EUREKA SPRINGS — In the past 40 years, hundreds of thousands of books have passed through the doors at Hillspeak.
Nestled atop Grindstone Mountain just south of Eureka Springs, the ministry operates out of twin red barns almost a century old. On a clear day, when the leaves begin to fall, visitors can see the Crescent Hotel and the Christ of the Ozarks statue from the hilltop, and some days the distant, hazy hills of Missouri.
Inside visitors will find not only the home of The Anglican Digest, a monthly publication sent to 42,000 readers around the world, but also Operation Pass Along. Since 1972, more than 300,000 books and other items have been given to the ministry and more than 200,000 have been “passed along” to others for free.
The Pass Along library includes about 20,000 books, all religious in nature, and visitors are welcome to stop by and take one or two or several at no charge.
Books also are shipped to readers across the United States and to countries around the globe for the cost of postage.
“We’re not here to sell books,” said the Rev. John Burton, managing editor of The Anglican Digest. “It’s all free. It comes to us with the expectation that we’ll pass it on to people who need it.”
Donations of books are welcome and are added to the rotating collection. It’s not unusual to find a stack of newly donated books on the reception area desk waiting to be shelved or to be shipped out.
Burton said the ministry receives or sends out about 1,000 books a month and he gets dozens of requests for specific titles each month by e-mail, too.
Burton, 70, has been at Hillspeak for almost 11 years.
He and general manager Tom Walker and a handful of others take care of Hillspeak’s various ministries. Although the organization is affiliated with the Anglican Church, the operation is independent, which Burton said helps them to better serve readers.
“We can be unbiased,” he said of the articles in The Anglican Digest.
The history of Hillspeak goes back to 1960 when the Rev.
Howard Lane Foland moved the operation to the mountain from Nevada, Mo. Foland, who had founded The Anglican Digest two years earlier as a way to teach people about the church, bought the land from a retired oil man, William Henry Rhodes. At the time it was a 1,200-acre parcel known as the Silver Cloud Ranch.
The barn that now houses the ministry was used to milk dairy cows and to store equipment and hay.
Walker, who came to Hillspeak in 1965, said it was a struggle to stay warm while the barn was renovated for use as the headquarters of the ministry.
“There was no insulation,” he said.
The barn has four floors. The cows were milked on the bottom floor, equipment was stored above and the third level was a hay loft. The fourth was a partial floor that is now used as a writer’s loft for those visiting the library.
Today, the barn is home to St. Mark’s Chapel, Operation Pass Along, the Howard Lane Foland Library and The Anglican Digest. Books can be found around almost every corner.
St. Mark is the patron saint of Hillspeak because the day Foland arrived on Grindstone Mountain it was St. Mark’s day. A cemetery named for the saint is also on the property, and the path to the cemetery follows part of the original route from Rogers toEureka Springs.
The property includes guest quarters for those seeking a private retreat or for seminarians taking advantage of the library. The building, known as The Farm House, was constructed around the turn of the 20th century. Next door is The Old Residence, where Burton lives. It’s the oldest building on the hilltop, dating to before 1860. An old cistern that once piped water to surrounding buildings still stands, too.
Visitors are welcome to tour the grounds, walk along the trails, pray in the chapel or peruse the shelves of the library or Operation Pass Along. Seminarians, high school students and area residents have taken advantage of Pass Along’s free books. Burton said the operation has also assisted new churches with libraries and books have been sent to Third World countries. Books that don’t fit in, such as fiction, are sent to chaplains and other ministries in need of reading material.
“We send them anywhere people can use books,” Burton said.
Operation Pass Along also includes gently used clergy vestments that are given away to churches and ministers. An upstairs closet is crammed full of vestments - everything from robes to cassocks - and shelves and drawers are filled with stoles and clerical shirts.
“We get a lot of calls and e-mail requests for books and vestments,” Burton said. “And we get requests from start up churches with little money for things like altar hangings.”
For Burton the entire operation is a way to help others.
“It’s a ministry, just a little different kind of ministry,” he said.
Information is available online at anglicandigest.org.
Religion, Pages 14 on 12/08/2012