The Rev. Scott Baier didn’t intend to become a priest, though he grew up in a Catholic family.
“I became Catholic, really, because that was the religion of my family,” he said.
But things changed as he got older and became interested in finding ways to “interact with people better.”
Now he’s been the priest serving Holy Trinity-St. Helen Catholic Parish, which includes those churches in Brownsville and Sweet Home, for the past eight months.
He arrived in Sweet Home after a journey that has included a lot of stops, and a lot of interests.
Baier grew up in Washington State, mostly in Vancouver, a shy kid who was a good student but “uncertain in some ways about the world.”
His father was a district manager for an architecture, engineering and construction firm and his mom operated an Italian restaurant.
Baier said he studied in an international baccalaureate program in high school, where he wanted to play sports but couldn’t due to a back injury.
He moved on to the University of Washington, where he studied math and chemistry – strong subjects for him, he said.
Then, “I really had this epiphany,” Baier said. “It was like, ‘You know what, I’m really good at math, really good at chemistry, but I don’t want to just make a lot of money in life.’ I wanted to help people. I mean, chemists and engineers, they help people, right? But I wanted to have more of a one-on-one connection, helping people.”
He switched his academic focus to Russian literature and language, eventually living for eight months in Russia, where he was when Vladimir Putin took office, he said. He also studied poetry, but wondered what he was going to do with his degree after he graduated.
“I really got a sense like I have been in academia my whole life and been studying, I really just want to connect with people.”
He’d learned to cook from his mother, he said, and got a job as a cook in “a nice Italian restaurant” in Seattle.
“I just really had this sense of maybe searching in my life, really seeking something more important,” Baier said.
Continuing to “search for meaning,” he moved to Missoula, Mont.
When he entered college he had stopped attending church, he said. In Montana, I “really started to discover God again, both through nature and through the Bible.”
“One of the scripture readings that really spoke to me was where Jesus says, ‘Take up your cross, deny yourself and follow me,’” Baier said. “I think for a long time it had just been me trying to do life the way I wanted to do it and it wasn’t working.
“And then it was like, ‘All right, you’re going to be in charge, God. Show me the way and I will follow.’
“That really marked the beginning of my path towards becoming a priest.”
He moved back to Vancouver and got a job in the kitchen of a retirement home because he wanted to work with seniors.
“I got to know the residents and was able to really develop a sense of greater respect for our elders, for the wisdom and the stories that they have.”
He also started participating heavily in church, including volunteering at the St. Francis Dining Hall for the homeless in Portland.
Baier said he was interested in joining the priesthood, but he was nervous, partly because, although his social skills had improved over the years, he didn’t know if he would be able to stand and preach in front of a crowd.
“My pastor, Father Hans Olson, said, ‘You know, you’re going through six years of formation at the seminary and you’re going to become more of a public person, and you’re going to be able to respond and talk to people.’”
He worked for a year in the Madeleine Parish in Portland, under “a very creative pastor, a really strong believer, just very dynamic in a lot of ways with a heart for people on the margins.”
Baier then spent six years at Mount Angel Seminary, and was ordained to the priesthood in 2015.
He served as a parochial vicar (assistant priest) at St. Luke’s in Woodburn and St. Anthony’s in Tigard for a total of six years before moving to St. Paul, “the first Catholic church in Oregon,” where he served until he was assigned by the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon to Sweet Home last year.
St. Helen, which celebrated its 70th anniversary in the fall of 2023, and Sweet Home have been “very welcoming,” he said.
The Sunday congregations tend to range about 130 people, though Baier said he sent 170 Christmas cards out to parish families. Brownsville’s Holy Trinity averages another 40, he said.
The church conducts daily Mass, which on a recent weekday evening drew 20 people.
“I notice the hunger and an interest,” Baier said, noting that at St. Paul “I’d get, maybe, three people.”
He said his mission at St. Helen is to “deepen people’s faith.”
He said he has three main questions: “What’s going on in your life and how can I pray for you about it – and then to actually spend time praying with them, and then they can pray with me about what’s going on in my life.”
Secondly, he said, he wants to know about their “relationship with God, with Jesus.”
“It’s actually a fascinating conversation to have with people because it is different for every person.”
Thirdly, he said, he wants to know what people are doing to share their “beauty, truth and goodness” which is “how God reveals Himself to us.”
“We call those the transcendentals.”
St. Helen is offering a Senior Lunch at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 26, as an outreach, and will follow that up with a seminar on “Life-Affirming Advanced Directives” on Feb. 28, led by Dr. Ruth Hayes-Barba, an adjunct professor at Mt. Angel Seminary.
In Brownsville, the church is offering a nine-week series that includes a meal, a presentation and a discussion, called the “Rescue Project,” he said, based on the Alpha Catholic program.
In his free time, Baier likes to walk and he still enjoys cooking, he said. He once was a rock climber, completing an ascent of El Capitan, but he said that’s behind him now, at age 48.
He’s come a long way from the shy boy, which he’s realized from congregants’ responses to the homilies he gives during services.
“One of the best compliments is people who say they disagree with me, but they still think I’m interesting,” Baier said.