My name is Scottie Kafka. For the past 11 years, my wife, Erica, and I have been a part of Cornerstone Worship Center (Nampa Foursquare Church) in Nampa, Idaho, pastored by Jim and Lynn Adams. We have four children: Hannah, Thorin, Jonas and Samson.
Erica and I grew up in homes that emphasized a relationship with Jesus, and we were regular church attendees with our parents and siblings. We went to different high schools, and never knew each other until after graduation in 1996. Through a series of divine appointments, the Lord arranged for us to meet at a local Church of the Brethren, where we both participated as youth sponsors through summer 1997.
We both ended up leaving the churches of our youth and our families, seeking more of what the Lord had for us beyond the familiarity of what we had always known. Together with some of our closest friends, Erica and I started to pursue Jesus with all of our time, resources and opportunities. The Lord began leading our close group of friends on an amazing journey into areas of local ministry, where we could see the Holy Spirit’s power at work.
Erica and I knew that we could love each other for our whole lives and wanted to make that commitment before the Lord, who alone could sustain that promise. After our wedding in June 1998, we began looking for a new church. Several of the friends with whom we had been so active in ministry had started attending Cornerstone Worship Center. Erica had been to some of the tent meetings the congregation had held the previous year and was fond of the passion she had seen among the believers there.
We started attending Cornerstone just a few weeks after our wedding. The worship style was nothing like the churches Erica and I had grown up in. This not only was because of the modern worship songs and rock ‘n’ roll accompaniment of the worship band, but also because there was something very powerful and present about the worship. The Lord had visited Cornerstone in a renewal outpouring just a couple of years prior to our attending, and He had never left!
The work we could see being done in and through people’s lives by the gifts, manifestations and presence of the Holy Spirit was unfathomable to us. We were quickly able to decide that this was where the Lord had planned for us to call home.
Erica and I have served the Lord here in many roles through the years. I play drums with the praise band, and looking out from behind my drums during worship to see my children freely worshiping the Lord has been a great joy to me. Erica is an artist—the Lord has blessed our church with her, and others, through their inspired and prophetic works of art.
Though our church is small in numbers, we have received many prophetic words that encourage us to seek ministry opportunities beyond the walls of our building. Erica and I have seen the Lord network us with people, resources and ministries that have stretched His reach far beyond the church walls to impact our community in unique ways.
Among the unique ministries here is an art gallery our church developed. Erica and I have an extension of Cornerstone that meets in our home weekly. Our daughter is active in the youth ministry, and our three sons are growing in the love and admonition of the Lord, as well.
The Lord has faithfully led our family through many spiritual seasons. Not all of them have been a delight to endure at the time, but each has produced its own rich harvest in our lives. We have truly been blessed both by the leadership as well as the entire church body of Cornerstone.
