Scott Swanson
Kevin Hill admits that he didn’t plan to stay long when he arrived in Sweet Home on Memorial Day weekend in 2001 to pastor Holley Christian Church.
“Actually, I was only intending to stay at this church for three, three and a half years,” he said last week as he reflected on his 20 years in the community and the fact that the church is preparing to celebrate its 150th anniversary.
“So I say Jesus had different plans and I’m still here.”
On Sunday, June 6, Holley Christian Church will celebrate its 150th anniversary. The celebration will also mark Hill’s 20th anniversary as pastor, looking back to a history of service to the community, which has been an emphasis of Hill’s time at the church, he said.
Holley Church, which is very familiar to anyone traveling Highway 228, with its classic white structure, tastefully lit during the Christmas season, was established in 1871. Originally called the Brethren of the Christian Church, it had a membership of 40 from the Riggs, Crawford, Shanks, Fields, Hamilton, Cary, Splawn, Newton, Lewis and Baar families, which met in the Splawn Schoolhouse.
The current church property was donated in 1875 by William and Nancy Matlock. The name had changed to Fern Ridge Church, since the Holley area did not have a name yet.
The current building was constructed in 1897 “in a beautiful fir grove with tie racks and shelters for teams,” according to a history of the church compiled for an earlier milestone. It was dedicated on Thanksgiving Day that year as Holley Christian Church.
“The pulpit, of intricate design, and the long box-type pews were hand-crafted by and under the supervision of Mr. Bob Matlock.”
Current member Jean Reynolds, 80, has attended the church literally since birth, she said, noting that she grew up in a house next to the Grange Hall, which was located directly across what is now Highway 228 from the church.
“The building has changed so much,” said Reynolds, one of whose relatives was among the founders. “It used to be a little square building with a wood stove in the back and when it was cold, we would have church around the wood stove.”
Later, she said, a stage was constructed, followed by classrooms, including one that was located above the entryway, where the belfry is now. Bathrooms followed.
Reynolds said she started teaching classes at the church while she was in grade school. She retired from Sunday School teaching a few years ago.
“It’s very unusual to meet a person who has only gone to one church their whole life,” Hill noted.
When Monte Smith was pastor, in the 1970s, more classrooms were added, Reynolds said.
“It’s gotten a lot bigger.”
She said Smith would keep track of the attendance on a chart that ran along one wall of the church, and one Sunday night a total of 60 people showed up for the service.
“Wow, that was off the paper,” she said, laughing as she added, “when they tore (the chart) down, I got that star.”
The church has had 35 pastors, including several who served on an interim basis, since the first, I.N. Mulkey in 1888, who actually was pastor over two separate spans of six years each.
Until Hill’s arrival, the longest-serving pastor was Harry Benton, who was at Holley from 1930 to 1947.
According to the previously mentioned church history, in the early days the custom was for men to sit on one side of the building and women to sit with their children on the other.
“Mrs. (Nancy) Matlock made a shocking move when she deliberately sat down beside her husband so that he might help care for their small child,” the writer of the history reported. “Once the ice was broken, however, the custom was soon forgotten.”
The church grove was a popular venue for basket dinners, family reunions, church and community gatherings, “and welcome shade for the weary traveler to eat his lunch under,” the history notes, adding that members began to fear that tree limbs could be dangerous during storms.
As a result, the congregation voted in 1951 to have the trees felled, sold and the proceeds applied to the church building fund.
Through the 1970s and ’80s, the church grew numerically and physically.
“We’ve always had a good congregation and there’s times when we had iffy pastors, but most have been excellent,” Reynolds said.
Kevin Hill was a reluctant pastor, initially. He says he attended Boise Bible College in Idaho, “not intending to be a pastor,” but felt God calling him to the ministry after he arrived there.
“I said, ‘God, you’re not really calling me to ministry, right?’ I had a professor that said, ‘I think God’s calling you to ministry and you should just put some feelers out there and see what happens.'”
Immediately, Hill said, he was contacted by a pastor in Oroville, Calif., who asked him to come for the summer and serve as a youth pastor. Things went wonderfully, he said.
“So I got back and I said, ‘OK, Lord, yeah, it was a great summer, but I’m not really called to ministry unless something happens.'”
Immediately upon his return to Boise, he was contacted by another pastor, who asked him to serve as an associate pastor until he graduated from college.
He and Jennifer married in 1986 and the next year he graduated summa cum laude from Boise Bible College, recognized as an outstanding student in the field of evangelism and church growth.
Hill ended up serving as an associate pastor in Grangeville, Idaho, but after seven years in the ministry he decided to open a comic book store in Boise with his brother after what he described as “bad” experiences with some church leaders.
During the next 10 years the comic business was “very successful,” he said, and his children Austin and Autumn were born. Towards the end of that period, he and Jennifer started hosting a gathering in their home that grew into a small church.
After he’d sold the business, because “I just got bored with it,” he heard from Holley.
Or rather, he contacted Holley Christian Church and Jean Rey-nolds, it so happens, came to Idaho to meet him personally.
“It came down to two churches, Vail, Oregon, or Sweet Home, Oregon,” he said. He chose Sweet Home. He and Jennifer arrived with two children, aged 9 and 3.
They’re still here, 20 years later.
“People say, ‘If you want to hear God laugh, tell Him your plans,” Kevin Hill said. “Jesus had different plans and I’m still here. I didn’t realize that when He called me here, it was for a way longer time.”
Hill said he arrived with a vision “for a church that it was really going to be involved in the community, and I’ve led the church to do that. The church really wasn’t doing that before I got here.”
Under Hill’s leadership, Holley Church has devoted itself in service to Sweet Home residents.
During any given year the congregation is involved with community cleanup efforts and other civic events; youth sports; coaching and team sponsorships; providing treats and encouragement to teachers and staff of the Sweet Home School district – especially to Holley School, just up the road; and the annual Trick or Treat Street, held at the Sweet Home Boys and Girls Club.
In recent years, the Holley Church building has become somewhat of a Christmas season destination with the historic building lit up with thousands of colored lights.
“I mean, I’ve lost track of how much stuff that we’ve done in the community,” Kevin Hill said, as his wife noted that the church is one of the largest supporters of Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance Service’s Sharing Tree, which provides gifts for underprivileged children in Sweet Home.
“We sponsored 72 kids at Christmas time,” she said.
Chris Forum, who said he’s attended Holley since 1996, after he graduated from high school, said he appreciates that outreach emphasis.
“There’s so much more community involvement than there used to be,” he said. “We do the Trick or Treat Street. We’d have church work days and go up to Holley School and do stuff. It’s been rewarding. We give gifts to teachers. I couldn’t be a teacher.”
He said people respond.
“They’re like, ‘Oh, my goodness,’ and send us thank you cards and letters. They say, ‘You go to Holley? I don’t go to church, but it makes a big difference what you’re doing.'”
Kevin Hill said he believes that, “whether the pastor likes it or not, the church does take on some of your qualities.”
Hence, he said, some of the “disappointing brokenness” he’s experienced in the past has helped the church connect with people who “may be, at one time, disappointed by the church.”
He said the church has experienced other changes as well – “modernizing the music,” upgrades to the facility, and big advances in technology and social media outreach, thanks in part to the coronavirus pandemic.
“We had tons of momentum right before the coronavirus,” he said, acknowledging that things “slowed down” with the government-imposed restrictions on public worship.
But some rapid advances in the church’s newly developed online capabilities at holleychurch.org have resulted in contact with “a ton of new people,” he said. While attendance isn’t back to pre-COVID numbers yet, “I’d say it’s good and it’s stable and right now, it’s moving up. We have a lot of people watching online.”
Hill said he feels, after 20 years, that he’s well-known in the community and “people who like me really like me.”
He noted that much of the church’s outreach is facilitated by Jennifer, who stepped in to serve as church administrator when the longtime secretary retired, and who manages much of the outreach and online presence.
“She’s done a fabulous job,” he said.
The main focus of Holley Church, he said, is “we want to be a place where when people can see hope, people can receive hope, where people can find hope. And so that’s always in our minds in whatever we are doing.”
He said he backs away from any notion that the church is competing with others.
“Jesus has different types of churches because there’s all different types of people. And we’re going to reach people that another church can’t reach; but the same thing goes the other way. Another church is going to reach people that we are not going to reach.
“I know what we’re in competition with: here it’s the outdoors, sports, the devil. That’s how we look at it.”
Forum said he appreciates the consistency Hill’s ministry has brought to Holley.
“With everything that’s going on, it’s good to say, ‘There is good in the world and people do care about other people.’
“Kevin’s definitely been a great person to have. He continues to encourage us to be better. I really like where he’s brought us, honestly.”