If anywhere in the United States seems peaceful, it’s southern Delaware, with its beaches and lazy ocean waves, rippling grain and fields of corn, strings of small towns and home–grown businesses. Yet beneath the serene surface lies the same discord and discontentment we find everywhere in our land. People are hurting, hungry, and searching.
On Route 13, a main artery through Delaware’s Sussex County, is Sussex Chapel, a haven of hope for the physically famished and spiritually thirsty. The driving force behind this new Salvation Army “outpost” is a committed, creative team of brand–new lieutenants, Debbie and Chas Engel.
The Engels’ journey to the newly opened chapel in Seaford, Del., is a meandering one filled with detours and obstacles.
“I am a fourth–generation Salvationist,” says Chas, noting that his parents and grandfather had been officers in the Army’s USA Western Territory.
“Do their credentials give me a ‘Get out of jail free’ card? No,” he says. “Before God, I must stand alone.”
But when he was a young man, Chas says, he “made poor choices and ran” from God. He married at an early age, and through that time and his eventual divorce, a Bible passage from the book of Revelation continually played in his mind: “So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue [spew] thee out of my mouth.” (Revelation 3:16, KJV)
Chas recognized that his off–again, on–again relationship with God was “lukewarm,” definitely not what the Savior had in mind for him. He knew he had a call to become a Salvation Army officer (an ordained pastor). But he put that call on the back burner as he pursued a career; he eventually became a well–paid supervisor in a Caterpillar dealership. He joined a community band to pursue his Salvation Army–grown love of brass banding and played tennis with anyone who was willing to pick up a racket.
Life was OK for Chas, but he couldn’t describe it as “the most incredible life possible.”
Debbie’s journey
Debbie Engel also grew up as a faithful church member. “I went because my parents took me. I think they thought it was ‘the right thing to do.’ I participated in all kinds of activities but never really worshiped God,” she says. Debbie busied herself doing the “right things”—being nice to people and attending church on Sundays.
But Debbie’s life journey, like Chas’s, also took her through a failed marriage and divorce. She found a career that stemmed from her love of classical music; she played French horn in the Delaware Symphony and then served for 20 years as the symphony’s executive director. Tennis was a passionate hobby.
Debbie could call her life interesting. But she wouldn’t describe it as “the most incredible life possible.”
Debbie and Chas found each other through their mutual interests: music and tennis. They married in 1998—with six children between them. Somewhere along the way, Debbie accepted Christ as her Savior. But that fact didn’t mean any revolutionary change in the couple’s life.
Digging below
hollowness
The Engels had no financial worries. They lived in a lovely house and drove new cars, pursued their hobbies, and stayed extremely busy. But that busy–ness had an empty quality.
As Chas puts it, “Sometimes [people have] to reach bottom, and only then can they dig from the depths and reach limits beyond imagination. Others … reach the hollowness at the top and realize the utter loneliness there and have to dig down to find the same result.”
That was the Engels’ experience: they had to dig down below their hollow lives to find something not just more meaningful but also more satisfying than they ever could have imagined.
That process began for Debbie at a professional women’s breakfast in early 2006. She participated in an icebreaker activity in which she was to choose an index card bearing the statement that was most in tune with her expectations for the coming year.
The card she chose said, “I want to be more spiritually connected.” When she went home, she seized on the first spiritual connection she could find. She began to read Bruce Wilkerson’s book, The Prayer of Jabez, which her mother–in–law had sent her.
Caught by one man’s prayer
The book, which caught the imagination of many people when it came out several years ago, is based on the prayer of one man named Jabez. In the Old Testament book of 1 Chronicles, Chapter 4, Jabez cried out to God: “Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.”
The Bible simply says, “God granted that request.”
Wilkerson’s book, which emphasizes the power of the Jabez prayer as a promise from God, had an instantaneous impact on Debbie Engel.
“Oh my goodness!” she says. “The puzzle pieces of my life started rapidly falling into place! I was truly regenerated by the Holy Spirit.”
She began attending church again, and Chas occasionally accompanied her. They talked more and more frequently about the pointless path they were following.
Then, as he had years before, Chas heard God’s voice, and he knew the time had come to “be the man who rallies the troops.” Such a thought was natural for someone who had grown up with the Salvation Army’s military terminology. Chas said, “I want to be the man who prepares [the soldiers] for war and in the end marches with William Booth as ‘the millennium’ is ushered in.”
Chas was referring to a thousand–year reign of Jesus described near the end of the book of Revelation. Booth, the Salvation Army’s founder, believed that winning the world for God would help bring Jesus back for that triumphal time.
Laboring for God in Delaware
For the Engels, their part in the Salvation Army mission had to begin in Delaware, where they already knew the Army’s work well. Debbie had served on a Salvation Army advisory board, made of up local business people, for several years, and from time to time, she and Chas had performed special music at the Army’s Wilmington, Del., Corps (church).
So both the corps officers at Wilmington, Majors Ray and Ruth Bartholomew, and the regional coordinators, Majors Philip and Connie DeMichael, were thrilled when, in the spring of 2006, Debbie and Chas walked into a Sunday morning Holiness Meeting and announced the moving of God in their lives toward full–time service with The Salvation Army.
The Engels quickly immersed themselves in the life of the Wilmington Corps. Their spirit of compassion immediately endeared them to both the adults and children in the congregation.
In October of that same year, officers at the Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware Divisional Headquarters in Philadelphia approached the DeMichaels about expanding the small emergency services office in Seaford to make it an “outpost,” which other churches might describe as a “church plant.” The Engels were offered the opportunity to lead the charge. They did that—full steam ahead!
They held the first Sunday worship service in March 2007, and now Sussex Chapel is up and running with adult Sunday school and Holiness Meeting on Sundays; a women’s Bible study group on Tuesdays; “Music to Grow On” every Wednesday for toddlers and preschoolers; “Singspirations” on Thursday evenings; and a youth night on the first Friday of each month that features movies, SONday’SCOOL® (a kids’ program), music, and devotions.
The lieutenants are reaching into the community through their lifetime hobby: tennis. They offer such programs as “Tennis for Life” and tennis clinics for adults. They also faithfully visit area nursing homes and community senior centers and recently conducted a prison ministry.
When an opportunity opened up to do music tutoring at an elementary school, the Engels saw it as one more window through which God can shine His light into young lives. A Girl Scout troop called asking if someone at The Salvation Army could offer instruction for the “God and Church” badge. Debbie now meets with the Scouts on Sunday evenings. On Wednesday nights, Chas conducts a choir called a “songster brigade” made up of men from the local Mission of Hope program.
Harvesting people
The lieutenants are not just a “two–man band.” More than 40 helpers and volunteers assist them with various aspects of the work. Serene Seaford will never be the same.
The Engels’ diligent “sowing” of Gospel seeds is reaping a harvest of people finding the Lord for themselves. Debbie excitedly shares the experience of leading “seekers” to Jesus during Sunday morning worship.
The Engels and their
new soldiers (church members) aren’t just waiting for people to walk in the doors of Sussex Chapel; they’re also going out to find them. Following training in the “Got Life” program for evangelism, Debbie and several volunteers stormed the parking lots of local businesses, and people came to Jesus as a result. The first senior soldiers (adult members) of Sussex Chapel were enrolled in August during Salvation Army meetings at Camp Ladore in Waymart, Pa.
The Engels’ lives are as busy as ever. But they have given up worldly “busy–ness” to pursue “Kingdom business.”
Chas says, “We answered God’s call with all of our energies and talents.”
Debbie adds, “Sometimes I think, ‘Wow, God, I’m not sure if I should continue to keep praying the Prayer of Jabez. You are increasing
our territory so much that I am not sure I can handle much more.’ ” But, she adds, “He never gives us anything we cannot handle. We need to remember, as strong and faithful soldiers for Christ, to take every opportunity offered to us to reach out to as many lost souls as we can.”
As they do that, Lieutenants Debbie and Chas Engel have found what was missing in their very full lives. Debbie quotes John 10:10, which says, in a paraphrase, “Jesus came to give us the most incredible life possible!’ ”
That’s what the Engels now have, and they are fully engaged in helping others find it too.
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