Big hearts give small town a bigger church

Published 11:54 pm Friday, July 10, 2009

LEBAM — Ask most people about the town of Lebam and their likely response is, “You know how it got its name, right?” They are then likely to share the story of how Jotham Weeks Goodell named the town in 1890 using the reverse spelling of his daughter Mabel’s name.

What you won’t often hear is Lebam described as a destination, but rather a quiet town of some 170 people that one passes through on Highway 6 between Raymond and Chehalis.

This week, however, people have arrived in Lebam from all over the Northwest, including Aberdeen, Hoquiam and Ocean Shores, Port Angeles, Port Orchard, Kennewick and Sequim. They’ve come from Corvallis, McMinnville and Sweet Home, Ore. There’s even someone from Somerset, Ky.

They have come to Lebam out of a desire to do good by others and to build a new place of gathering and worship for the members of the Lebam Community Church, a non-denominational church located on Highway 6.

“It’s really amazing to see people come together like this,” said Steve Jones, the pastor at the Lebam Community Church. “We are really excited.”

With a congregation of almost 75 people, Jones says the current church, which is one of the oldest buildings in Lebam, simply isn’t big enough to accommodate its members. For example, says Jones, there is almost no space to conduct Sunday school classes for the 20 or so children in the congregation.

The new church, which is being built directly next door, will be 4,000 square feet and will have a Sunday school classroom, a kitchen and a small hall, and a main church that can seat 200 worshippers.

But perhaps what’s most impressive about the new church is how it is coming to be. Once the decision was made to build a few years ago, the church began exploring its options. Finding a location that was adequate and affordable was becoming more and more difficult, says Jones, when the church received a generous donation from Jake and Jodie Keach.

“They ran a store in the lot next to the church,” says Jones. “They wanted to sell it for $110,000. They couldn’t sell it and finally they told the church that it could have the property if it wanted.”

Jones and his congregation jumped at the offer. With a place to build lined up, the Lebam Community Church began looking into construction when it received another piece of cost-effective luck.

Bill Reed, a member of the church, had a son, Dennis, who was once the youth pastor at the Faith Community Church in Ocean Shores and had been involved in rebuilding that church. Dennis told his father he should get in touch with Gil Yoder, a semiretired contractor who lives in Hoquiam and helped build the church along with the Northwest Christian Builders.

Affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, the group has been involved in building more than 50 churches in Washington, Oregon and Idaho over the last 35 years. It didn’t take long before it was signed on to build the new Lebam Community Church.

“Bill (Reed) got a hold of Gil, Gil got a hold of me and now Gil has been running the show ever since, for about a year and a half,” Jones said.

Joining Yoder as point men on the project are Dave Foss, a contractor who drew up the plans for the Faith Community Church in Ocean Shores and did the drafting for the Lebam Community Church, and Butch Adcock, a pastor of the First Baptist Church in Sequim who has been building churches with the Northwest Christian Builders since its early days.

“The fellowship is great and the building is great,” said Adcock. “But when you figure the money and the fact that we’ve saved millions of dollars over the years, that’s the big reward. Saving the Lord’s money so we can make better use of it.”

With more than 30 men, women and children volunteering to help defray labor costs, and much of the design work and building supplies provided for nominal fees if not for free, Jones is amazed by the effort.

“They are working for nothing,” he said. “They are going to work through Friday and whatever they get done is great. Then we’ll take over from there.”

“It’s just amazing,” Jones added. “We’re building a 4,000-square-foot church for around $75,000. That’s unheard of.”

So far, the volunteer work crew has been putting in close to 12-hour days. When they arrived on Monday morning, all that was there was the foundation. Over the next two days, the volunteers were able to build the entire frame of the church and install trusses for the roof. The plan is to get as much done as they can by this weekend, at which time church members and others in the community will finish such things as the plumbing and electrical work.

To help show its gratitude, members of the church are providing what Jones calls an “abundance of food” for the volunteers. Everyday at 12:30 p.m., the church bell rings to let workers know it’s time for lunch. The bell rings again at 5:30 p.m.

“Who would think that this could happen in the little town of Lebam,” said Sharon Jones, the wife of the pastor, as she prepared the lunch spread. “It’s so exciting. Yesterday the crane blocked traffic for a little while and somebody said to me that it was the first time they’d ever seen a traffic jam in Lebam.”

For Yoder, building a church is rewarding, but it’s the people that he gets to interact with that he enjoys most, even if it means more supervision and a mislaid tool here and there.

“There are a lot of people that are involved,” he said. “I’m so impressed that people come clear from Kentucky on their own money and they come and they want to work. And you better find them work or they’ll scream if they don’t have any.”

“They are very nice people and I really like being a part of this,” he added.

Adcock echoes Yoder’s words.

“They are good people and they are working hard,” he said.

As for the 12-hour work days they were putting in to get the church as close to completed as they can by the weekend, Adcock is asked if he’ll be getting paid for any time-and-a-half.

“No,” he said with a wide grin, “but maybe I’ll get a special place in heaven.”

“We’re sure you’ll get there anyway,” concluded Tom Maden, a church member and volunteer.