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“We Set the First Record!” Entering the Guinness Book for SFC—The ninetyandnine.com Interview September 17, 2007 Interviewed by Kent d Curry
Honestly, I had never even heard of Vienna, IL until Youth Congress, but once I had, I couldn’t forget what the Vienna UPC had accomplished in 2006. During the Frontrunner’s session they were featured as a small church who dreamed gigantic for God and Sheaves for Christ—and made sure they entered into the Guinness Book of World Records, while also gaining regional press and government attention.
I just had to interview them. Immediately after they sat down from their arena interview—and just after a stranger stuffed a wad of dollar bills into the hand of one of them—I snagged their contact information.
Pastor Bart Loyd is the current pastor of Vienna UPC. His father, Gary Loyd, was the previous pastor for 18 years, while his grandfather, Noel Loyd, was the pastor in Royalton IL for many years and the groundskeeper for the Illinois District camp grounds for many years.
A man who bleeds St. Louis Cardinals red who said he’ll never move north into Chicago Cubs territory (which, by my interpretation, means he’s guaranteed a ticket to heaven), he was forthright and careful with his answers. It says a lot about a small assembly remaining undaunted by the initial challenge of dreaming big, then topping it in 2007. (More on that below.) If nothing else, this is a reminder to all of us God will magnify our dreams if we’ll just try.
This interview took place over mid-September, 2007. ---------
90&9: First, please share where you’re located and what your average weekly church attendance is in a town of how big? BL: We are located 30 miles south of Marion, IL in beautiful southern Illinois in the city of Vienna. Our average attendance per week is around 60-65 people in a city of 1,400 people.
90&9: Tell us how your church has supported SFC in past years? BL: My father, Gary Loyd, had previously pastored the church for the last 19 years and has had numerous years of successful offerings. I believe that his continued drive to have a global impact has been the main focus for our inspired giving to SFC. We have raised $61,929.81 since 2000 for SFC because of a pastor’s transferring his vision to the church, as well as successive leadership.
We have utilized many methods of raising funds with the primary method being pledges. Each family is asked to pledge an amount, and through both personal and church-wide efforts, these pledges are reached.
In prior years we also had contests—between the men/women, youth/older adults, (and) teams. One year we used coins, and the team whose coins weighed the most won each week. Of course, after a few weeks people realized the nickels weighed the most so we broke all the banks in town turning our money into nickels. We have always tried to use friendly competition to keep it fun. We had people bring money each week. It is important to have weekly goals rather than wait until the end and expect a big one-time offering.
90&9: Why did you decide to get extra imaginative in 2006? BL: That is a difficult question because we try to be imaginative every year. After a couple of years of using coins, we decided to go with dollar bills. My father had a couple of old wagon wheels that a few guys in our church decided to put together and collect the money on every week for SFC. I believe that my father originally thought we would promote it as the wheel that moves the gospel to the world. After several weeks of offerings, we were inspired to try and fill the wheel up with dollars. We did this for two years. The second year (2006) our minister of music, Michelle Winterrowd, decided to see if we could make it a world record. When we found out it had never been done before, the church responded to the challenge.
90&9: So she came up with the idea of taping them all together? BL: We knew that we didn’t want to glue the dollar bills together, so, we thought we would start using tape. At first, we used cheap tape from the Dollar store. Then, we realized that it wasn’t holding the dollars together very well. We ended up using a better brand of transparent tape that worked fine, but it was a real learning experience. One more thing that is noteworthy, our secretary, Carol Elledge, taped all of this money together weekly with very little assistance. Our people are the greatest!
90&9: Was that a hard process to sell to the church? BL: You ask if it was a hard sale? Let me tell you what was difficult: we had this great party planned after church on Sunday, where we would all untape the money and count it at one time. We broke up into teams and we estimated that with our people this would take about 3 hours. We found out our local bank wouldn’t accept any bills that had tape on them, so we had to remove all the tape from the bills. We had no idea how hard it was to remove tape from dollar bills! As a result, a one evening fun “event” turned into a two night “project”. Now we have a better understanding of how to make this a celebrated “Event” for this year.
90&9: So what did you have to do to start the record-breaking process? BL: We contacted Guinness Book of World records in London and asked them to send us information on how to become a world record holder. Most of the communication was through email. They sent us an application; from start to finish the process took about six months. They actually created a new category for us entitled: “The World’s longest line of bank notes.”
90&9: What was the previous record? BL: We set the first record!
90&9: What duties did everyone take on to make it happen? BL: We started promoting the wheel to make it the main focus of fund raising for SFC in our weekly Sunday service. Mark Winterrowd, our activities coordinator, organized several methods of raising money such as car washes, yard sales, youth auctions, donut sales, candle sales, dinners, (and) walk-a-thons. Michelle Winterrowd took care of the duties of corresponding with Guinness. Our assistant pastor, Roy Elledge, wrote a parody song to the theme of “YMCA” that we sang every week to help focus attention on SFC.
Each week church members would bring their dollar bills and the majority of the young people would stay after Sunday service about an hour to tape the dollars onto the wheel. They had to be taped in a specific way, end to end, with no over lapping per the instructions of Guinness. The entire church came after the wheel was rolled out to untape the dollars to be taken to the bank. This process took a total of 500 hours to untape all the bills! We truly had 100 percent cooperation from our entire church.
90&9: How did the local government get involved in your record-breaking day? BL: Because Guinness requires that two public officials witness the record in order to make it official, we called the mayor of Vienna and the Johnson County Sheriff to see if they would help us. We were amazed when they not only agreed, but also were excited about the exposure that we were bringing to our city. The sheriff and his deputies directed traffic around State Route 146 while we rolled out our dollars to be counted. The line of bank notes stretched about 1.5 miles through the center of town, ending at our local park.
Guinness also required that a continuous video be made to ensure that it was indeed one continuous line of bank notes. The local police stopped traffic as we walked through town and it wasn’t long before the state police turned out and wanted to donate additional dollars to the project. Many townspeople cheered us on as we passed by with our sign explaining the record we were attempting to set.
The mayor wanted us to do it again the following year and let the town participate in giving to the drive. Many of the church people walked along with the wheel as it was being rolled out while I ran the meter over the dollar bills to record the number of feet. We had a mini van directly behind picking up the dollars and stuffing them into large trash bags once it was recorded. Another car was following directly to the side of the meter videoing the entire process.
Everyone ended at the park where the Mayor and Sheriff read a statement giving validity to the event. It was an amazing day to say the least!
90&9: Then what happened? BL: After sending the video, pictures, and a local news article written about the event to Guinness, we finally received the certificate in the mail as well as a commemorative letter from Guinness. We took the certificate, letter, the first dollar on (the) wheel and a group picture and had it professionally framed. This was presented by our fund raising director, Mark Winterrowd, to the church on that following Sunday.
We also awarded Mark and Michelle Winterrowd with a pewter/silver tape dispenser engraved with the year, dollar amount, and record for all the hours of taping dollars together. We celebrated what God had allowed us to accomplish and gave God all the glory!
90&9: How much did you end up raising for SFC? BL: We ended up raising $16,018. The church gave the 17th largest offering in the nation.
90&9: Tell us about your Youth Congress experience during the Frontrunner’s Session. BL: Wow! What an awesome experience! I pray that the focus on individuals and groups making a difference was really beneficial in inspiring churches to do more for the kingdom. Our young people were very excited to be able to sit on stage with Bro. Gaddy and were very proud, in a humble way, to have their story told.
90&9: Tell us about the unexpected gift you received when you sat down from that session. BL: That was an awesome day and night! When we exited the stage and were seated, a young man brought me a wad of dollar bills to place on the wheel. I was amazed that someone that I didn’t know had been moved by the same feelings that our church people had for numerous weeks as we raised the record-breaking offering.
Then, later that evening, after service we were eating in a local restaurant and in walked Bro. Todd Gaddy. He came over to our table and placed several dollars in my hand and told me that he believed in what we were doing! I can’t even begin to tell you how overwhelming it was to know that our leaders support us, not just with words or when the lights were on them!
90&9: Any other Youth Congress stories we need to be aware of? BL: Yes. When I left the morning of the Frontrunner session at Youth Congress we had just done our theme song and I was trying to inspire the youth to do the actions by leading them on stage. I was terrible at the actions and didn’t do a very good job. Later that morning, I was recognized by a couple of youth leaders in our hotel elevator. They asked me, “Are you the guys that did that wheel thing?” To my surprise I said proudly, “Yes, we are the world record holders!” To this they replied, “Man, that was awesome, but seriously, dude, you can’t dance!” I replied back, “What do you expect from a white guy from the Midwest?”
90&9: I understand you are going to try to do the same thing this year. What is your goal? BL: We wanted to challenge our record from last year and set an all-time high goal! We also felt that with the involvement of the community, we could raise more. So, we used our zip code, 62995, as our dollar goal!
90&9: What do you have planned? BL: To date, we have had several yard sales, dinners, donut and candle sales. We also went to the Illinois District SFC relay and have taken pledges from our community businesses that concluded on the September 8 weekend.
90&9: What would you advise any other church wishing to unleash their imagination for God’s glory? BL: Don’t limit God! Don’t limit people’s potential! Get involved in the local community—let them give to the church. Allow the church to exercise its faith in giving.
(Editor’s Note: After the initial interview, I learned that Vienna UPC had raised $22,010.00 this year, a hefty $6,000.00 increase. And, trumping their own entry in the Guinness Book of World Records.)
ninetyandnine.com
© 2007, Kent d Curry
--------- Kent d Curry is an executive editor of ninetyandnine.com, a college and career speaker, and now, a part-time literary blogger. .
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