Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
After 68 years, Cascadia Bible Church now has some amenities most folks these days consider basic to survival.
Indoor plumbing.
A 980-square-foot fellowship hall has been added to the church building, which was first built in 1948. Pastor Wayne Beard said he and members Howard Arms and Verde Frazier were able to finish the addition, which was begun by Beard’s predecessor, Clive Millett.
“We had professionals do the sheetrock and the floor,” Beard said, looking around the hall, which will be used for potlucks, classes and other fellowship activities. The 40-foot-long addition also includes men’s and women’s restrooms, replacing two single-seat outhouses in the woods behind the church.
“When we had a potluck before, we had to move the pews back in the sanctuary,” said Beard, 75, who took over as pastor in June of 2005.
The simple sanctuary, built by Mennonites in 1948 on land donated by Gordon Short, contains 14 pews, a piano, a pulpit and an old organ. There’s room to spare for the congregation, which usually numbers between 16 and 20, Beard said. Most of the congregants are retired, though one child attends. The sign on the highway simply invites people to “Come As You Are.”
Beard himself was retired, or so he thought, until he got a telephone call from the director of the American Missionary Fellowship last year. AMF, which used to be called the American Sunday School Union, provides pastors for rural churches, usually on a temporary basis, until those churches can find more permanent ministers.
Born and raised in Conrad, Mont., Beard attended Multnomah School of the Bible in Portland, graduating in 1959. He then pastored small churches in Oregon and Montana before joining AMF.
He and his wife, Karen, had been based in Kamiah, Idaho, where he pastored seven churches in northern Idaho and southern Washington, “kind of like a circuit rider,” for 20 years before reaching 65, AMF’s mandatory retirement age, in 1996.
Beard said he can see clear evidence that God wanted him here in Cascadia.
He said he and his wife tried for nine years to sell their house in Kamiah, with no success.
Then, last year, he was visiting his daughter in Kentucky, when the director of AMF called and asked him if he’d be interested in taking another church, in Cascadia.
“I told him that if God wanted us here, we’d have to sell our house,” Beard recalled.
When they got back to Kamiah, he said, they found a waterpot on their steps with a note underneath.
“Someone had written, ‘We want to buy your house.’ They left a name and phone number,” Beard said. “I think it is of the Lord that we’re here.”
He said Cascadia presents challenges in that the community has little to draw it together and drugs are a problem.
“The Post Office and our church are the community centers,” he said. “Praise the Lord, we’ve seen some who got out from under drugs and are walking with the Lord. We desire to help people who are in need.
“I’d like to see them grow in the Lord and I’d like to see those who do not know the Lord to come to the Lord.”
Sunday service at Cascade Bible Church is at 10:30 a.m. To contact Beard, call 367-0477.