St. Peter’s Parish Making Journey Of Faith Catholics Moving From Old Gym To New Sanctuary

Parishioners of St. Peter’s Catholic Church will walk the last few steps tonight in a journey that has taken almost 40 years.

Congregation members, led by Bishop William Skylstad, will travel from their old church - a gymnasium, really - to their sleek new sanctuary.

They will switch from baptizing new members at a punch bowl to total submersion in a marble font.

The Rev. Mike Savelesky will hear confessions in a real confessional, not a kindergarten classroom.

The altar is a solid block of hardwood, not a Formica table.

“It was a god-awful thing to use for the table of God,” Savelesky said of the old altar.

After establishing St. Peter’s in 1956, members worshiped for two years in borrowed space at the Betterment Club on Ray Street. Two years later, they built a gymnasium and four classrooms to serve as both school and sanctum.

The gym was carpeted, furnished with wooden pews and made to look as much like a church as possible. But it was still a gym.

Now that members of St. Peter’s get a church, the students of St. Peter’s get a gym.

In the new church, at 18th and Freya, the pews wrap around a central altar in a semicircle.

“It’s very different,” said Mary Brickner, a member since 1960. “The whole configuration is more comfortable. You can get a greater feel for the Mass.”

Brickner, who has raised two children through St. Peter’s, said she and other longtime members probably will feel a touch of nostalgia as they walk from the old building to the new.

“But everything about the new church is so beautiful, it won’t be bad,” she said.

The parish wanted to build a real church in the 1950s, but plans fell by the wayside.

When Savelesky came to St. Peter’s in 1980, the idea of a new church was “just a dream on the shelf.”

Gradually, as the congregation assessed its needs, the idea to build a $4 million church took form.

In the last 10 years, the parish has grown from 385 families to 675 families. And more growth in southeast Spokane is inevitable, Savelesky said.

“We wanted a parish center for ourselves and for service to the community,” he said. “We’re not trying to be ostentatious; we’re trying to be practical.”

Through donations and bequests, the parish paid about half of the $3.5 million construction bill. The other half was paid through a loan from the Catholic Diocese of Spokane.

More than $600,000 worth of labor was donated by members.

Construction began in July 1989 and continued at a feverish pace as late as Thursday night. General contractor Kerry Olson and part of his crew were planning to work through the night and most of today.

Various parishioners scurried around, washing windows and moving furniture. The priest was on his knees waxing a newly finished floor.

Fire inspectors signed off on the occupancy permit Thursday. The city Building Department is schedule to do its inspection today.

“Everything will get done,” Savelesky said, lifting his eyes toward the six-story-high ceilings in a silent prayer.

Although the change of setting is dramatic, the church will keep its guitar and piano music worship, Savelesky said.

“It isn’t the building that makes us the church. It isn’t the building that makes us holy,” he said. “It’s our relationship with God.”

Parts of the building are unfinished. Two meeting rooms, a social hall and a kitchen aren’t completed on the top floor. In the basement, administration offices, a day care center and a multipurpose room are unfinished.

The parishioners must refocus their energy, Savelesky said, from framing the church to framing their faith.

“It’s not a final statement or a final goal,” he said of the new building. “It’s a chapter in our journey of faith.”

MEMO: The dedication of St. Peter’s Catholic Church begins at 7:30 p.m. tonight with a procession from the old building to the new church.