Ministry celebrates

Hidden away in the West Central neighborhood, it might go unnoticed. Just a block away from Westminster Presbyterian Church there is a little house with a little ministry celebrating its 15th anniversary Sunday.

Westminster House, 2612 W. Gardner Ave., was founded by five graduates – Mark McIlraith, Steve Watts, Paige Baker, Monica Martens, and Kristy Parsons – of Whitworth University.

Like many recent graduates, the five wanted to do something significant after they graduated, and the West Central neighborhood had needs that many pockets of Spokane didn’t. Known for its high poverty rates and crime, the neighborhood needed a positive influence.

“We thought, what if we lived together in a poor neighborhood and shared Christ with people,” Parsons said a Spokesman-Review article in 1993.

The five found an abandoned drug house which an anonymous donor bought for them. They moved in, to live among the people they would minister.

But the house was in sorry shape. They had to remove three tons of garbage. There was blood on the walls and cocaine in the bedrooms.

Most disturbing of all, one bedroom was painted black and there were prayers to Satan written on the walls.

The group of students took possession of the house and made it their own by praying over it.

“The house itself is a story of redemption,” McIlraith said last week. Since he has lived in the house, he has married Paige Baker, had three children and is now pastor of families, youth and children at Whitworth Community Presbyterian Church.

He and Paige said that all of the furniture in the house is donated and groups of recent graduates still live in the house to minister those who want it for one to two years.

This year, Jon Brewer, Taylor Counts, Julie Lauterbach and Karli Zimmermann live in the house. They lead after-school tutoring sessions with kids from Holmes Elementary School in a project called Homework Helpers.

Every Tuesday and Thursday, they walk to the school, gather the children involved and take them back to the church to study.

On Wednesday nights they host a youth group for children in kindergarten through the fifth grade.

“We do games and singing,” Brewer said. “We have a Bible lesson and prayer time.”

Brewer added that the kids come up with their own prayer requests.

“This allows us to see what’s going on in the kids’ lives,” he said.

He said that he volunteered to live at the house because he felt God was calling him to minister abroad and he wanted to gain experience in the West Central neighborhood.

“I feel like this has been a valuable experience for me,” he said. “If I never leave Spokane and continue to do ministry here, that would be enough.”

The ministry is funded through the Presbytery of the Inland Northwest. The McIlraiths are still impressed that a tiny church such as Westminster with only around 50 members does so much for the low-income community in Spokane. The church runs the Christ Clinic, the Christ Kitchen and a food bank.

“It’s a matter of being there, and God does the work,” Mark McIlraith said about Westminster House. He remembers many stories of kids coming to visit them at the house, and he often thought the kids would have tragic lives when they left.

But he said that many times, the former kids that came in 15 years ago have come back to have their own children baptized at Westminster, and he is humbled at the thought.

“It’s a testimony as to what God is doing,” he said.