Both Questions Passed
What it meant to help our town say yes to its schools while we were still new here.
On the first Tuesday in March, I voted before work, with my two kids beside me at the table where you fill in the ballot. Two questions sat on the McPherson USD 418 ballot: one to renovate the high school, one to turn Eisenhower Elementary into a middle school.
By the time the numbers came in that night, both questions had passed. After three earlier bond proposals had failed, this town said yes, twice.
We had lived in McPherson less than two years. My wife and I moved here for the church, not for the schools, and we could have treated the bond as somebody else’s business. Plenty of reasons would have excused us. We were still learning street names. Nobody would have faulted a new pastor for staying out of a local election.
We did not stay out of it. Each of us took the part we were suited for. My wife worked the in-person side, meeting with the group planning the campaign, showing up at events, and talking with neighbors. I took the writing and the posting online, naming why the schools mattered and why this time could be different.
Here is what caught me off guard. Being new turned out to be a strength, not a liability. We carried none of the history of the failed votes. We had no old arguments to relitigate, no grudges to protect, no reputation to guard. We could say plainly that these schools were worth the investment, because we were still choosing McPherson, putting down roots in real time rather than defending a history we did not carry.
The yes belonged to McPherson, not to us. Teachers who could not campaign for their own buildings. Parents who had already voted three times. Neighbors who decided their children, and their children’s children, deserved better rooms to learn in. We added our voices to a chorus that had been singing for years before we arrived.
We showed up for a community that was not fully ours yet. That is most of what faith in a place looks like. You invest before you fully belong, trusting that what you help build will hold the students who come next, including, as it turned out, our own.
When the polls closed, we drove to the courthouse, where the most invested people gather to hear the count first, and then to the watch party at The Cedars with the group that had refused to quit. The room was loud. People who had worked toward this for years were finally celebrating. We were new enough to be surprised by the win and connected enough to feel it as our own.
Two questions passed. A town said yes to its children. And a family still learning the streets got to be part of it.
Wherever you are new, in a town, a congregation, a season you are still growing into, you may be closer to the center than you think. Sometimes the newcomer is exactly the one free to say yes.