Scott Swanson
When Brian Hotrum arrived in Sweet Home in 2010 to pastor the local Evangelical Church, he was on familiar ground, both geographically and as a minister.
He’d grown up in the Evangelical Church, in which both his father and his great-grandfather had been pastors.
“We kind of go way back here, for generations,” Hotrum said, noting that ministers moved around more when he was young than they do now in the denomination. “So between me, my dad and my Great-Grandpa (Archie) Cleveland (who once was principal at Liberty School in Sweet Home), we’ve been in a lot of churches in the Pacific Northwest.”
His father Ron pastored the Sodaville congregation from 1990 to 1998.
After serving the Sweet Home church for 12 years, Brian Hotrum is leaving to head those churches as superintendent of the Pacific Conference, which includes 53 local churches in Oregon and Washington, from Eugene and Florence to Spokane. He and his wife Donalyn are in the process of moving north, where he will work out of the organization’s Clackamas office.
Hotrum, 54, has pastored some of those churches himself, starting with the Lebanon church, following his graduation from Hillcrest Christian College in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada. He served in Lebanon from 1996 through 2003, followed by “seven years of wandering” that included ministerial stops in Portland, Eugene and Iowa, where he also taught at a college that closed while he was there, and for nine months pastored two United Methodist churches in the area that needed ministerial help.
“I went out to teach at the college and I thought it would be a fun change,” Hotrum said. “But I was so bored on Sundays, so I sent my resume out because there’s 800 United Methodist churches in Iowa. I was just saying, ‘Hey, if you need somebody to fill in, I’m happy to do that. I’m teaching during the week but free on Sunday.'”
He got a call from the denominational superintendent and next thing he knew, he was back in the pulpit.
In 2010, he and Donalyn, whom he knew from Bible college, were married and he suddenly had two daughters, 14 and 11. And they moved to Sweet Home, to take over the local church, which had had six pastors in as many years.
“The superintendent called me up and he said he had a few churches where he needed a pastor and he wanted me to think about, you know, various places but he didn’t really give me an option,” Hotrum recalled, chuckling dryly. “It said he just wanted my opinion, but he ended up telling me ‘OK, you’re going to Sweet Home.'”
But, Hotrum added, “looking back, this was the best spot for us to be. The girls, it was not an easy move for them. But this was a great spot for them to graduate from high school. And this was a really good place for us to be, a great church for us to be at.”
Hotrum had already earned a master’s degree from what is now Bakke Graduate School in Seattle, where he wrote a thesis on the history of the Evangelical denomination, which grew out of the old Evangelical United Brethren, a movement closely associated with the early Methodist evangelists and circuit riders who ministered in the early frontier.
The early Brethren were almost exclusively German and essentially, Hotrum said, were German Methodists under a different name.
“The evangelical church originally, 200 years ago, was started as an ethnic ministry, reaching out to Germans in America who didn’t speak English well enough to go to a Methodist church,” he explained. “And they continued that in their DNA, making sure that we present the gospel message in the language that people can understand, whether it’s a foreign language or just in modern language.
“There have been ups and downs and mergers and divisions and reorganizations along the way, but the church is focused on just sharing the gospel. And we are part of our doctrine and DNA is also not just making a commitment to Christ, but also letting it go deep in your heart and being filled with the Holy Spirit – being sanctified, as the Scripture says.
“Not to just say, ‘Well, I raised my hand at a camp meeting years ago,’ but to really live it out, being filled with God, with God’s spirit.”
He said he’s noticed that with the proliferation of ideas on the internet, it’s easy for people to “just kind of go down the rabbit hole, and kind of keep going and going and really get caught up in things.”
“It gets to be a struggle to step back and focus: ‘Here’s the Bible and we’re going to just focus on that and not get too far here or there.'”
The denomination has always had a strong focus on the Christian gospel and on missionary work – particularly church planting, in recent years, he said. It also has put efforts into raising up and supporting local church leaders overseas.
“Here in America, if you go to church on Sunday morning, if you go to Sunday School and Bible study, if you do that for five years in America you have more training than a lot of pastors in India.
Hotrum was elected to the superintendent’s position earlier this year at a conference meeting. He said that process sometimes takes some time, but he wound up with the job.
He acknowledged that it will be an entirely new experience for him, but “in my mind, I didn’t really feel like I had a lot of choice, because I took ordination vows that said I will serve the Lord and serve the church wherever I was needed.
“In that meeting it was the pastors, plus a representative from every church, and it seemed good to them to elect me into this position. Who am I to say no to that?”
As superintendent, he’ll lead a denomination that oversees credentialing of pastors and operates the Pacific School of Ministry in Portland, which trains prospective ministers.
“Apparently, technically, I guess I am the new president of that school,” he said.
That responsibility is something that lines up with his academic interests, as most recently, Hotrum has been working to finish his dissertation for a doctor of ministry degree with an emphasis on strategic leadership from Corban University. In it he is focusing on the training of pastors in the Pacific Conference, which included “open-ended” interviews with 20 then-active Pacific Conference pastors to gauge the efficacy of their preparation for ministerial work.
Another of his big responsibilities will be helping local churches find pastors.
“Out of the Superintendent’s Office we do a lot of the screening and search for pastors, working between the superintendent and the (search) committee in the local church.
“I try to find them a good pastor that fits them.”
In addition, he said, the superintendent can provide a “referee” when local churches have problems.
When speaking with an interviewer, he said he’d just visited a “new” church in the Portland area that meets on Sunday afternoons, and he dropped in. The young pastor, he said, was “thrilled that I came in but was a little nervous,” and asked following the service whether Hotrum could provide any input.
“I’m old enough and have enough experience where I can actually encourage and speak into the life of pastors younger than me,” Hotrum said, recounting the experience.
“I’m looking forward to just traveling and encouraging the pastors and just going to church on Sunday.”