Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build my house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored,” says the Lord. — Haggai 1:8.
Sunday morning chairs were set up to accommodate a typical overflow crowd of worshipers at Harvest Baptist Church.
“We have a problem,” said the Rev. Tony Godfrey, 38, the church’s senior pastor.
The church’s pews will hold 100. Membership is 180, including kids who meet in a building next door. While Godfrey was exaggerating their plight, they are on the lookout for a new abode.
A recent proposal to trade buildings with American Legion Post 15, 712 Patterson Ave., didn’t fly with Iola’s Board of Zoning Appeals. “We prayed that if it was God’s will we would get the building, and if it wasn’t he’d slam that door,” Godfrey said. “He slammed the door, and we’re just fine with that. We’ll do something else.”
For years congregants met in a tiny clapboard church at the corner of Fourth and Broadway. David Shelby, who now splits responsibilities as associate pastor with patrolling Iola streets as a police officer, arrived in 2005 from Denver. The church began slow but sure growth.
Within a few years Shelby made overtures to another Baptist church in town about a merger in order to accommodate growth. That fell through, but in 2009, when Grace Lutheran moved to its new church at the north edge of town, Harvest members purchased the traditional brick church at 401 S. Walnut.
In 2011, when Godfrey took the reins, the church had about 50 members. Seldom is there a Sunday when most don’t show up, along with new faces.
Godfrey says the verse quoted above from the book of Haggai — go, bring and build — is a metaphor for Harvest Baptist.
“Mature believers lead young believers in the word of God one-on-one … in worship, fellowship and ministry,” Godfrey said.
For a time Godfrey attended Hope Chapel, east of Moran, “where I was led to the Lord.” But, as sometimes happens, he found other things were more important than trekking to church on Sunday — until his wife Kara became an important part of his life in the late 1990s.
They attended the church regularly and he took the disciplining pattern to heart. By 2000 he was attending the Shepherd School of Ministry at the Kansas City Baptist Temple, while filling the Iola pulpit. He was then called to a church in White House, Texas.
After a few years in Texas, the Godfreys were back in Iola, in some measure because a mission of Shelby’s was to bring back members to the church. “He wanted to restore the walls of the church and pull everyone in,” said Godfrey, who became a ministerial helpmate.
Before long the two men switched roles, Godfrey became senior pastor, Shelby associate when he took on police duties.
Kara, who has been the public face of the Iola administrator’s office, resigned last month to give more time to volunteer church work. She, Tony and four others will go to London in June for a week to do street missionary work. The church sent a similar team in 2014.
Sunday she was at the church’s sound board, with daughter Kayton, 13, at her elbow. The Godfreys also have a son, Kale, 9.
