Hillcrest Continues 100 Year Tradition This Month
In 1918, Alfred Bridston arrived on staff, and in 1920, he started Hillcrest’s long tradition of cross-country music tours. The tours became a staple of the Hillcrest experience. Not even the Great Depression or gas rationing of World War II kept the schools from conducting their annual music tour. The only interruption in the annual rhythm was the Covid pandemic, where Hillcrest paused the tour. The tours are done to encourage churches, unite the synod, and educate our students, but they impact many students in dynamic ways. Countless Hillcrest tour members leave the tour bus and return to their communities with a renewed sense of mission.
In 1939, Watler Christianson, a 1941 graduate of Hillcrest, attended a tour. He said, “God marvelously guarded us from danger...probably more than we realized, but after these experiences, we could not help but praise Him more for His protecting power...The most disheartening experience was to see the destruction wrought by hailstorms to bountiful fields ready for harvest in Montana and South Dakota. Nevertheless, the friends whom we visited in these sections acknowledged that ‘God’s way is the best way.’”
In 1951, Hillcrest’s Gospel tour brought them through Minot, North Dakota. Harland Helland, a 1950 graduate of Hillcrest, drove the bus and felt God prick his heart for the community in Minot. Years later he would be called from Antler, North Dakota, to lead a Bible study in Minot, the site of Harland’s first of many church plants.
In 2017, after the home concert ended their Easter tour, students greeted friends and family to share their tour memories. A host of senior choir members had participated in the Dominican Mission trip before embarking on the choir tour. Throughout the tour, these students actively shared their faith at the foot of Mount Rushmore, on a ferry ride to Deception Pass in Washington State, and in the streets of Seattle. Then Senior Hans Holzner said his tour experience, actively sharing the Gospel, was on par with his senior mission trip to the Dominican Republic.
The spirit of the cross-cultural tour, something born in 1920 but evident in the regional visits students conducted to churches since the founding of the Bible School which birthed Hillcrest Academy, is a significant aspect of the Hillcrest experience, and one of the school’s longest traditions.
Hillcrest embarks on its annual tour this month. Make plans to attend a concert by visiting www.ffhillcrest.org/tour