December 31, 2001

THREE LIGHTS form the image of a cross above leaers of a tent revival in Comanche as they hold an early-morning prayer meeting.

New church stakes its tent in Comanche
___By Ferrell Foster
___Texas Baptist Communications
___COMANCHE--Sleet pecked against the top of the revival tent as six believers held hands and prayed for God's blessings on the outreach effort and on the young church that sponsored it.
___Propane heaters sputtered and gasped in a vain effort to keep the tent warm for the daily prayer meeting at 6 a.m. as the two-week revival stretched from November into December.
___Circumstances could have been better for a tent meeting, but Comanche Community Church has made a habit of ignoring circumstances in the six months since it began. Few people attended on the cold nights of the revival; but, on the next-to-last night, a middle-age man gave his life to Christ.
___Four people have professed faith in Christ since the church started, said Randy Heddings, the pastor who moved to Comanche early in the year along with his wife, Cheryl, and their 12-year-old daughter, Jessica.
___Comanche is a town of about 4,500 people southwest of Fort Worth. Demographic reports indicate only 13 percent of the people in town go to church, Heddings said. "But we weren't looking at the numbers; we were just following the Lord."
___The church started in July with 28 people and no money, but they had friends and made some new ones.
___A man from the Comanche area gave the church land in town on which to build. A Baptist couple from Brownwood donated storefront space for church meetings in the interim. A large corporation offered warehouse space for free food distribution. The list of contributions mounted--pews and pulpit, 15-passenger van, sound system, sheetrock and

CHERYL HEDDINGS and Georgia Childress raise their Bibles during a tent revival meeting.

central heat and air conditioning for the future building, a forklift and walk-in cooler for the warehouse.
___The church, now part of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, has $62,000 in assets from gifts, the pastor said. He calls them all "blood-bought blessings" from Jesus Christ. "The only expense we really have is the utility bill."
___Heddings doesn't even receive a salary. He tries to support his family by working on cars as the ministry allows.
___"We've moved so rapidly," Heddings said. And the young congregation already is looking at starting two more churches in nearby towns. "It's definitely a walk of faith."
___That is what got the Heddingses to Comanche in the first place. He resigned as pastor of a church in Indiana and, with $250 in their pockets, they headed for Texas strictly because they believed that was what God wanted them to do.
___"God was with us every step of the way," Mrs. Heddings said.
___They had lived in nearby Dublin in the late 1990s, and so they had friends in the Comanche area.
___After a career in the military followed by 10 years in the auto repair business, Heddings felt a call to ministry in 1998. He waited to tell his wife as they drove down a highway because he didn't think she would jump from the car while traveling at 70 miles per hour.
___"I grew up Catholic,"

RQANDY HEDDINGS, pastor of Comanche Community Church, supports his family by operating an auto repair shop.

she said. "You don't grow up dreaming of marrying a priest. ... It was a totally alien thought to me." But the two of them had prayed they could do something together.
___Heddings has been a pastor the past three years, but he never had started a church.
___"I didn't want to plant this church," Heddings said. "I wanted a stable job." But he felt God calling him to do it.
___"We knew (God) was calling us here," his wife said. "And he was waiting for us to be here, so here we came."
___Upon moving to Comanche, plans fell through on the house where the family was supposed to live. They ended up living in an 8-by-17-foot camping trailer on the church property for the first few months.
___"It was wonderful," Mrs. Heddings said. "God made it an easy stay."
___And God encouraged them. In the early months they escaped the camper by walking around the property and praying. Heddings asked God for some indication that they were, in fact, on the right track.
___He looked up at one of two old metal buildings on the land. A large opening near the top of one, like the door to a hayloft on a barn, revealed the wooden rafters inside. They formed a perfect cross, light gray against a dark background. That was confirmation enough.
___The start of Comanche Community Church is all about God being at work, but it has taken faith to see it through, Heddings said.
___"I believe God raises us all up, even in our secular life, to do what he wants us to do when he calls us."
___It all makes sense to church member Georgia Childress. She and two of her friends, Margie Cox and Florene Simpson, had been "praying for years" for a tent revival and a church like Comanche Community.
___"We don't turn anybody away, because we're searching for souls," Childress said. "We just want to do a work for God in this area."


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