore never more. How stupid could I be?

The Friendship House ended with a thud and one rather frazzled heart: mine. This misadventure is only a warmup to what was coming later on.