were built on the church grounds to house Feastgoers (and, later, Ambassador College students). The next year, in 1959, the Field House was expanded by a third to accommodate more than 8000 brethren attending the Feast.
Work continued on the grounds, and in 1961 some 600 additional acres were purchased. In 1962 the church, in conjunction with Imperial Schools, was to host the first Summer Educational Program (or SEP, a summer camp for Church youth).
Roy Hammer died in 1962, and Mr. Armstrong announced that when the Redwood Building was remodeled, it would be renamed in his honor. In September 1969, in recognition of Mr. Hammer's labor, the structure was rededicated as the Roy Hammer Library, with an engraved plaque being placed on the exterior and a portrait of the building's namesake hung inside.
After the death of his father, Buck Hammer took over the responsibility of continuing to improve the Church grounds. On an adjoining property he owned, with the help of volunteer labor from Church members, he constructed a lake, which he named Lake Loma, after Mrs. Armstrong.
That property Mr. Hammer soon deeded to the Church as plans called for the establishment of a third Ambassador College in Texas, joining the original campus in Pasadena, California, and a sister campus in Bricket Wood, England. "The bankers we talked to thought we were a little crazy for thinking we'd build a college out here in the middle of a sandy field," Mr. Hammer reminisces.
But in the fall of 1964, a pioneering group of 40 Pasadena transfer students and 65 freshmen arrived on the rough-hewn campus to take residence in the Feast booths now called "Booth City." Leroy Neff was named acting Deputy Chancellor to open that first year until Les McCullough was named Deputy Chancellor in the spring.
Mr. Armstrong set in motion the Ambassador motto, "Recapture True Values," at the inception of the Big Sandy campus, beginning a new era in the Big Sandy church. The church, as well as the college, would benefit from the building programs he oversaw and his insistence on high standards.

SEEING THE DREAM EXPAND
Over the next 25 years, both the church and college grew rapidly, fueled by the national, and then international, expansion of the work of the Worldwide Church of God. The Big Sandy church would continue to play host as a Feast of Tabernacles meeting site, as well as serving as the location for various departments of the Church's far-reaching ministry, and Ambassador College would undergo vast changes—transformations best viewed by a year-by-year account:
• In 1965, construction on the college dormitories and the Church's Mailing Department began, and the campus produced seven graduates. This was also the last year that the Feast of Tabernacles was kept in the Field House until 1992.

iMciLf:
• In 1966, Lake Loma, in constant use by the college and the church for recreational purposes, was doubled in size, and 12,000 brethren met "under the big top" in a gigantic tent for the Feast. The majority of those meeting for the fall festival camped out in the wooded area nearby known as "the piney woods campground" and in an auxiliary campground across Lake Loma.
• In 1967, a new water plant was constructed to service the campus, Booth City was renovated, a major landscaping project in the lower valley below the Roy Hammer Library was nearing completion, a transportation building was going up and a Home Economics Department was added. New paved walkways appeared on campus, along with a redesigned Field House entrance and a new waterfront facility at Lake Loma. Much of this work was accomplished by Church members organized for special projects.

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• By 1968, 59 Ambassador College seniors
were awarded diplomas—an eightfold increase
in four short years—and work was completed on
a 300' x 320', 96,000 sq. ft. metal convention
center and accompanying festival administration
building built to accommodate crowds of up to
16,000 Feastgoers. Also during this time, the
Spanish editions of the Church's publications,
The Plain Truth and Tomorrow's World, were
printed in Big Sandy.	' •

• In 1970, the Festival office, which handled transfers and housing for the Feast of Tabernacles, moved to the Big Sandy campus. (Though it was later relocated to Pasadena, the Feast brochures continued to be printed in Big Sandy as late as 1978-79.)
• In April of 1973, the Church's internationally circulated newspaper, The Worldwide News, was first produced in Big Sandy. It was printed here until the summer of 1977 when its operations were moved to Pasadena. During this time, Church members volunteered on a regular basis to help label, sort and prepare for second-class postage mail-outs up to 32,000 WN issues at a time.

• In 1974, the U.S. government gave Ambassador College in Big Sandy permission to accept international students, exposing the local church to diverse cultures and an .international flavor.
• In 1975, a pioneering version of the Youth Educational Services (YES) was begun in Big Sandy to serve youths in grades K-6 with educational and social opportunities.
• In 1976, as the college considered accreditation with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, the Field House was remodeled, enhancing its usefulness to both the college and the church. Also that year Big Sandy hosted the first national Youth Opportunities United (YOU) conference for Church youths in grades 7-12.
• In 1977, after conferring degrees to 111, the Big Sandy campus of Ambassador College was closed. At the time of its closure, the college had expanded to include farm and equestrian facilities, a nine-hole golf course, a remodeled physical education area complete with coated-surface track, tennis courts and racquetball courts, a science lecture hall, the inclusion of the former Imperial Schools facilities into a humanities complex, an airstrip and a faculty housing area. While the college was merged with the final remaining campus in Pasadena (the Bricket Wood campus was closed in 1974), the church continued to use the campus facilities as a home base for local and regional Church activities, including ministerial and youth conferences. Sports tournaments were also centered in Big Sandy, which served as the site for the 1978 YOU national basketball finals.
• In 1981, the Big Sandy campus reopened as a two-year junior college. Leon Walker was named Deputy Chancellor, Donald Ward served as Academic Dean and Ronald Kelly was Dean of Students.
• In 1984, to augment the system in Pasadena, Wide Area Telephone Service (WATS) lines were installed on the campus to help process literature requests from Church advertising. (Big Sandy church members became heavily involved in donating their time to the WATS services, with approximately 200 members in six crews handling 20,000-30,000 calls per weekend for four to five years and entering thousands of Plain

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Truth subscriber addresses. In all, Church member volunteers helped take 4.5 million calls from March 1984 to December 1992, and Church members still work for what became in 1990 the Church's sole telephone response and mail processing center for the U.S.)
• In 1986, after the death of Herbert W. Armstrong, a man whose singular vision founded both the Worldwide Church of God and Ambassador College, Joseph W. Tkach became Pastor General of the Church.

• In 1988, the Big Sandy congregation celebrated its 35th anniversary along with pioneer members, ministers and friends from across the nation. The event included a picnic and special services. Meanwhile, the college again began studying the merits of accreditation.

SIGHTING A CROSSROADS
On December 14, 1989, just a week after ground was broken on Ambassador College's Big Sandy campus for a new three-story administration building, Church Pastor General, Chancellor and Chairman of the Board of Regents Joseph W. Tkach made an announcement that would prove earth-shaking to the church and college in Big Sandy. In a student assembly in the Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, he made official the plans to

consolidate the Ambassador College campuses in Pasadena and Big Sandy into a single liberal arts program in Big Sandy.
"We are at a crossroads," he said, explaining that because of the legal requirements governing higher education in the states of California and Texas, the Church could not support the demands of accreditation for both campuses.
While Church offices in Pasadena were named to remain as international headquarters and the center for the Ambassador Foundation and the performing arts program, Big Sandy geared up for the massive move.
«~i-
1 HIS IS A FRESH START IN A
SENSE, BUT WE WILL CONTINUE TO
BUILD ON OUR TRADITIONS OF
RECAPTURING TRUE VALUES
THROUGH BELIEVING THE
FOUNDATION OF KNOWLEDGE IS
THE WORD OF GOD."
—dr. donald L. ward
That spring, while construction on the college campus was slowed by unseasonably heavy rains, church members, who had already begun meeting in the convention center because of a renovation and asbestos abatement project in progress in the Field House, gathered 1589 strong for what may well have been the largest single Passover service in the history of the New Testament Church.
Through coordination carried out with smooth teamwork, scores of dedicated employees and volunteers worked tirelessly to meet the initial deadlines for consolidation and accreditation. Their efforts were shown fruitful when, on September 4, the college began its 1990-91 academic year with a student body of 1160.
Hundreds of Big Sandy church members had worked alongside hired contractors in what college president Donald Ward called a "heartwarming example of dedication." He thanked the church for the members' "sacrifice, loyalty and patience" in a celebration Sabbath September 15.

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we MUST WORK SMARTER, NOT JUST HARDER."
—joseph W. tkach
At that 1990 Feast of Tabernacles, 6000 festivalgoers came to Big Sandy to camp in the Piney Woods and marvel at the rapid transformation of the campus. The nine-month effort had resulted in the building of a college administration building, a lecture hall, five student residence ______^^^^^__= dormitories
and    a
chiller plant. In addition, the Field House and Roy Hammer Library had been remodeled, a ~—————•""—-~^~—~ utility-distribution corridor had been begun and an infrastructure of new roads, sidewalks and streetlights was in the works. In all, 445 students and faculty and 72,000 library books had made the move from California to a new home in Texas.
The theme of the 1990 Envoy, handed out that Feast, was, "Values and Visions for the '90s." The Big Sandy church also adopted this theme for its approach to the new decade.
In June of 1990, the church resumed meeting in the Field House. Its congregation of 1300 members represented the single largest in present Worldwide Church of God history and was reconfigured into two congregations, A.M. and P.M.
Though the two congregations (composed of local church members, college staff and students), numbering about 1200 each, now meet at separate times and have different pastors, the church is still known simply as "the Big Sandy church." And though the church in Big Sandy is similar in many ways to any other local Worldwide Church of God congregation, in other ways, it is unique.
Its uniqueness lies not only in its size, but in its large and constant influx of visitors due to the many activities offered and sponsored by the church and college, its designation as a festival site, its supplying of guest speakers to a dozen outlying church areas and its recent appointment as a regional YOU hub.
To coordinate its unique features and the more typical facets of church activities such as YOU, YES and senior (Silver Ambassador) events, men's and YOUth clubs and social happenings such as the western or spring formal

dance and church picnic, the Big Sandy church relies on the Big Sandy church office.
The office was established in 1968 by then-
pastor Mr. Les McCullough as a central
clearinghouse of information to serve the large
numbers of brethren in the area. Modern office
.. ,..... ....... ,,    ..._..	equipment was added
to the department beginning in 1989, with a total of seven computers, a variety of software, a large-
^^^^^^~^^^^^^~   capacity copier, computer electronic mail and phone voice mail now giving the staffers the necessary technology to help them perform their administrative duties.
Because the Big Sandy church office is located on the Ambassador College campus, church office employees are able to further their computer training by attending college seminars on a regular basis. The church office also cooperates with Church Administration by helping train international ministerial staff during their college terms at Ambassador.
The "one church-two congregations" concept has led to a cooperative approach to the delegation of administrative responsibilities within the church office. Specific areas of management—general visiting, calendar coordination, the speaking schedule or coordination of YOU activities—are assigned to various full-time ministers who keep in touch with local elders, deacons and other volunteers who all play major roles in serving both congregations.

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let YOUR LIGHT SHINE BEFORE MEN, THAT THEY MAY SEE YOUR GOOD DEEDS."
—MATTHEW 5:16
Vast numbers of volunteers serve in the Big Sandy congregations; and the church office staff tries, whenever possible, to rely on the expertise and talent of member volunteers. Volunteers routinely help plan and execute social and sporting events, maintain services such as the church's used-clothing boutique and coordinate regionwide activities such as the YOU regional arts showcase held in Big Sandy for the past several years.
In addition to volunteers, the Big Sandy church office also uses college student employees to help get the job done. This brotherly interface with the college extends throughout the congregation as church members invite Ambassador students to their homes for Feast celebrations and —^——————^—^— Thanksgiving, sing
alongside them in performances of the combined choir and cooperate with them in Outreach activities.
Together, the church   "
and college celebrated the 45th anniversary of Ambassador College in July 1991 and the start of its 45th school year on September 2, 1991, with 1150 students representing 39 countries.
Together, the church and college in Big Sandy saw 1992 begin with a fiscal downturn but rebound with the ground breaking of Ambassador's Jackson Hall, the first building in a planned academic complex. Big Sandy church members embarked on a citrus fruit sale to help

raise funds for the structure; the sale was completed in time to present a check at the college's third annual alumni reunion in December. Meanwhile, the Big Sandy church became one of several local church areas chosen to "field test" several new aspects of a completely restructured YOU program, designed to add academic achievement, community service, cultural awareness and vocational goal-setting to a program already rich with Church teachings and sports events.
FOCUSING ON THE FUTURE
As 1993, the 40th year of the Big Sandy
church, began, the congregation was focusing on a
-—————————————   new clarity of vision
emphasized by Pastor General Joseph W. Tkach in his Feast 1992 sermon. Referring to Matthew 28:19 and 5:16,
he said, in the September =——————=^—— 8, 1992, issue of The Worldwide News, "Our commission involves making disciples. It does not involve the Church obscuring its existence. . . Let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds."
Extending the beam of Christian service beyond the church door may be a shift in emphasis for the Worldwide Church of God in general, but for the Big Sandy church in particular it is not altogether a foreign concept. Because of the large numbers of Church members concentrated in Big Sandy (and other nearby towns such as Hawkins and Gladewater), the church has a long history of involvement in the greater community of which it is a part.
A church member was recently appointed as Big Sandy's Emergency Management Coordinator, and members of the church have served in the Big Sandy Volunteer Fire Department since 1964, presently comprising three-fourths of its active membership.
A number of church members who are firefighters have also become qualified as EMTs to provide emergency medical care. Member Frank Parsons, a paramedic on the force, explains, "A few years ago a number of us showed up at a fire meeting at the same time,

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T

(From top, left to right) Members participate in a relief drive for victims of Hurricane Andrew; well-wishers congratulate Diana Kordsmeier on her Fun Run win during Big Sandy Heritage Days; church youths participate in Cub Scouts; Deborah Shipman and family raise seeing eye dogs; volunteer firemen hold a fund-raising chill social; parents volunteer their time in their children's schools; Angle Pemberton competes in the high jump for Hawkins Middle School.

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