Hope Center Indy co-founder Hubert Nolen has released a book, “Hope for a Lifetime.”
Tom Russo | Daily Reporter
NEW PALESTINE — There was the teenager interested in hog farming. The college student struggling to write essays until instructed by a caring professor. The pastor who took his two young daughters to a field in the 7000 block of U.S. 52 and asked if they could see a church. The father grieving after his son’s unexpected death at age 28.
Hubert Nolen shares all these stories in his book, “Hope for a Lifetime.” He has lived them all.
“It’s about the story of how my life was changed by Christ and then the different challenges and things I faced,” he said, “but also the opportunity for ministries that kind of came out of that.”
Nolen is a Shelby County native who turned from pig farming to the pastorate over the late 1970s and early 1980s. He’s also the minister who planted a church in 1983 that eventually became Brookville Road Community Church in New Palestine. In 2016 he retired from leading the church, feeling God was calling him to launch a new ministry.
Nolen was inspired by the Dream Center, a Los Angeles church working to meet practical needs to help address homelessness, lack of education, and other issues. Over the years that followed, Hope Center Indy developed west of New Palestine, housed in the former Marion County Home and offering residential care for women exiting human trafficking. January is National Human Trafficking Prevention Month.
In his recently released book, he spans the decades from visiting a rural church at his roommate’s invitation to working as executive director of the center.
He recounts times he sought to trust God even as he wondered what the outcome would be, whether that was planting a church or trusting God would provide flooring for an area inside the Hope Center. He also talks about the shock and grief following the death of his son, David, co-founder of the center: “ … we were in total shock, like we were in a fog. … It just couldn’t be true, but it was true — David was gone from this earth.”
The larger story over a lifetime has various seasons in it, and Nolen writes how those seasons often presented a new challenge or goal or hardship and often brought some new lesson and/or call to action. He lists a few Bible verses and a prayer at the end of each chapter that connect with the story told and the lesson learned.
Sara Stout of New Palestine has read the book and given away all her copies, ordering it for her three daughters and her daughter-in-law and planning to share a copy with her hairdresser. Before she and her husband, Phil, were married, they worked with Nolen when he was a teenager at the Kopper Kettle in Morristown. Later, the Stouts lived about a quarter-mile from Hubert and Tonia Nolen and their five children in Shelby County.
Even though she’s known Nolen a long time, she learned more about his life while reading the book. She said it was a reminder to her of God being involved in a person’s day-to-day life, and that’s why she’s encouraged others to read the book.
“I want them to see the comfort and the struggles he’s dealt with, but still he stayed steadfast,” she said. “There’s hope for everyone, but you have to trust and believe that.”
Mike Luker has also read the book. Having attended Brookville Road since the mid-1990s, he can remember some of the stories told in the book as they unfolded.
Luker said what stood out as he read the book was “the consistent thread through his life of being led by God and being faithful to take the next step — even sometimes in the face of adversity or not knowing how to move forward. …
“There’s enough in there to find yourself in those stories.”
Nolen hopes people will do just that. He hopes people will relate to facing uncertainty, loss, or discouragement, and yet see God still guiding a person amid it all. He hopes readers will find that encouraging.
He believes it’s a story that can change someone’s life. “It changed mine.”
“Hope for a Lifetime” is available at Hope Center Indy, 11850 Brookville Road, Indianapolis. It can also be bought on Amazon for $19.99 (paperback) or $9.99 (Kindle). Proceeds will go to Hope Center Indy. Author Hubert Nolen has also recorded the text for an audiobook version, which is still in production.
To find out more about the center, including signing up for a tour or finding volunteer opportunities, see hopecenterindy.org.
