In spring 1988, Pastor Dave Risendal had made the decision to become a mission developer charged with gathering a new church in the new neighborhood called Mountain Park Ranch in Ahwatukee. But before he could begin the church needed a name. He and his wife, Betsy, had noticed the Spanish character of some of the new constriction. Maybe there was a Spanish word that would express the role that church might play in the new community. The Spanish word for faith? Joy?
What about hope – Esperanza? “It sounded like a celebration, and it referred to one of the central gifts of our faith,” said Pastor Risendal recently. They knew immediately that Esperanza was a perfect fit. The church on the corner of Ray and Thunderhill would be a place where congregants and the community would find hope in their lives and carry it into the world.
Pastor Dave hadn’t set out to be a mission developer, but a friend and fishing buddy, the late Pastor Paul Halvorson, urged him to consider it. “Just talk to three who have done it,” Pastor Halvorson said. Dave made the calls, and all three “raved” about the early days of bringing the founding members together.
Several weeks later Risendal made his first visit to Mountain Park Ranch. Back then Ray Road ended a little past Frye’s and the property where Esperanza now stands was still a desert. Over the next four months, while the neighborhood was building out, he knocked on 3-4,000 doors, talking to residents, dropping off packets of information, and finding the faithful who would become Esperanza’s charter members.
In those very early days the group worshipped in a small room at Corpus Christ Church. When they outgrew it they moved to Monte Vista School, across the street from the building site for the new church. And it was a procession! Cars loaded with boxes and a pickup truck carrying the cross in its bed drove slowly two and a half miles to the corner of Ray and Thunderhill.
In September 1994 the congregation moved again. It was another procession, but this time members carried chairs and the altar across Ray Road to the new sanctuary. On February 23 we are going to re-enact that day, kicking off our anniversary celebration.
Pastor Dave and his family moved on in 1998. For 23 years he was the senior pastor at St Peter Lutheran Church in Greenwood Village, CO. Currently he is pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church in Littleton, CO.
When Pastor Dave was knocking on doors, the neighborhood was in a special time in its history. Everyone was just moving in, busily setting up their new lives. Esperanza was part of the excitement. When people found a church they were excited to tell their neighbors, Risendal said.
But bringing hope and building community is a different challenge in the fractured, stressed world we live in today.
“We miss an opportunity when we fail to communicate that we are still a reforming movement, and a place where it is safe to ask hard questions,” he said. Hope grows in places like Esperanza.
That’s our challenge for the next 35 years.
On a spring afternoon in 1988, Dave and Betsy Risendal were listening to the music at a bluegrass festival on Stoneman Lake in Flagstaff, paging through a Spanish dictionary to spend a quiet afternoon at Stoneman Lake.
By, Liz Farquhar, Member of the 35th Anniversary Team