Members of the Horace Lutheran Church asked the Mayor of Horace, North Dakota what the community's greatest need was. The Mayor said, "lack of childcare." Now, the church is working to provide needed childcare services for the community. ~~~ We share a Plains Folk essay, “No Other Place to Go.”~~~ Acclaimed humorist David Sedaris has an upcoming show in North Dakota. We share a reading from Theft By Finding. ~~~Sue Balcom is here to talk about Halloween! ~~~ In an episode of Birdnote, we learn about Hawkwatchers.
Horace Lutheran Church & Childcare (transcript)
Main Street
Growth is not just a statistic, but a living, breathing reality in Horace, North Dakota. And as the Horace Lutheran Church inquired about its community's most pressing needs, they received a swift and resonant response from City Hall child care. Horace has grown from a modest community of 1500 to a thriving city of 5000 in just the past decade. And the demand for more child care is real. With me to discuss the Horace Lutheran Church's responses, Will Sappington, senior pastor at the Horace Lutheran Church. Pastor Will, welcome to Main Street.
Senior Pastor Will Sappington
Thank you for having me.
Main Street
Why did the church approach City Hall, Pastor Will, to ask them what they needed?
Senior Pastor Will Sappington
Well, we are in a unique and amazing time being the church here in Horace. It's a time of rapid transition. I was called to be the pastor here in the spring of 2021. It is a city in flux where I've been asking the question, what are the needs in the community? Because it's a move from agricultural, where it was a farming community, to now it's a lot of young families moving in, building houses, wanting that small town feel. And we've got the two schools that were built and just occupied in the last couple of years, and now the first graduating class in the high school this year. And so I went to the mayor. Mayor Corey happens to be a member of the congregation, asked him, you know, what are the needs in the community? And he's been gracious enough to come in and meet with the church council to share the city perspective of what's happening.
Main Street
What did he tell you?
Senior Pastor Will Sappington
Well, he gave us - here's what's happening with growth. Here's what's happening with building. And then here's what he's seeing. And again and again he came back to, it's kids, it's childcare. We hosted, he asked, and we hosted an open forum on childcare last fall and brought together existing childcare providers. Folks who were looking to get into it invited parents. And so that was October a year ago, that we hosted that here at the church. And he's been working, trying going back to Bismarck, trying to to get some state help with solutions on childcare because it is such a need. There are folks, as he'll tell the story, there are folks driving to Morehead to drop their kids off so they can go to work, because it is in such short supply.
Main Street
Moorhead is about a 20 minute drive or so from where we are here in Horace. So then you had to decide what it meant to be a child care provider in many ways, or how to help what process the church goes through to come to that conclusion?
Senior Pastor Will Sappington
Well, as we said at the leadership level, at the council level, asking what are the resources that we have that we can be a blessing to the community? Well, we've got people and we've got space. And as with most churches, our highest traffic times are Sunday mornings and then Wednesday nights. But we have a large percentage of the week. Our space is not in high demand. And we looked at our space and we invited someone from the state of North Dakota and the childcare department to come and take a look. And she said, this is a great space with our classrooms that are already set up. Big open spaces, she said this would be great. You don't have to change a thing. And what we're looking at when we're not looking at a preschool, we're not looking at all daycare at this point, we're looking at being part of that sort of pressure relief valve for those kindergarten to fifth grade that that 5 to 11 year old age range, which at this point there's a two year wait list to get into the why after school care for latchkey kids?
Main Street
And when you look at those numbers here in Horace, we're not talking about just a couple of dozen or so no kids that are in that range. Do you not have an idea of how many kids might be impacted by this?
Senior Pastor Will Sappington
What I've been told is that if we said tomorrow we've got space for 40 to 50 kids, we would be full tomorrow.
Main Street
So now you're going down the path to understand how to provide these services. And you have the space, You have people here that will support the program, right? You've got kids who are in need. And the question I have to ask you is who's going to staff this thing?
Senior Pastor Will Sappington
That's that's the $10,000 question right there. We are thinking about that as we speak. Well, right now I've asked my people to pray on it. I had hoped that there might be somebody within the congregation that had the had the credentials, because it needs to be someone with an early childhood degree or a certificate in childhood development. So it does need to be somebody who's got that background or is going toward that certification and failing, having somebody in the congregation that had that. Having someone who had a connection with somebody. Because what I've the connections that we've got there is a member of the congregation who is a phenomenal resource and a great champion of this idea, she said. Word of mouth is your greatest ally in this search because I asked her about, you know, do you go on the other recruiting sites? Sure. And she said, word of mouth is where you're going to get your best candidates.
Main Street
So if I were to ask you a timeline when the dream can may become a reality, is it still an unknown because of maybe the staffing concern?
Senior Pastor Will Sappington
It's an unknown, but I am hopeful for the new year. Yet this school year is because we've still got some legwork to do. We have crafted a mission statement, our short version. We've got a page long version, and then our short version is nurturing Spirit's hearts and minds, said Horace Lutheran after school care. We still need to finish up our handbook for parents. There are some policies that we need to get together. There's the insurance side of it, which we need to get together with our guy that does our insurance for us. So there's a lot of the policy pieces that we've got in motion, but then that staffing piece is the next thing, and that's before we can get officially licensed. We need to have the staff people in place. That's it. Sort of the what comes first, the chicken or the egg is in order to be licensed, you need to have those staff people in place, that director in place to get that license.
Main Street
You have stressed to me off microphone that this is not a denominational project that you're working on. It won't be, for instance, a requirement that a young child be a member with this family of the Horace Lutheran Church.
Senior Pastor Will Sappington
Absolutely not. This is a resource for the community. And I feel very strongly that. When folks were right on Main Street in Horace, and whether folks ever come to worship here or not. I want folks as they drive by Horace Lutheran to look at us and say, oh, I know that's the place. That and they may say, hey, that's the place that my kids did after school care and they were blessed there, or oh, that's the place where my kids did Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts or that's the place that the Thanksgiving baskets came out of. Or, you know, a place where a community center, a community center, yeah, a place that we were a part of. Blessing. I know that as we are a worshiping community, we are a place that we seek to. You know, we gather, we praise God. We know that we are not the only expression of that kind of community. We have we have other expressions around us and we celebrate that. We are not exclusive in that way. And so all of the ways that we seek to be a community center. I ask my counsel at least once a year. If Horace Lutheran and all the people who are members of Horace Lutheran who worship at Horace Lutheran disappeared tomorrow, who would miss us? And I think that's the true test of who we are as a community, because if we're only ministering to the people who are members, then we're missing the mark.
Main Street
There will be financial requirements, obviously taking this on. What is your business plan? What does your work tell you on whether this might be not sustainable for us or we can make it work. What kind of back and forth have you come to in your mind about whether or not this will be affordable for kids and then workable for the church?
Senior Pastor Will Sappington
Yeah, that's the back of the envelope math that you sit down with leadership and you look at knowing that there's high demand means that we are very positive about making a go of it. One of the other benefits, the positives and the ledger is that our building is new. Our church was built in 2009. And so you welcome 3040 kids into the building. There's going to be an impact on space. And so yeah, so you look at all that math and you think, okay, what is our what is the break even? And at what point does a venture like this allow you to then fund other outreach funds other missions. And it's an exciting thing when you say, wow, what could something like this allow us to do to dream big in other ways? Yeah, I'm very hopeful.
Main Street
So I'm a parent now who might be listening to this and thinking, okay, now I may have an option, riight after the first of the year here. How great is that? What will my kid be doing once he gets here? Do we know the answer to that question as to. Of course, you haven't hired staff yet, but you do have a vision about what's going to happen here?
Senior Pastor Will Sappington
Yeah. So because it's an after school care program, what the kids don't need is another curriculum. What they do need is a space where they feel safe, where they feel heard, where they feel tended to. So they're going to be here, they're going to have a snack. They're going to have time to play. They're going to have time where if there are some things they need to work on from school, they're going to have space to do that. There's going to be space where they can read. There's going to be space where they can do some art projects. We've got. That's one of the things that the folks from the state loved about our spaces. There's different rooms that we can set up to be different focal areas. So art room, puzzle room, game room.
When it's nice, you know, in North Dakota, we do have some months where it will be nice, where we can run around outside. We've got a huge green space where we can do fun stuff outside. And then in those months where it's not so nice and we've got a fellowship hall with a big open space where we can do indoor games, and then once a week on Wednesday, we can roll right in and invite families. And we've got a Wednesday night meal. Invite the family, say, come join us for that too. But getting back to your question: what will they be doing? That's the advice from our dear friend who has the background in child care and education. She said you don't need a set curriculum because they've had a whole day of being locked into. Here's your routine. They need to know you're there. They need to know you're taking care of them and give them some freedom to do. Get those wiggles out, do those things that they need to do and have a little fun. Have a little fun.
Main Street
We're enjoying our conversation with Will Sappington. He's a senior pastor at the Horace Lutheran Church, a church that is dedicated now to helping with the child care issue that has been presented to them by the city of Horace. What about summertime? Have you reached beyond the school year and thought about maybe how you can also help in summer?
Senior Pastor Will Sappington
We are open to that. Yeah. Right now my focus is just figuring out the after school care, the summertime, because that becomes an all day thing. That would be something that once we get the director on board, then we start looking at, okay, do we want to offer the summer program. And so but that's something I'm open to. We've got the space again that becomes a little bit easier. We've got the huge green space. And that is something that would be fun to be able to use.
Main Street
When you walk up to this beautiful church, you see a bell that was given to or maybe even manufactured in 1877, which this church's roots go back to. What do you know about the history of the church?
Senior Pastor Will Sappington
Yeah. So the church was founded in 1877, and so we're going to be coming up on our 150th anniversary. And the longest time sight of the church was on Wall Avenue here in Horace. And it's kind of a crackup when you read the forum article on the relocation of the church to here on County Road 17, talked about the church moving to the far north end of Horace, which now, as you look at the expansion of Horace, it doesn't feel like the far north.
Main Street
Um, but in fact, we're still in West Fargo, aren't we? (laughter)
Senior Pastor Will Sappington
Yeah, almost feels like that. Yeah, but the history of Horace Lutheran now, that little, little white church with the bell on top, it was a church that got added on to and added on to until the people decided, you know what? We're going to stop adding on. We're going to build new. Because of the piecemeal projects were beginning to be less than the sum of their parts. We need to do something that was going to last into the next generation and beyond. And I think the after school care program is something that we can do because of the vision of those people who said, you know what? We're not going to do one more piecemeal edition. We're going to do something that's going to be a big blessing.
Main Street
When you come to Sunday services, you can't help but notice that this is not a church full of gray hairs like me. There's a lot of younger families here with a lot of kids. At a time when church attendance across the country is dropping. Why is that not the case here, do you think?
Senior Pastor Will Sappington
I think it's because of the rapid growth of Horace. Mayor Peterson, as he said it to us in our council retreat we had last month, the building boom in Horace is because we're the only dry land in the area where the only game in town. And so there was something. I don't want to misquote him, but I think he said something like 1200 new housing lots just opened up. We believe that there's nowhere else in the area where that's happening. And so this is where people are able to build. This is where people are coming. And when I accepted this call, my family, we wanted to live close to the church. I firmly believe in living where I serve. I'm a firm believer in community, and I think that is something about living here that people also have a desire to want to worship close to, to where they live.
Main Street
And your wife is just a couple blocks away from us. Physics and chemistry instructor teacher at Horace High School?
Senior Pastor Will Sappington
Yes she is. Yeah. So we are tied to this community.
Main Street
Well, best wishes with your child care efforts. It's certainly needed. I'm sure there are families across the area that are thinking this is going to be great, so good luck.
Senior Pastor Will Sappington
Yeah. If any of your listeners know of good folks that might be a fit for the position, have them call me.
Main Street
Pastor Will Sappington is the senior pastor at the Horse Lutheran Church. Thanks for joining us on Main Street.
Senior Pastor Will Sappington
Well thank you.
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