Hello Wellspring!

Here is some information about the church history book and how it was written, followed by a video of a Ministry Moment with Herb Speer, Mikayla Ericksen and Pastor Rick.  If you would like to be put on the list to reserve a copy from the next printing,  please send an email to office@wellspring.net. The cost is $30.

It is not generally well-known that the history of our church goes back over 100 years, having been established in 1883 by a group of Swedish immigrants. Even less well-known are the details of that expansive history: the teachings, ministries, and leaders that have shaped our church up until the present day. One main person can claim extensive knowledge on this subject: Herb Speer, our Church Historian. Herb, in addition to serving in many other capacities at Wellspring over the years, took over as Church Historian in 1978. He started with nothing except the memories of those who had come before, and over the years passionately accumulated and recorded entire filing cabinets full of information about our history. His dream was to one day compile all of this information in a book, to be made available to the members of the church.

But while Herb has enjoyed collecting and organizing artifacts from our history, he will profess that he is not a writer, and was thus struggling to piece it all together in a digestible form. After praying for many years for help, early this year God impressed on my parents’ (Steve & Debbie Ericksen) hearts that they should speak to Herb about the church history. They believed it was important to condense the church history from across Herb’s scattered but organized files into a written form, and they also knew who could do it: me.

When I first entered Herb’s basement, I was amazed at the sheer amount of information he has accumulated over the years. Transforming it into a book proved to be a massive undertaking. I spent about six months sorting through crates of files, typing up old documents, reading, outlining, and finally writing this expansive history. The church, upon receiving the completed manuscript, decided to have it printed as a book and made available for the congregation to purchase. You can read about the founding of our church, prophetic words and teachings of various pastors over the years, the church’s response to world events including the world wars, our ties to various ministries such as Klingberg or Kampala Children’s Center, and much more. Looking back on our history is not only interesting, but also important. It gives us the perspective of what God has done, so we are better able to follow His direction moving forward.

Mikayla Ericksen