... a faith-based community center ~~ a door of hope

 Gary Kerr and his wife Lori moved their young family from a small panhandle farming community to Katy in 1980.  They were assaulted by the pace of life in a metropolitan suburb. It seemed church, and personal relationships, had been shoved down the ladder of importance.

Time demands indicative of life in the suburbs, things such as driving distances and traffic, were changing the way their children were socialized. In smaller communities, aunts and uncles, some biological and some not, were part of their extended, loving, and nurturing family units. A child was surrounded daily by people of all ages who were in relationship with the child's parents. Loving, teaching, and disciplining were part of community life. The church was the center of that community. Teachers, ministers, and law enforcement officers were known and respected; now they found themselves in a different world.

There were other more subtle factors that became apparent; pluralism in society had relegated the commandments, God's directives to order society, to a place of antiquity and viewed as intolerant in an enlightened society. Absolutes were depicted as tools of intolerance. For two decades the commandments had been excluded from school classrooms, and the consequences were evident in the lives of a generation.

It became increasingly clear that there was a need for a moral compass. The three R's of their grandfathers and fathers, "Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic," were not sufficient to protect, guide, and equip their children. They needed a return to the three R's of equal or greater importance. Reverence, Respect, and Responsibility: a reverence for God, respect for authority, and responsibility for one's personal actions.

They needed "a door of hope:" a place where love was the guiding theme; a place where the excellence of God's purpose for the lives of their children would not be compromised by pluralistic societal revolution; a place where tolerance means loving guidance and not carte blanche acceptance of any and all perverse behavior. To that end, Faith West was established in 1982, for their children and for the all families looking for a door of hope.

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God has blessed us with unbelievable facilities.