Scott Swanson
Mark Scott has been pastoring churches for 30 years, and his latest call – Crawfordsville Calvary Chapel (formerly Crawfordsville Community Church) – is familiar ground.
It’s rural, it’s small and there’s room for growth.
Scott, 57, was called by the church after previous pastor John Denham decided to step down. It was a quick transition, Scott said.
He and his wife Diana, a medical doctor, have lived in the Sweet Home area for the past two years and Scott had been helping the pastoral staffs at Harvest Christian Fellowship and Freedom Hill Church and had been filling pulpits around the state at churches that were without pastors.
“We’d been praying about it, and God told me I needed to prepare to be closer to home,” Scott said, adding that he came to that realization about a month ago. “All the churches I knew locally were doing fine.”
So he updated his resume and waited – not long.
Within days he’d gotten a phone call. Denham had resigned after five years as head pastor at Crawfordsville, and the church wanted to talk to Scott about taking his place.
“We came to the church to see the people and I realized I knew at least a third of them,” he said.
Scott comes to Crawfordsville from a multifaceted background, though church ministry has been a steady thread through his adult life, he said. He’s been a ranch hand, a bronco buster, a general contractor, a chef. He’s worked with recovering addicts, in mental health and with developmentally disabled adults.
“I was also a youth pastor and every other position in the church, as well as the senior pastor,” said Scott, whose grandfather was a longtime pastor who lived to nearly 100.
Born in Myrtle Point, Scott grew up “all over the United States” as his father was in construction.
Starting from a Pentecostal background, Scott has attended various colleges and he’s served in a wide range of churches – “Pentecostal Church of God, Assemblies of God, Southern Baptist, Calvary Chapel. I’ve worked with Nazarene, I’ve worked with Foursquare.
“I’m not what you would call denominational-barriered,” he said. “I think the Bible is pretty clear that (the church) is called the body of Christ, not a denomination.”
He said his ministry focuses on “two pivotal questions.”
The first, he said, is “Are we friends with Christ, or are we intimately in love with Christ, because that will define what I do as a Christian.
“If I’m intimately in love with Christ, He’s the one that helps redefine my life.”
The second question, he said, is whether a church is reaching out to “the lost,” those who do not have faith in Jesus Christ.
Scott has a vision for Crawfordsville that extends beyond its residents, he said.
He noted that he’s served multiple churches that were ailing when he arrived.
“Our first church had been closed for three years and God sent us there,” he said.
He arrived at the church building, in Madras, he said, “and I just said, ‘God, I just need two people, just give me two people.’ And two people that were heading to another town said, ‘I wonder what happened to that little church.’
“That was our first two members. That was how we grew, literally, every Sunday.”
That church, he noted, still exists, now a Spanish-speaking Hispanic church.
Another’s building was on the verge of being condemned. Another, in Depoe Bay, was down to two members – “that was what was left of the church.”
Regarding Crawfordsville, which isn’t in those straits, he said, “You know, we’ve just come through the pandemic. We’ve come through so much closure and so much hurt.
“My vision right now is, re-uniting family, if you will, bringing the body of Christ back to just love on one another, to get us through that hurt the stress and the strain of what we’ve gone through and to grow from there.”
He believes that Crawfordsville is a strategic location, he said.
“I see it, maybe, different than locals do. This town is a hub. If you’re in Sweet Home and you have to go to Eugene or Springfield, you pass right through here. If you took a compass and drew a 10-mile radius around this church, that’s a ton of people we can reach out to minister to just in 10 miles. And we live in a society now where I know folks that drive an hour and a half to go to church. We’re 30 minutes from a major metropolis.
“So I don’t see this as little. I see this as a really intricate hub that can be connected to many different communities.”
Scott gestured out the window of his new office, toward the old Crawfordsville School building.
“That school over there would make a great church,” he said. “I would love to see the church grow past this building here,” adding that the Crawfordsville church building “has a history and is a great foundation for this community, but I do see the potential, because of the location, to grow way beyond the means of this building.
“My personal philosophy is that if you took every church in Sweet Home and you filled each one of them, there would still be those in Sweet Home that need to get saved. There’s not enough churches.”
And once people profess faith, it doesn’t stop there for Scott.
“Being a Christian, he says, “is a life commitment, not a one-time vote.”
“I work with a lot of different groups, people coming out of addictions, people in various walks of life.”
His Facebook page, he noted, reflects that.
“I have those going through addiction, trying to recover. I have the biker community” – he and Diana are avid motorcyclists, logging thousands of miles a year. “I have those in the gay community, those who are transgender. I have friends in all of those communities.
“They all know my stand. I think that that, for me, is one of the biggest challenges in this day and age, that we are willing to stand for something and there has to be truth somewhere that we represent.
“There’s a misconception about true Christians that we hate other individuals. In my opinion, if I hate somebody because of their lifestyle choices, then you’ve missed the whole point of Christianity, because Christ taught that we can love the sinner, and not partake of the sin, right, because how do I get somebody out of the sin if they can’t first be loved?”
Scott’s focus on relationships and outreach extends beyond the borders. He’s counseled and mentored pastors in Cambodia, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Africa.
Often, he said, in some of those cultures, pastors simply need a friend.
“I’m out of the loop,” he said. “So they’re able to contact me and we can talk through things and they don’t have to worry about where that goes.”
A lot of those contacts, he said, are word of mouth – he’s never been to some of those countries.
“We do Zoom meetings or internet or whatever we have to do. It’s interesting, because we’re countries apart.”
He has no timeline in mind as he takes over at Crawfordsville. His last pastorate lasted just short of 14 years, he noted, which is a long time, “especially on the coast. The turnover rate there is about every three years.”
Becoming established as a local pastor takes time, he said.
“To start with, the community has to get to know you. They have to develop a trust in you,” he said, adding that the “rapid turnover” he’s seen in churches is a problem.
“Every church goes through its hiccups and subsidies and stuff. Too many times, especially younger pastors take it personally and they bail.
“One of the terms that we’ll be talking about to the church here is this church should never be referred to as a ‘little’ church; we’re part of something way bigger than that. And if we have that terminology, then we have that mentality.”