Lyssa Henry

Don and Shannon Schaupp are the owners and caretakers of the Potter’s Place in Central, South Carolina near Southern Wesleyan University. I interviewed the Schaupps to find out where they came from and why they do what they do. Their passion for the work they do is undeniable.

ME: So, both of you can answer this: Where did you grow up?

DON SCHAUPP: I grew up in the Catskill mountains of New York, about 120 miles North of New York City

SHANNON SCHAUPP: And I grew up in San Antonio, Texas

ME: Those are very different places

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Yes, they are. But the military, Don was in the Air Force and he was stationed in San Antonio and that’s how we found each other

ME: Cool! What were your families like growing up?

DON SCHAUPP: Oh, my. Uh, My father was a railroader. My mother was a telephone operator. And that was back in the days when you just picked up the phone and said “Operator,” and you could, I’d say “I want to call Barney”

ME: And they knew who Barney was?

DON SCHAUPP: Yeah.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Isn’t that amazing? And you did a lot of things in the mountains, a lot of yours was running and playing [D: Oh, yes] And friends and a whole different environment than ours. It was cold. And my growing up in San Antonio was, we had an alley behind our house, and I was raised with a mammy

ME: What’s a mammy?

SHANNON SCHAUPP: A mammy was a black woman who basically raised the children while the parents either worked, or maybe the mother didn’t work, or whatever, but both my parents worked. My father was in the oil business, my mother was in real estate. And Lois, our mammy, pretty much raised the children. And my mother was brought up in a very Victorian kind of, if you’ve ever seen the movie “The Help,” that was my world.

DON SCHAUPP: That was her family!

ME: Wow! Were you like Skeeter?

SHANNON SCHAUPP: She was the, kind of, the rebel, right?

ME: Yes

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Yes, I was that person. And my family called me the black sheep of the family because they did not , they were just, couldn’t believe that I felt the way I did about things because they had very much of an idea of how things were. All the help was referred to, all the “colored people” as they called them, were referred to as “the help,” and I was real friendly with the help and I was not supposed to be and they said “You need to not be friendly with the help! You need to just be polite, nod your head and walk by, don’t make eye contact,” I mean it was just a whole ‘nother world.

ME: That’s crazy. Yeah, that’s my favorite book, I’ve read it several times.

DON SCHAUPP: And the interesting thing is, the gal who makes the pie, that was Lois, except that, but she didn’t make a pie like that. What she did, though, was, her father had special wood that he used when he barbequed, it was mesquite. And when Lois would get upset with him, she would take his mesquite and put it in the fireplace.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: And burn it, and he’d go, “Where is my good wood?” “OH, mister Hill, I didn’t know that was your good wood!” Then she just had this little grin on her face, she knew. It was her way of getting back with him. But yeah. It was a different world. Different world. We put, Don was the first Yankee in the family, so believe me, I heard about that. I heard a lot about that.

DON SCHAUPP: Extended family, as well as immediate.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Yes, matter-of-fact, one of my aunts offered to pay us the cost of the wedding, pay me the cost of the wedding, to not marry Don.

ME: Just because he’s a Yankee?

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Because he was a Yankee.

ME: That’s so weird!

SHANNON SCHAUPP: That culture, you know, that was just, part of that is the very deep South, and, you know, some things die hard

ME: Yeah, Texas is a little bit different than North Carolina.

DON SCHAUPP: But when I cornered her parents one night on the way out and said “I need to talk to you, we want to get married.” And Shannon told me what her mother was going to say, and she said exactly the same thing, exactly what Shannon said, “What does Lois say?”

SHANNON SCHAUPP: And so he had already asked Lois, and Lois was like “I think it would be just so fine!”

ME: How did you two meet?

SHANNON SCHAUPP: How did we meet? I was dating a guy named Bobby, and Don was dating his sister, Sandy.

DON SCHAUPP: I never saw her. And Sandy and her mother, and Bobby, all three of them, worked for me on a computer service bureau. I was in the Air Force, but I had a computer service bureau on the side. And the three of them worked for me. The two girls did key punching, and Bobby was a programmer.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: and I went away to Texas Women’s University and I did not know it, but Bobby decided to get married, and we were still kind of dating, so when I came back, I said, “Sandy, who can I go out with?” I mean, I’ve been dating Bobby for a couple of years and I don’t even know any guys, and, you know, when you’re at a women’s university you’re ready for a date. So, I call her and she says “Well I’m not dating Don anymore.” And so Don and I went out on a date, the first time I didn’t, and I said, “He’s an old man” I saw him at a distance and he wore a vest and smoked a pipe, and so I went “He’s an old man,” well he’s only four years older, but, you know, that was just… But she said, “Oh, you’ll have a wonderful time, you’ll really have a fun time.” So he picked me up, drove me to the airport, and put me in a private plane and flew me to the Gulf of Mexico for dinner

ME: That’s crazy!

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Yeah, it was wonderful! And we got married three weeks later

DON SCHAUPP: 21 days later.

ME: Three… what?! How did you know?

SHANNON SCHAUPP: We just, well I think my parents were ready to get rid of me to begin with, because I was just a hell-raiser.

DON SCHAUPP: This September 7th will be 50 years.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: But we can say that it was probably one of the rockiest first year, years, maybe, that it was awful. We were not compatible

ME: You were still getting to know each other.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Oh yeah, and being military, we were away, you know, I was away from family, I was barely 19 years old

ME: You were married, like, I’m 19. You were, whoa.

DON SCHAUPP: She turned 19 on the 26th of August, and we were married on the 7th of September.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: And, we had an option, either, my father was getting ready to go overseas, a lot of far-eastern consulting, and he said “Well, I’m going to Washington, flying out tomorrow, I’ll be back such-and-such a time, I’ll be here for the weekend, and then I’m going to be gone for a year.” And he said, “You either can get married during that window, or you can wait a year.” And there was no question. We were not going to wait a year

ME: [to Don] So how did you know that she was the one? [D: laughed] ‘cause that’s pretty soon, so you must’ve, you, like, knew.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: That was really soon, well, yeah. We just, I don’t know, we’re just crazy, young.

ME: Well it seemed to work out better than most young people’s…

DON SCHAUPP: Well, we were both convinced that we were going to make it work.

ME: I guess you did.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Even when things were rough, and we became Christians, I mean, really committed our lives to the Lord in the Jesus Movement, before the Jesus Movement really had a name, but it was happening, and that’s where we really turned our lives over to the Lord and it just changed, changed everything.

ME: How long into your marriage did you have kids?

SHANNON SCHAUPP: We had a child the first year, one of the reasons we hurried up and got married, that’s part of the story we don’t necessarily tell everyone, but we figured that in time, probably all of our grandchildren will know that it’s all about God’s grace in our family. We broke all the rules, I mean, I was a mess in college, Don was a mess, we were both just a mess. SO, anyway, he just, we got married and had a child 8 ½ months later. But, and that was hard enough, then we had another one right after that, so we had, like, stair-step, the first three are pretty much stair-step

DON SCHAUPP: Well, the first two are 18 months apart , the third one is three years, and the fourth one is eight years.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Eight years, yeah. Surprise!

ME: How many grandkids do you have?

DON SCHAUPP: Ten. Three of the sons and their families live within a mile and a half. And then one of them lives in  Montgomery, Alabama, four hours away. So we have 7 grandkids right here, and then 3 in Montgomery.

ME: Who are all of they? All your 7 here? I think I know some of them.

DON SCHAUPP: You know Lauren, and do you know Davey, her brother?

ME: I do not.

DON SCHAUPP: He’s in between Lauren and Kate. And then there is Mazie, and then her older brother is Calum.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: He lives in Florida now.

DON SCHAUPP: And Nathan has two girls, Mackenzie and Madison.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Now those are the ones that live here, and then in Alabama we have a son, we have four sons, a son and his wife and three children. But it’s a God story, I mean, we can say the only way that we made it was dying out to ourselves and the Lord walking us through and just deciding that when we committed before God, you know, for better or worse, when we would get to the worse, we remembered that it’s a commitment before God, and we really took that very seriously. We took our walk, when we really came to the Lord, it was a 180. I mean we were totally “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back.” And, so, we didn’t look at things as options. If in the Bible it said, “This is what you do and this is what you don’t do,” we just really followed that [Me: That’s hard!] and I thank God because now, yeah, that was hard, but now we can say we go into our golden years with good things, you know, a family that’s together that love each other, that get along, that, many of them mission-minded, you know, just, we could’ve thrown all of that away just by one decision, to say, “I can’t.” And when I’d reach the point or Don would reach the point where you’d go “I can’t,” It’s as if the Holy Spirit would say, “That’s why you need me. Because when you can’t, [Don: “I can.”]” And not compatible when people say “Well, we ever were compatible.” That’s not a reason to split. Compatibility, it’s really about your commitment before God, and letting Him hammer and chisel and work all that stuff out.

ME: [To Shannon] So, you mentioned where you went to college, [To Don] Where did you go?

DON SCHAUPP: Oh, my. I started off at University of New York. I had a scholarship and got bored. So, I joined the Air Force! And then I was going to get out of the Air Force and the Air Force said “Well we’ll send you to school.” So I went to Arizona State, did my undergraduate there.

ME: What did you major in?

DON SCHAUPP: Mathematics.

ME: Math major. [To Shannon] What was yours?

SHANNON SCHAUPP: It was pre-med.

ME: Really?

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Yes, and then I decided maybe I ought to be a nurse. I really didn’t, I hated school. I was not a student. I was the class clown all my years.

ME: I feel like going to school to be a nurse would be the hardest.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Well, I didn’t know what to do or what to be. I just knew I had to pick something, so I thought, “Well, I could be a nurse.” And then I couldn’t give the orange a shot

ME: You couldn’t give…

SHANNON SCHAUPP: The orange. You have to practice on an orange. [laughing]  I couldn’t give the Orange a shot because I was too visual. I could imagine that being a person and I just couldn’t do it, so that was good.

ME: But did you get your degree in that?

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Nope, I didn’t. Once I got married I was full-time wife, and mother very shortly after that.

DON SCHAUPP: And then the Air Force sent me back to school and I did my graduate work at Texas A&M, and did it in computer science and architectural design.

ME: I feel like computer science would have been a lot different back then.

DON SCHAUPP: Well I actually started working in 1963 for IBM.

ME: Really, my mom works for IBM.

DON SCHAUPP: I worked for IBM from ‘63 through ‘66. And then when I joined the Air Force in ‘66, I was considered a computer geek and so I got to write my own ticket, which was great. I just, God provided me with the world’s best assignments.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: And the computers were huge then. They’d take up the whole room. That’s part of the reason he wears hearing aids today. That, and flying. But it was in Arizona is when, we were there when the Jesus Movement was happening.

ME: Do you have, like, a story from when you were saved? Was there like a specific moment or did you just…

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Well, just, we were at bottom in our marriage. Our marriage was a mess and yet, we were going to a Presbyterian church and teaching Sunday school because my father, my grandfather was a Presbyterian minister and when I told them that, I guess they thought I was qualified to do that. They didn’t ask if I was saved or anything, we were just, we were there.

DON SCHAUPP: Well, I grew up in a Northern Methodist church. My dad was Sunday school superintendent. I knew all the Bible stories. Never once heard the gospel that Jesus wanted a personal relationship with us. It was all social gospel. And we had a young girl who lived, high school girl, who lived a couple of houses up, we had two ankle biters, and so she babysat. And she went home and told her mom and dad “The Schaupps are neat people, but they need Jesus real bad.”

SHANNON SCHAUPP: They were serious Christians. They were Pentecostal Christians.

DON SCHAUPP: They prayed for us and loved us into the Kingdom.

ME: That’s awesome.

DON SCHAUPP: It really was, and God just transformed our lives.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: They invited us to their church and… It was such a transformation that, I prayed for a guitar because I began hearing music and songs, and I started writing them and I said, “You know, if I had a guitar,” and I prayed for a guitar and went into a music shop and she just said, “I can tell you’re just really staring at that guitar” and  I said, “Well, I would like to get one. My mother sent me $50” but this is like $85 or something like that. There’s no way I could get it. She said “well it has a little nick right up here,” and she said “I’ll sell it to you for $50.” So I don’t know how to read music, but I just taught myself, figured it out, and we had rallies in the gymnasiums called “God Save America Rallies” because you weren’t allowed to have Christian rallies. All the principals in the schools in Arizona were Mormons, but, their kids were coming off drugs, and so they could see that there was transformation happening in mass proportions across the area, and so they invited us to come in and do a rally and a guy who had also come off drugs radically converted like a Paul conversion, and had an incredible gift for preaching, and he’d preach and I’d sing and play the guitar, and the gymnasium would be full, and people would just come out, you know, for an altar call. They’d be on their faces on the floor just turning their lives over to the Lord. And these kids just never go through withdrawals from drugs, they just came off of them and it was amazing. I mean it was really a miraculous move of God time, the Jesus Movement was.

DON SCHAUPP: And we were involved in it for almost two years. [To Shannon] Well, I guess you were two years because I left 3 months before you did, so we were there close to two years involved in it. But it was pretty powerful. It was just neat.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Once you go through something like that, you’re not a churchy, church-going person. There’s a radical change that happens, which is we’re where we are today.

ME: Yeah, so, [To Don] you taught at SWU, right?

DON SCHAUPP: Yes, I spent 22 years in the Air Force. I was the squadron commander, I got to work in lots of research, in radiation hazard research, biomedical research, I had a NATO assignment in Canada, and then my last tour of duty was the Air Force ROTC here at Clemson. And got involved, we went to the stone church right here on campus, and that was a God thing, we had just got involved with Southern Wesleyan in the adult program, which is, they’re phasing out now, but, I was the one who implemented it. Jim Bross brought the concept from Indiana Wesleyan and then I was the director of operations and faculty and curriculum and so on, so I just, I love the area, You know, you’ve got the mountains, you’ve got the four seasons, and you don’t have much snow. I mean what more can you ask for? So I taught here 21 years.

ME: Yeah? What exactly did you teach?

DON SCHAUPP: Most of, well, I taught photography, I taught computer science, taught management.

ME: How did you integrate faith into those things?

DON SCHAUPP: Well in those days, we had classes on Monday/Thursday, Tuesday/Friday. Wednesday was Lab day. All classes were an hour and fifteen minutes, so the first fifteen minutes of every one of my classes was devotionals and preaching. And every semester I’d get to lead a couple of students, in class, to the Lord.

ME: Really, in class?

DON SCHAUPP: It was just, it was so powerful and so addicting. I loved it. It just got my juices going.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: You know Don is a people person.

ME: Yes, and speaking of that, you know, Potter’s Place, can you explain what exactly is the Potter’s Place?

DON SCHAUPP: What it is or how it started?

ME: Well, both.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Well, I would say it started out of seeds planted in our own lives because our marriage was so rocky and it was so hard, we found ourselves in our desperation turning to the Lord just individually, just one-on-one, and time with the Lord, and I would want to get away and spend that time and Don in his own personal life would be doing the same thing and we realized that transformation didn’t take place in the church, transformation didn’t take place in Bible studies or small groups, it’s that time alone with the Lord that was so transformational where you can just say, “Lord, here I am, I need to hear from You.” And so I think there’s always been a desire to see people have that space and have a place and you kind of want to let people know that you need to do this, I mean, you really need to do this. We’ve had ministerial students from Southern come out and say, “I’ve never done this before, what do I do?” And one of the questions I ask is “How do you know you were called to be a preacher?” And I remember one guy said, “Well, my grandmother always told me that I was going to be a preacher,” and so on and so forth, and many of our ministerial students have never gotten away and just had one-on-one time with the Lord where they realized that He really does want to talk to you, and wants you to hear what He has to say to you. So when they spend those hours in a cabin, and in the word before the Lord, saying “Lord, speak to my heart,” and He begins to just open up His word and really speak to them, it changes their whole relationship with the Lord. So having that space, we lived on Wesleyan drive, it was very busy, our home on Wesleyan drive was always home away from home for college students. They knew they could come in any time.

DON SCHAUPP: It’s the one right next to Newton Hobson.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: As a matter of fact, the door was always unlocked and everyone knew that it was okay to come. When we moved, of course we didn’t realize that people didn’t realize we moved, but,

DON SCHAUPP: We moved out here

ME: People didn’t realize you moved so they kept going into that house?

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Well, not everybody, the people that were here knew, but there were people that would come back.

DON SCHAUPP: After the fall. And she had rented it to a family, she had rented us out of house and home, is what she did [laughed]. And two days after she rented it, she left to go to San Anton for 6 months,

SHANNON SCHAUPP: My father, he was real ill

DON SCHAUPP: and so this family moves in, and I get a call from the guy, and he said, “We have a problem. I was in the back bedroom, there was noise out front, I came out, and here was this group of kids and they were in the refrigerator, and…” [laughed]

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Which was very normal for us, but when he walked out, he said “Who are you?” and he looked and they said “Who are you?! Where are Don and Shannon?” and he said “Well they don’t live here anymore,” and they were so horrified, you know, they had no idea and it happened like two or three times and finally we had to put a sign on the door saying “The Schaupps don’t live here anymore, they live down at the end of Clayton street.

ME: That’s really funny.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: So when we came out, it was for a picnic shelter for our family, and people, we’d always invite people over after church that were new at church, just to get them connected. We were in the stone church at that time, before Alive became a big thing. So we lived down here in a little pull-behind camper. We built the picnic shelter to do our little family thing, and Don said, “You know, I’d love to just build a woodshop out here for retirement, and who knows, we may end up just building a house out here

ME: You built this house?

SHANNON SCHAUPP: We did not physically build this house, and we thought one day we might. We never have built our house out here. This is actually four guest houses, we’re living in two of them.

DON SCHAUPP: Well I built the picnic shelter.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: We never have built, so it’s kind of temporary housing, but then, all housing is temporary for the believer, so we know it’s not going to be permanent anyway, so we don’t know whether we’ll stay here or build and move. I mean, if we do, it’ll be on the property somewhere, maybe over in these woods, we’ve talked about that as a possibility. Anyway, when we were out here, we loved it out here, even though we’re living in, this is a camper, not a mobile home. This is a camper.

DON SCHAUPP: But it was not a little pull-behind camper it was a 38ft camp model RV.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: It was long, but you did have to ask permission to, only one could pass in the hallway. And so, we walked around and we said this would be a beautiful place just to put in some trails and some benches and people could come out and have some quiet time, and so Don began to clear paths and areas to do that, and we put benches in and then one day I was back here and I said, “You know, we ought to build a little cabin for Darren and Cindy, that’s our number two son and his wife who were in Africa. But when they would come home, they would rent a cabin at Table Rock to have solitude time, so one would keep the kids and the other one would go out and they would have solitude time. So I said “You know if we built a little cabin they won’t have to pay for that.” So cabin #1 was the first prayer cabin.

DON SCHAUPP: The one in the middle.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: So that’s why they’re numbered funny, because that was the first cabin, not because it makes sense.

DON SCHAUPP: That was 2008.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: And so then I’m standing out there and I went, “You know, we could put another cabin here and another one here, and then if anybody else wanted to come out and have a quiet time, they would have cabins.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: So it’s sort of like the question you asked earlier, so how did this happen? I think it kind of evolved out of our life experiences, how God took very difficult, rough years of our life and showed himself faithful in that, and that planted seeds of wanting to provide that for other people, so what the Enemy might’ve meant for harm, God turned into good. Then when we knew, we had a church come out who donated cabin #4, and while Stan, who was building that cabin, he’s on disability, and he was building that cabin and he said, “You know, if you let me build another cabin at the same time, I’ll do it for half the price.” So that’s how cabin 5 came about. And the picnic shelter, the bathroom was built, ‘Cause Don said he used to have a roll of toilet paper on a tree and we said, “No,” the girls said “this isn’t going to work out here, we need to have a bathroom.” So we built the bathroom and,

DON SCHAUPP: It was not open like this, it was very thick, you could not see 30 feet.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: And that was before the other cabins. This was just picnic shelter. This was thick woods here. Before the idea of a cabin or anything. Matter-of-fact, we were not living in a pull-behind camper at the time, we were still living on Wesleyan drive. Oh, and this is an important part of the story, is, before this land was even thought about, this is where I would come and have my quiet times. So when I needed solitude, I would leave our house on Wesleyan Dr. and I would come down and as soon as you hit the gravel, it was just thick woods.

DON SCHAUPP: There was a bar, a gate, there was a bar across the road.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Yeah, there was a bar across the road. So anyway, I would trespass on this property and I’d find a log and this is where I’d have my quiet times. And years later, you know, I would look back and I thought, “Lord, you knew when I came out and sat on that log that someday we would be out here doing what we’re doing now.” That was just so amazing that it was sacred land before it became anything. But we still didn’t realize we were developing a ministry, it was more our gifts of hospitality, our desire to connect people with the Lord, and that was very compelling, we just would do that and now we look back and we just see God had a bigger plan than we ever dreamed.

ME: Did you ever think that your life was going to end up being like this?

DON SCHAUPP: Being out here like this?

ME: Yeah.

DON SCHAUPP: No, actually, we did have a long-term plan.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: I’ve got to hear this because I didn’t know that.

DON SCHAUPP: No, you will remember! When we had the girls living with us, when we were in Arizona with the runaways and one of the coaches at a local school got us hooked up and he said, “I need your help” and Chuck and Carol Blanton, they kind of partnered with us, but we had some gals living with us and that continued when we lived in Maryland, we had the girls living with us and

SHANNON SCHAUPP: They were runaways and they were pretty much living on the streets.

DON SCHAUPP: We had a vision to retire; we looked at a couple of places in Maryland and thought about getting out of the Service and having a large, a farm-type area. One was in an abandoned hotel with a farm area around it and just having a place for these kids, at that time girls, and it just never came about. Then when I actually did retire, I was hooked into Southern Wesleyan.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: There were seeds of wanting to connect people with the Lord, and it just wasn’t time for those seeds to become what they were going to become until here.

DON SCHAUPP: And when we did this out here, when we put the picnic pavilion in, it was for grandkids and visitors at church. We had no idea that this was going to happen. People say, “Where’s your master plan?” Well, we don’t have a “master plan,” we have a Master Planner. We wake up in the morning and say “How are we going to be surprised by God today?”

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Man plans his ways, but God directs his steps, you know, and we just see that. When we have a little plan to do this but He’s directing our steps for what He had planned.

ME: You guys know I’m an English major, so I like words and writing and stuff, do you guys think that writing is super important to people’s faith?

DON SCHAUPP: Oh my goodness, yes. For instance, one of the things, I can’t wait until somebody comes and takes over responsibility, because one of the things God has put on my heart, when you go into a cabin, there are books in there. Lots of good stuff in those books. But when you go in, you’re there for an hour, maybe two hours, you’re not going to pick up a book and read it. And so what the Lord has laid on my heart is to take some 3×5 cards in a recipe index thing and different subjects and then Bible verses, might be, page 27, second paragraph. Just key things like that. Writing is so key.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Good writing is so key. Have you ever been in a church where the worship leader is really anointed, and they have the ability to take you from walking in with other things on your mind and then just know how to usher you into the presence of the Lord, and there’s already a change before you ever hear the sermon, It’s like you’re able to leave all that stuff outside and you are able to just worship. And then there are worship leaders that do their job and they do a good job and they have the hymns and songs that are sung, they’re just gifted that way, and writing is another one of those art forms where I think the Lord can anoint someone to write for Him. Obviously that’s the way He had scribes do it and so on and so forth. So He felt like it was a really good idea, but you also know when you read it, there’s something transformational about the words you read. It’s not just words, it gives life. And I think the Lord uses different authors that do that. I mean, you’ve read those books that you just go, “That book made a difference,” or “That sentence in that book made a difference.” So yeah, it is really important.

ME: Sometimes I feel like writing is a good way to worship, too, like I got up one morning like a month ago and I drove up to Glassy Mountain in Pickens and I watched the sunrise, and I wrote down some stuff and I thought it was really cool and I sent it to my stepmom and she was like “Wow, you’re like a Psalmist,” basically. It was super cool, but I feel like it’s a way to get your thoughts out, on paper.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: And how the Lord will use that, it’ll be interesting to see.

ME: Yeah, but I feel like not everybody can do that.

DON SCHAUPP: You’ve read the Jesus Calling in the cabins?

ME: Some of them.

DON SCHAUPP: That’s the kind of thing.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Her ability to take how the Lord speaks to her through a scripture and put it down in a very personal way.

DON SCHAUPP: And, like you were there, and God just spoke to you, and, you know, those jewels can be taken, it’s like the jewels in the journals here in the cabins that go on a Facebook page, a few of them. You know, a compilation, to take some of that and put that in a compilation: Jewels from the Journals at the Potter’s Place. There could be a book written.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: And Maggie felt inspired to write prayers for people, and that’s what those little boards are out here on the trees. And she said, “I just feel impressed to write prayers and to have them where people can look at them, and if it’s right for them, then they can take it.” You know, that, it is, it’s a form of worship, it really is. It’s beautiful. And there are people who have picked those up that just went, “It’s amazing heading to this cabin and that prayer was meant for me.”

ME: Well, I just have one more question because I asked a friend, and she wanted to know: why did you think of doing this for free? You guys don’t make any money off the Potter’s Place, do you?

DON SCHAUPP: Oh, no, nobody is charged at all. There are missionaries from Paraguay staying next door here for a couple of weeks, there’s no charge, and they eat over at the caf.

ME: How do you do that?

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Well, rental properties, the rental properties that we have, actually, and Melanie that does our bookkeeping says, “you realize these rental properties exactly cover the cost of running this place?” That was God’s provision. And that’s a whole ‘nother story, is how those rental properties came about.

ME: So you guys rent out places around here?

SHANNON SCHAUPP: Yeah, we have a wonderful, [She described one of their tenants and where she lives, and how they’re looking for another single female to rent the other side of that duplex, but I won’t share that information for the privacy of the tenant.]

DON SCHAUPP: We screen all the rent houses.

SHANNON SCHAUPP: But that is how it’s provided for, and we feel like, if this was God’s, I mean, the reason it got the name the Potter’s Place is because we thought this was just kind of our gift of hospitality and so on and so forth, and as we began to watch people, because we don’t advertise, we began to watch people coming and going and one morning I got up and Don was sitting in his chair and he goes, “You know what, this really isn’t our place.” and I said “God is molding and shaping lives here. This is the Potter’s place, for His work in people’s lives.” So, that day,

DON SCHAUPP: Jeremiah 18 “And God says to Jeremiah, ‘Go down to the potter’s place and I will speak to you there.’”

SHANNON SCHAUPP: But it was the idea of lives being formed by the Potter’s hands, I mean it really didn’t have anything to do with us. The place was here, but God was the one doing the work. I said, “This is the Potter’s place.” So later that day, somebody came out, and that was in the days when we knew everybody that came and went and we connected with them. And they said, “So is this the place that you can go to just have quiet time with God?” And we said “Yeah, do you want to go on a tour?” and she said “Yeah!” And so, anyway, I took this person in a tour and they said, “So, is this your place?” And because that was so fresh on my mind, I said “this really is the Potter’s place, but we’re caretakers here.” So a couple of weeks later, somebody came out and said, “Is this the Potter’s Place?” and it caught me off guard because I wasn’t naming it, I was just, we just knew that it wasn’t ours, you know, and so I said, “Yes, this is the Potter’s Place” and I said, “Honey, I think we have a name.” We needed to put a sign up, so we eventually put that poor little broken sign up. We hope that somebody will do a new one for us. So it was just the comings and goings of people, and it’s amazing how many people come and go from this place. So when people talk about the church ad how we need revival and how it’s dying and I say, “You know, the church of Jesus Christ is alive and well.” It may not be underneath a building, a specific building, but God still has children who are hungry and thirsty for Him, and He’s speaking and He’s directing them and they’re being obedient and going out. It’s our blessing. And we don’t feel like because it’s God’s place, how do you charge for what God does? I mean, this is just a place, but God’s the one doing the work, you know? And we don’t want to be a facility, we don’t want to charge, we just want people to know that they’re welcome to come and spend time with Him. As long as He’s providing for it, we can do that, and that’s wonderful.

DON SCHAUPP: It’s open 24/7. We try to catch people when they come in that don’t know. Show them where the bathrooms are and how to do the flags, and remind them to blow the candles out when they leave.