String of miracles brought Kirk to ministry

The story of what brought Warren Kirk to the ministry is an inspiring one of not only seemingly unending miracles and amazing circumstances, but it’s a glimpse of how life’s everyday happenings are sometimes guideposts for a grander future and purpose.

When you ask Kirk what brought he and his family to the Hope community back somewhere around the mid-2000s, his answer is simple and yet profound.

“Just coincidence and God,” he says.

However, when you ask him what brought him to the ministry, that is another answer altogether.

To better understand the greater design of things, one needs to go back a bit further to the mid-late 1990s before Kirk became a Methodist minister. It began with his heart. Literally.

During the last years of his more than 30-year career with Procter and Gamble, a physically fit Kirk lived in England. He was no stranger to marathons and was, in fact, training for a marathon when he was diagnosed with a heart problem.

He had a 99 percent blockage in the left aorta of his heart.

Kirk recalls his doctor’s amazement when he reviewed the imaging tests.

“He said, ‘It is amazing because you have made more than 40 bypasses around that blockage and that is what has allowed you to live. I have seen a dozen or so bypasses, but I’ve never seen nearly four dozen,’” Kirk says.

After receiving a stint and a clean bill of health to fly, Kirk was back in the U.S. and assigned to another project. However, that project failed, leaving Kirk the opportunity to make the decision to retire – but he would not be spending his time in what one would consider a conventional way for a fresh retiree.

“I decided I would get back to physical exercise,” he says. “And I tried jogging and it just wasn’t the same. I tried health clubs and that wasn’t the same.

So, I got this crazy idea I would ride across the U.S. on a bicycle.”

He hadn’t been trained on how to ride a bike long distance. Kirk didn’t own a bike.

While planning his grand cycling adventure, his wife gently reminded him of a promise he had made to her that he would attend a weekend Mass. A promise that was now 19 years old.

For those who are unfamiliar, Mass is a nondenominational gathering where the Bible’s teachings are condensed and delivered over a weekend that runs from Thursday evening to Sunday midday, Kirk explained.

After a half-hearted attempt of stubbornly arguing the matter, Kirk relented.

“On that Mass weekend,” he says. “I felt the call to become a minister. I said to the Lord, ‘Let’s talk about it on this bicycle trip. I am too old, Lord.”

While sitting at the dinner table with about one half dozen other men, Kirk heard the Lord speak to him again.

“I heard the Lord say, ‘I want you to be like Ted,’ who was one of the other ones at the table,” Kirk says. “All I knew about him was his first name. I argued with the Lord and said, ‘Why can’t I be like Warren, isn’t he OK? What is this Ted character?’”

Later that evening, the answer to the mystery was revealed.

Ted was an ordained elder in the Methodist Church.

“I said, ‘OK, Lord, we will talk about it on this trip.’” Kirk says.

Admittedly ambitious in his aspirations, Kirk decided he would make the trip from the West coast to the East coast in 40 days. After all, 40 is a number that is quite significant in the Bible and doesn’t really quite receive the attention it deserves, Kirk says.

“Jesus did several things in 40 days,” Kirk says. “It is a significant number that we really don’t talk much about. Looking at this trip, I thought it would be possible – not likely – but possible I could ride across the U.S. in 40 days from coast to coast. The 40 days would be the riding, not resting days.”

That settled it. He would ride from California to Maryland via U.S. Route 50, the only highway that runs literally coast to coast.

In the Spring of 2002, Kirk and his wife set off for Sacramento, Calif., where she dropped him off. The plan was for him to set out on Monday, but was delayed by rain. Again, his plans were postponed due to rain for the next three days. Finally, he had a dry window of opportunity on Friday. If he didn’t take it, it was likely another week before the sun would return.

It was Good Friday.

“I had no knowledge it was Good Friday,” Kirk says. “I started riding and came to a church that was offering a Good Friday Service.”

After being on the road a matter of hours, Kirk developed a pain in his left knee, so while sitting in church he asked God for a sign.

“I said, ‘OK, Lord, if this pain is any indication I should stop this ride, keep the pain on and I understand.’ So I biked Friday, Saturday was pain and Sunday I wasn’t planning to ride because it was Easter morning and I went to a 6 a.m. sunrise church service,” Kirk recalls. “Sitting in that service, the pain went away instantly. It was there when I went to the service and by the middle of the service it went away and didn’t come back for the rest of the trip.”

The Lord had Kirk’s attention.

Depending on the weather and how he was feeling, Kirk would be on the road by 8 a.m. and would average about 10 to 12 hours riding time each day. He readily admits he had no expectations and no intentions for what would await him at the end of the ride. The future and possibilities, one might say, were wide open.

“The Lord presented to me several miracles on this ride, which absolutely there was no question in my mind He had called me to be an elder in the Methodist Church,” Kirk says.

While traveling through the Midwest near the latter part of his ride, Kirk couldn’t believe the lack of rain. After all, it was spring.

“I would ride through the Midwest and people would say, ‘You are perfectly dry. Where have you been riding?’ I would tell them and they’d say, ‘That isn’t possible because it has been raining here all day,’” Kirk says. “But all through the ride, I never felt a drop of rain. It was in the spring of the year and people couldn’t believe I was telling the truth.”

Kirk says he made sure to stop in Dodge City, Kansas, if it was only for a short time.

He had a soft spot for the historic city. Growing up in Washington State near an Indian reservation in the 1950s, Kirk says he recalls playing cowboys and Indians and, well, Dodge City was the epitome of that kind of vibe.

“I tooled around there and got a late start and about 12 p.m. I heard the Lord say, ‘You have to stop at this restaurant coming up here on the left,’ I argued and said, ‘I got a late start, I’m not that hungry, I don’t need to stop,’” Kirk says.

By now, Kirk had learned he couldn’t argue. Well, he could. He just wouldn’t win.

He swung a left and stopped at the diner. Inside there were two guys in a booth and the waitress.

“I thought, ‘Well, He wants me to talk to those two guys,’”

Kirk tried to strike up a conversation, but they didn’t want to talk.

Annoyed they finally spoke and called him “Sonny,” he recalls.

“What do ya want, Sonny?” they asked.

Kirk asked if they could help him find a place to stay for the night. He needed directions to the nearest motel on U.S. 50.

“They mumbled amongst themselves and said I was in luck because Molly’s was a few miles down the road on the right and she was very clean, nice and reasonable,” Kirk says. “I said, ‘No, I need something about 50 miles.’ And they said, ‘No, if you miss Molly’s you have to go 70 miles.’”

There wasn’t enough daylight left to go 70 miles. When the waitress came to cash out his ticket at the cash register, Kirk noticed she was visibly shaken, upset and admitted she needed someone to talk to.

“I said, ‘Let’s pray. You talk and tell the Lord what the problem is.’”

Since taking the bus here to be with someone she had met online she’d found out things weren’t what they seemed, she needed an opportunity to get out of a bad domestic situation. She’d been planning ahead and saving her tips, so a bus ticket was no issue. It was opportunity she lacked.

When she was finished and Kirk closed the prayer, he asked what she’d heard.

“I am to leave in the morning,” she said.

Concerned about her safety, Kirk asked if she could do so without any issues.

“She said, ‘Oh, it’s unusual, but he has to work early tomorrow so I will have time to get to the bus station when he leaves,’” Kirk says.

With a promise from her she would follow through, Kirk got back on the road.

After passing Molly’s and then a spattering of closed, off-season cabins Kirk admits he began to panic a bit.

Just when he was about to give up, he found an old-style motel with the drive-up carport at the office. The lights were on, but it seemed no one was home. No one answered the door. There were no shadows moving about.

“Dejected, I turned away and saw a sign saying, ‘If you are looking for a room a single is $19.95 and a double is $24.95 the key is on the window ledge,’” he says. “And so I got a motel. That was only God’s work.”

“There was so much evidence the Lord was with me,” Kirk adds.

As if the signs up to now weren’t enough, there was a spiritual and religious crescendo taking shape just in time to welcome Kirk to the end of this leg of his journey.

When he awoke in Annapolis, Maryland, for the final day of his journey, he read from Paul’s Letter to the Galatians where it talks about how not all journeys are smooth and easy. It was then the clouds burst, literally and metaphorically.

As Kirk set out, he was met with rain for the first time on this trip. And it was a torrential downpour with no ambition of relenting.

Car after car would stop and offer Kirk assistance or a ride to his destination.

“And I said, ‘Well, it is part of the journey. I will put up with it,’” he says.

When he crossed Ocean City’s city limits there was no evidence of rain.

At the end of U.S. Route 50 there is a barricade that signifies the end of the road. Looking past the barricade into the distance is nothing but sand and sea. Well, normally.

“Right behind the barricade there was a life-sized sand image of Christ on the cross,” Kirk says. “I thought, ‘Lord, you are reinforcing it aren’t you?’”

The sculpture was clearly fresh. The artist had to be there somewhere.

Walking beside his bike, Kirk combed the beach until he spotted an exhausted gentleman sitting on a five-gallon bucket at the water’s edge.

He said he had sculpted the image, but it hadn’t been his original intent.

“He said, ‘That wasn’t my plan this morning. My plan was to come in and make dolphins here where I am sitting, but the Lord said, ‘I don’t want dolphins today. I want that image of my Son on the Cross, so I had to carry all the water from the edge of the ocean over there to get it wet,’”

Kirk says, he smiled and said, “Let me tell you why you made it.”

Per ministerial rules within the church that state one must retire at age 72, Kirk has since retired from the ministry.

Clearly, there is nothing he would change if given the chance, he says. Everything went according to plan and, if anything, that proves something, he says.

“You can’t argue with God.”