Gary Nowlan – Boulder, Colorado … With a mild sense of horror, I stood observing furniture and other items from the Boulder Seventh-day Adventist Church piled near the basement entrance to the church. Times had changed and the church had decided these items were no longer needed.
Two items especially caught my eye—the large pulpit that had stood on the rostrum since the church was built around 1950, and a smaller pulpit that stood in front of the large one at a lower level. In much of the past, the smaller pulpit was used for Sabbath School and the larger one for the church service. I envisioned these two pulpits being disassembled and used for other purposes. Or, worse yet, being split into kindling.
So, after discussion with then Pastor Japhet De Oliveira, I loaded them into my SUV and moved them to my garage. He gave me the bronze plaque that had been attached to the side of the large pulpit. It reads:
In Memory of Our Mother
Kathrine Florence Austin
1862 – 1951
By
Earl and Ray N. Austin
The pulpits stood in my garage for many months as I contemplated what to do with them. Could they be used as reading stands in our heirloom basement?
Then one day, I was conversing with Pastor Hubert Cisneros, who grew up in Boulder, attended Boulder Junior Academy, and is now pastor of the Capitol View Seventh-day Adventist Church in Lincoln, Nebraska. He was ecstatic to learn that the pulpits were still in existence, remembering the days when he, as a teenager, stood behind them and performed or spoke. He asked if he could use them in the newly-remodeled Capitol View Church.
Recently, I attended Capitol View. There they were—still serving as they had served for so long in the Boulder Church. I smiled in satisfaction.
—Gary Nowlan is a member of the Boulder Adventist Church. Photos supplied.
