Opening Doors Dan Berg Took Over A Shrinking Flock At Deer Park Church And Now Is Packing The Pews With Parishioners

Small Town Shepherd Open Door Congregational Church is Deer Park’s oldest sanctuary, built in 1891.

The church pews squeak decrepitly, making it difficult for parishioners to slip in unnoticed. The stained-glass windows reflect the characteristic solemnity of yesteryear. And when a bride ascends the bell tower on her wedding day to clang the church bells — an Open Door tradition — one gains a sense of the church’s resounding history.

Yet for all its antiquity, a new enthusiasm exudes from the small white structure, and parishioners believe it is embodied in the person of the Rev. Dan Berg, Open Door’s minister.

Berg was hired to pastor the congregation three years ago when membership had dwindled to a dozen. Today, it has swelled to more than 100, and the pews are squeaking in unison.

Born and raised in Deer Park, Berg takes little credit for the church’s recent vigor.

“I am intrigued by what appears to be the work of the (Holy) Spirit,” he says. “We’ve had visitors — not by my invitation — and many have stayed. These people sense that something is happening here. God is at work.”

To accomplish that work, God’s emissary of the gospel is a soft-spoken, animated, doctor of theology who is as comfortable digging ditches in the church yard and running snakes out of parishioners’ woodpiles as he is ruminating on the mysteries of God.

“This church is very much something old, something new,” says Berg. “Because it is old, there is a feeling of stability, just as the gospel is stable and unchanging. Yet we can accomplish new things for God.”

His vision is that Open Door Church would be a center of culture in the community, promoting the highest and best of culture and Christian faith through solid Bible teaching, traditional liturgy and hymns, classical music and excellent poetry.

Berg believes many newcomers visit because “we look like the church to them.” They stay because they recognize integrity in the message being taught.

“People are looking for church in quick time,” says Berg. “They want worship to be rich and helpful, to go away feeling lifted. They want to be encouraged by the good news of Christ and, with others, reflect on the mysteries of God.”

Seeking to understand these divine mysteries, Berg, 54, has embarked on a journey of academics and church leadership in this country and abroad. After graduating from Deer Park High School in 1962, he attended Northwest Nazarene College with the intention of becoming a Nazarene minister.

In seminary, Berg changed course to pursue a teaching career. A professor encouraged him to get his doctorate at Glasgow University in Scotland, so Berg and his wife, Doris, headed to the Scottish city, “famous for Johnnie Walker whisky,” he quips, “which made no difference to a Nazarene minister.”

After completing his Ph.D., Berg held teaching positions at Northwest Nazarene College, Seattle Pacific University, Western Evangelical Seminary and European Nazarene Bible College.

From this last school, in a small German town on the Rhein River, Berg received word from home that his mother was ill. He returned to Deer Park in 1996, to the same log cabin of his childhood, to care for her. She died the following year.

In November of 1996, Open Door Congregational Church hired Berg as its pastor.

Though Berg had not been ordained in the United Church of Christ - of which Open Door Church is affiliated - he was granted dual standing in order to become its minister.

“Some were worried, I’m sure, that they were getting an academic who wouldn’t get his hands dirty,” says Berg with a smile.

Yet parishioners, like Maureen Dobson, are quick to set the record straight.

“Rev. Berg is wonderful and giving,” she says. “He is so caring and intelligent - we need two Sunday services now to accommodate everyone.”

Berg hopes to make a difference among parishioners by inspiring them to help restore what he calls “a loss of sensitivity to each other’s humanity.”

Society, with its television and commerce, portrays human beings as objects, he says, leading to tragedies like the Columbine High School shootings. “There ought to be a basic respect for each other, just because we’re human,” Berg says.

Materialism, too, contributes to this desensitization. “Materialism eats up our most precious resources, beginning with time,” he says. “We have palaces to live in, but rarely sit in our living rooms. The cost of busyness is enormous.”

In contrast, Berg speaks of the Old Testament idea of Sabbath, a symbol of God’s rest. Maintaining the practice of Sabbath rest everyday allows us to worship more fully, he says, since worship is the notion of entering into God’s rest.

The greatest influences on Berg during his childhood were the simple people who loved others and drew others to Christ. As a boy, he attended Deer Park’s Methodist Church, “the other white church,” he jokes.

Now, standing on the steps of Open Door Church, Berg looks at the expanse of railroad tracks across the field - tracks that have brought commerce and citizens to Deer Park for more than a century. Berg hopes his church will continue to be a shelter for people in the midst of life’s storms, as it has for a century.

After all, that is how Open Door Church got its name. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, word spread that the church remained unlocked and open to anyone, regardless of circumstance.

“Men traveling the rails knew that if things got really bad, they could always get off at this church,” says Berg.

In a figurative sense, Open Door Church is still unlocked. Berg’s mission is to proclaim the gospel and pray for those who walk through its doors.

“Jesus had a knack for appreciating people, whatever their experience,” Berg says. “We don’t care about differences in denomination, doctrine or lifestyle. We say, `Y’all come.”’