The Church at the Top of the Hill

Life in Flagstaff was good! The position at Trinity Heights was a good fit and allowed me to do the kind of work I enjoyed. One of the lessons I learned from working at Dad’s church was that pastors in charge (senior pastors where more than one is on staff) need to possess certain CEO qualities if the congregation is going to grow and thrive. Dad was one of the best in this respect, and having worked under him for the first year after Mary and I wed gave me a behind-the-scenes look at what made a large church (later to be labeled megachurch) tick. Trinity Heights was about a third the size of the Arvada church in terms of membership but still fell into the large church class. Hal Cowart was the senior pastor who had the unenviable assignment of following Bill Denlinger, Trinity Heights’ founding pastor. Denlinger was (I was told) very charismatic and had been permitted to stay in Flagstaff long enough to put his personal brand on the congregation. Cowart, in contrast, was more scholarly and introverted, and struck me as someone not really suited to convert Denlinger’s church back into a United Methodist church. My predecessor, Irma Campbell, decided to move on herself when Denlinger, who had hired her, was appointed to a Phoenix church. I think that Cowart would have been just as happy working solo, but the congregation was intent upon continuing to do things the way that Denlinger had done them which worked to my advantage. It was going to be Hal and me working together to erase the Denlinger/Campbell legacy at Trinity Heights.