LYNNWOOD
It was a long journey home for Reggie Corns.
But he is back doing what he loves and what he feels he was meant to do.
In some ways, the setting Corns finds himself in today mirrors the unconventional approach he has taken with God’s House, the church he founded last August.
Corns is a busy man these days. He is Lynnwood High School’s head baseball coach and is an assistant football coach. Corns also helps run DRC Technologies, an Internet company, with his brother, Dale, during the week.
It’s a Sunday morning and Corns, the pastor of the church, along with the congregation, are singing gospel songs in the building that houses his business, which is located in a strip mall in south Everett.
Set among the microphones and music stands are copy machines and shelves filled with copy paper. The 40 people who gathered for the weekly service are sitting for the most part on metal folding chairs in a small room.
Dress is casual. Corns, 45, sometimes wears jeans and a t-shirt, though on this particular Sunday he is dressed in a brown sports shirt with tan pants.
Corns finds his bliss on Sunday mornings when he preaches to the congregation. But there was a time when Corns didn’t think he would ever return to the ministry.
From 1991 until 2004, Corns was the full-time pastor at First Baptist Church of Martha Lake in Lynnwood. His departure in 2004 marked a turbulent period in his life.
Corns, who is married, was dismissed from the church when it was discovered he was having an affair with a woman.
“I had to get out of the ministry because of the affair and I needed to get my act together with my family,” Corns said.
What followed was a long period of introspection as Corns sought to rebuild his life and his family. It was by no means an easy process.
“My wife’s been real good,” Corns said. “We worked through a lot of stuff. We went through some counseling and some other things to make sure that before I ever got back into the ministry that it was something that would be right or healthy for me.
“I think the experience has shaped who I am now,” he added. “But I sure wish I had never had it. I sure wish I had never gone through it and never put my family through it.”
In early 2006, Corns was talking with Wayne Taylor, the senior pastor at Calvary Fellowship in Mountlake Terrace, who suggested that it might be time for Corns to get back into pastoring. God’s House is affiliated with Calvary Fellowship.
Corns spent the next six months contemplating Taylor’s suggestion. It wasn’t a decision he made lightly.
“It’s been a long road back for me,” Corns said. “It wasn’t something I ever thought I would do again and it wasn’t something I was sure I should do again. I just did a lot of listening to a lot of people and spent a lot of time praying to be sure.”
Corns said he didn’t want to be a blight on or an embarrassment to his former church or his family.
“I wanted for them to be able to say ‘Yeah, this is what you’re supposed to do,’” Corns said. “That was really important.”
Corns, 45, was born in Maine but grew up mostly in California. His father was in the military and then worked for K-Mart, so the family moved around.
The Corns family went to church regularly, but Reggie admitted he was a bit of a rebellious son and he went to church mostly to keep his parents off his back.
When he was 17, Corns’ outlook on church and his religion changed. Something clicked in his head and he started to become a believer.
Corns didn’t set out to become a pastor, but gradually moved toward it when he moved up to the Northwest in 1981. One day, someone asked if he would teach a Sunday school class. Corns agreed. He then become involved in the church’s youth ministry. Then one day a speaker didn’t show up and Corns stepped in. He was ordained as a minister in 1988.
Though coaching and ministering might share some of the same skill sets, Corns is very careful to keep the two separate. He had coached youth sports for years before becoming an assistant football coach at Lynnwood five years ago.
The name God’s House was borrowed with the permission of another church in Huntington Beach, Calif. The church’s slogan is “God for the People.”
Corns hopes the name God’s House communicates that the church is something other than just a church.
“We don’t really care about where you’ve been or what brand of Christianity you’ve been a part of before,” Corns said. “This is just a place for people to come and explore and hopefully get answers to questions.”
God’s House is non-denominational. Corns eschews terms such as Catholic, Baptist, Pentecostal or Lutheran. Those are kinds of labels he wants to avoid.
The goal is to be a place where people can feel accepted regardless of what is going on in their lives, Corns said.
Corns is big on redemption and people being reconciled and restored after they’ve failed. He wants God’s House to be a church where parishioners are free to express where they are failing and to ask for help.
“They’re not afraid to hide anything because I’m really pretty open about where I’ve been because I don’t think it would be fair not to be,” Corns said. “It would be a pretty big shock for somebody to be a part of a church and then to find out later — ‘You did what?’ It’s not that I really broadcast it, but it’s not like it’s something that’s a secret.”
When he decided to start a church, Corns had very specific ideas about what was important to him based on what happened in his past.
“I really wanted to have a place where and be involved in a place where when people screw up, it’s OK, because people screw up,” Corns said. “What they do isn’t necessarily OK. What I did wasn’t OK. It was wrong. But there has to be a way back and there has to be some help to get to a right place again.”
Many people also had bad experiences with churches and Corns wanted God’s House to be somewhere they could express their disenchantment and rebuild their faith.
Corns likes to take what he describes as a balanced view of the Bible with a mixture of the Old Testament with the New Testament. One of his goals is to make the principles and ideas that helped shape history relevant today.
“How do they mean anything for us right now in the day we live?” Corns said. “I’m really big on just focusing attention on the idea that God is gracious and loving and He just wants us to be the same way and to treat each other in the same way.”
Word about God’s House spread through word of mouth and attendance currently is close to capacity. The church is looking to possibly move to another facility to accommodate more people.
“It’s good to be where we are now,” Corns said.
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