Clover Pass Community Church marks 50th anniversary

 Church Elder Mike Cooke addressed the attendees in the sanctuary that was packed with attendees during the service.

“This church is a great church,” Cooke said. “It always has been, and it still is a really great church.”

He noted that he has been a church member for 34 years, and noted that although there have been “tough times throughout the years,” there have been “best times, because we’ve seen the Lord provide.”

He added, “You can’t have great faith without great trials.”

The timeline posted on the church walls stated that the “Little Red Church,” which is a small chapel that still sits alongside the newer, larger church building on North Point Higgins Road, was built in 1950 by the Methodist Church.

In 1963, there was a group meeting in the small church wherein the members formally merged with the Methodist Church. In 1971, there was a group of Lutherans who met at Leif and Vernie Singstad’s house, starting a regular prayer gathering.

Soon after, the Lutheran church started a mission at the Little Red Church, and rented the building from the Methodists, with Pastor Normal Dahle presiding. It was that year, 1972, when the congregation was named Clover Pass Community Church.

In 1975, the congregation had grown, and a vote was held to affiliate with the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Arne Halvarson in 1976 came to Ketchikan with his wife Carolyn to serve as the church’s senior pastor.

In 1978, Frank Palmer was hired to build the foyer in the first stage of construction for the new, large church building. The church expanded its reach, welcoming 95 children for its Vacation Bible School.

Kevin Gould, who later served as pastor of the church, visited the church to perform a concert that year as well.

In 1979, the church began offering preschool for families, and a second family camp at Orton Ranch was held. In 1980, the church’s board approved the institution of Clover Pass Christian School.

In 1982, the church held its first Singing Christmas Tree concert, which has become a seasonal tradition for the community over the years. In 1983, the large main sanctuary was opened and dedicated, and attendees to that event also toured the newly finished school facility.

In 1984, the Rose family moved to Cypress to become the church’s first international missionaries. In 1986, the Halvarsons moved south, and Gordon McAlister began serving as the senior pastor.

In 1991, Kevin Gould was hired as the senior pastor of the Clover Pass church.

In 1994, the church established a cruise ship ministry, then a jail ministry was established in 2001.

In 2008, Gould resigned as pastor of the church and moved to Florida.

During the next several years, the church went through a time of transition and adaptation with a series of three senior pastors serving for short terms.

In 2024, Jake Beaty was hired as the senior pastor and came to Ketchikan with his family.

During Sunday morning’s service, former long-time church members spoke, and a video of past members was played, in which they spoke encouraging words and reminisced about their fond memories of attending.

Following the video, long-time church member Ann Graham Radford spoke to the congregation, recalling how she started in the church and about her time on the steering committee of the church’s school. Radford’s late husband Jennings Graham was the new church building’s architect.

She noted that she and her family moved to Ketchikan in 1970 to live in a home on Potter Road, which is very close to the Little Red Church and the current larger sanctuary. They initially were attending a church in town at the time, but often noticed the little building as they drove or walked by.

“We were intrigued by the Little Red Church sitting there all by itself on the muskeg, surrounded by trees on three sides looking kind of neglected and more shabby as the years went by,” Radford said.

In about 1974, she said they started noticing activity around the little chapel.

“We began to hear the things about the new pastor Arne Halvarson and the ministry that was happening there,” Radford said.

In 1977, they began to attend services at the Little Red Church, then soon after fully committed to the congregation.

“It was such an exciting time,” she said. “It seemed like every week people were being saved. It was kind of a mini revival among the longshoremen, and others were coming out regularly from churches in town to join with us.”

She added, “That was one of the characteristics of those early days of which I was most thankful, and have the fondest memories.”

Grace LaCour next read a letter written by former church member Marjie Beck, who with her parents Jan and Bob Landis and her three siblings, were members of the church starting soon after its founding.

Beck, in her letter, recalled the days of attending services in the Little Red Church as having a cozy, frontier-like feel, with an oil stove warming the sanctuary, the women wearing long dresses and Xtra-Tuff boots, and the men taking turns to give sermons.

Beck also recalled her experiences with the construction of the new, larger church building.

“As a teenager, I helped with the building, swinging a hammer, stuffing insulation,” Beck wrote.

Beck, who moved to the Anchorage area many years later, added that, “I still feel a part of this body. … When I return to visit family in Ketchikan, it’s such a blessing to have this place and these believers to come home to and to see how the Lord has provided for this — his church.”

Long-time church member Clint McClennon and his niece Carina Chernick next spoke during the service.

McClennon told the story of how he began attending Clover Pass. In 1979, he said that his mother in 1979 drove to town with him and his three siblings in a Toyota truck with a camper.

“It was supposed to be a summer trip,” he said, then added with a grin, “that’s still going on.”

One day they were driving from his grandmother’s house where they were staying, on their way to visit a friend who lived near the church.

“All the way out from town we were arguing and carrying on in the truck,” he said.

He said that his mother told him later that she was feeling like a bad parent due to their bad behavior.

“She came up to this corner,” McClennon said, pointing to the corner of North Point Higgins Road, “and there was a big sandwich board by the highway saying ‘Come to the open Sunday at Clover Pass Community Church,’ and it was when they were opening, the first Sunday, in the foyer out here, which was the church after the red church.”

McClennon said his mother made a quick decision, worn down by her children’s fighting, and turned on North Point Higgins, then “just kept turning into the parking lot” of the church.

He laughed as he recalled his brother’s shock at that moment, as well as his mother’s response that their bad behavior meant they needed to go to church. He said that he and his siblings never had been to church, so it was a totally new experience at the time.

He then said that he remembered during that service, as Halvarson gave his sermon, looking at his mother and realizing that “she was weeping. She went forward that morning and got saved.”

He recalled, “We never left.”

McClennon said that the foundation that the family built as church members “was so critical,” as was later attending the Clover Pass Christian School.

Chernick said that she has been a member of the church since she was a young child, and called her involvement “my foundation.”

Her time at the church’s school were “the best school years of my life,” she said.

Another church member from the founding days, Al Hauan, spoke next.

He emphasized the faithfulness of God as being the reason that the church has weathered the challenges it faced over the years and continues to flourish.

Hauan said that he and his wife, Yvonne Hauan, first moved to Ketchikan in 1971 to work as teachers with the Ketchikan School District. They first attended the First Lutheran Church at the time, and while there met Leif and Vernie Singstad.

The Hauans and the Singstads both began to attend Clover Pass when it still was holding services in the Little Red Church, partly inspired by the close proximity to their homes.

He recalled talking to the First Lutheran Church council and securing the agreement to institute Clover Pass as a Lutheran congregation.

“We began having people coming to the services that weren’t Lutheran,” Hauan said. “They came because they heard about the church.”

Eventually, the leaders at the Lutheran church told Hauan that they wanted the Clover Pass congregation to come back to the church in town, he said.

Hauan recalled replying, “‘Pastor,’ I said, ‘We are called to Clover Pass and we feel that God wants us there in that field.’”

He noted that the pastor was fully supportive of that decision. He and fellow church founders decided, after some studying of three different denominations, to affiliate the Clover Pass Church with the Christian Missionary Alliance.

He also recalled his part, alongside Dan Michalsen, in inviting Clover Pass pastor Arne Halvarson to serve as the church’s pastor, noting that he and Halvarson had previously attended the same church in Seattle.

At first, Halvarson was reluctant, Hauan said, as Halvarson had been planning to work with the Billy Graham mission. Hauan and Michalsen were determined though, and kept working to convince Halvarson.

They finally talked Halvarson into coming to Ketchikan, and Hauan said that Halvarson and his wife realized that Clover Pass was the right choice for them.

From that point on, the church grew quickly, Hauan said.

Former pastor Kevin Gould spoke next, and recounted the story of how he first visited Clover Pass as a professional Christian musician to give a concert.

He became friends with Halvarson, he said, and during that time he had begun to focus more on preaching. He then came to Ketchikan to serve as an interim pastor for a few weeks, and Gould said that the Clover Pass leadership asked him whether he’d be interested in becoming the full-time pastor. The timing wasn’t good for him, he said, so he declined.

A year later, Gould said, he was asked again, and he agreed to take on the job.

He talked about the marriages, the church milestones and the positive growth that came out of his first visit to Ketchikan as a musician, giving God the credit for his “faithfulness.”

Gould said, “I want to thank this church for its persistence and its faith through the tough times, through the difficult years when all you could see was the temple being burned and the walls being pulled down, it’s hard to see beyond that.”

He then expressed his gratitude to Pastor Beaty for “being obedient to the call of God” to come to Ketchikan to lead Clover Pass.

“And now he’s here, and he’s doing great work … I’m excited to see what’s going to happen in the years ahead. It’s a wonderful blessing and an honor to be here,” Gould said.