Worshippers get open-door welcome

One Deer Park church gained its name, “Open Door,” from its early years of leaving its door facing the railroad tracks unlocked, so people out of luck coming through town on a train could come inside for shelter. It opened its doors to serve as an infirmary during the 1918 flu epidemic and in the 1950s to house the city’s library.

For years, Meals on Wheels cooked meals in the church’s kitchen for daily delivery.

The church’s doors are also open to conduct weddings and funerals for people not involved in any church.

Its covenant affirms its openness: “We affirm that the doors of our church and our hearts are open to all of life’s travelers who desire a sense of belonging and an atmosphere of support for continued spiritual deepening and growth.”

Open Door Congregational United Church of Christ now also opens its door to provide educational and cultural events.

“We are like a cathedral, a place where the town can gather in a hospitable setting to learn and to appreciate music,” says the Rev. Dan Berg, who grew up in Deer Park and returned in 1996.

“After feeding and clothing people, part of a church’s role is to enhance people’s quality of life.”

Berg’s wife, Doris, is the church’s organist. The church offers an annual organ recital “as an act of thanksgiving for the instrument and as a gift to the community,” he says.

“One longtime Deer Park man once observed that if you can’t be a good Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran or Catholic, you can go to Open Door Congregational,” Berg says.

“I took that as a compliment. We’re an option for people who want a broader understanding of Christianity.”

Outside the church doors, Berg has served nine years on Deer Park’s planning commission. Recently, when people were fearful a proposal by Habitat for Humanity to build 34 units of duplexes on 17 acres would create a ghetto, he spoke in favor of it because it would provide needed housing.

Susan Peterson, who often worships at Open Door, is director of The Green House, Deer Park’s community emergency center, thrift store and food bank.

Last year, the church raised $13,000 to purchase a walk-in freezer so the center can provide more perishable foods.

Berg and some local bicycle riders meet each Monday evening for a bike ride as an entry point to reach out to people not involved in a church.

He’s also often seen on a motorcycle, his transportation to hospital calls in Spokane, pastoral calls and regional church meetings. An accident and broken bones in 2006 did not deter him from using this mode of transportation.

When Berg returned to Deer Park to care for his mother in 1996 after a career as a professor and administrator at Nazarene colleges, he began preaching at the Open Door church. Soon he was asked to be interim pastor and then invited to stay as the permanent pastor 13 years ago.

Berg grew up in the Methodist church and later switched with his family to the newly forming Church of the Nazarene. His was a strict family that became “disillusioned with modernism” in the Methodist church at the time.

While he was in high school, the Church of the Nazarene gave him leadership opportunities, including preaching his first sermon when he was 15.

In 1962, Berg attended Northwest Nazarene College in Nampa, Idaho. After graduating with a major in religion in 1966, he studied at Nazarene Seminary in Kansas City, Mo., graduating in 1969.

Next, he studied for four years at Glasgow University in Scotland, earning a doctoral degree in theology in 1978.

He taught seven years at Northwest Nazarene and nine years at Seattle Pacific University, served three years as dean at Northwest Nazarene, taught a year and a half at Western Evangelical Seminary in Portland, served as pastor of Overland Park Church of the Nazarene near Kansas City, and then taught a year at Nazarene Theological College in Busingen, Switzerland.

Attending worship on his first Sunday at Open Door were 18 gray-haired people, the pianist and her two children. But when the church advertised four Sunday evening Advent events, 75 people came to the first one.

Berg remembered the church from his boyhood as the one professionals and teachers attended.

He says the church today includes people from “across the spectrum of achievement in life – some who have done well and some who have not done well. It doesn’t make a difference.”

While many older members have died, Berg sees “prospects for new people to come. Some have returned to church after leaving another church. Some renew themselves spiritually and stay or go back to their church.

“We are seeking simply to be a church. We serve in humility in the name of Christ. Beyond that, it’s the Spirit’s work.”

Berg offers adult classes for church and community members, aware that many Sunday school curricula for children offer “black-and-white, good-guys-bad-guys and overcoming-evil-by- brute-force theology.”

He seeks to help adults unlearn such concepts and become aware that people still kill those like Jesus, and that worshippers who put Jesus on a pedestal to escape personal responsibility may find his teachings hard to follow.

Being part of the United Church of Christ, which has a history of taking controversial stands to promote justice – such as challenging racism and being open and affirming – Berg has to educate members to deal with neighbors who hear news about those stands and question the church.

To help people think, he encourages them to explore the humanity of Jesus, biblical and ecclesiastical history, the variety of literature in the Bible and a critical appreciation of its truth.

“It’s fun to draw people into the Bible through different translations,” Berg says, noting that he is fascinated by how people are in different dimensions spiritually.

“Some are childlike in some aspects of faith and mature in other aspects. I affirm people for who they are.”

While rural churches are often stepping stones, training young pastors just out of seminary before they move on to advance their careers, Open Door’s pastor has had his career.

“I’m just here to serve this church,” he says.