On a recent Saturday morning, members of the Klondike Community Church were busy vacuuming upholstery, wiping down tables and scrubbing floors to prepare for the 100th anniversary of their church building, the former St. Wenceslaus Church.
On Saturday, the congregation will open its doors to the community for a celebration that will include a free brat fry, tours of the historic, renovated building and a bluegrass concert.
There’s an ample supply of elbow grease in this small but industrious congregation, which has experienced multiple changes and setbacks over the past century. Built in 1915 as a Roman Catholic Church, the building was a community gathering place for generations. Now a nondenominational church, the building sparkles from the care of many volunteer laborers and worshipers.
In 1996, the building was hit by lightning and partially burned. The town of Brazeau Fire Department fought the fire by climbing into the church attic to extinguish it. Repairs were made, and the life of the church went on.
But in 2005, the Catholic diocese closed St. Wenceslaus during a consolidation of parishes, and members began worshiping at St. Anne’s Catholic Church in Coleman.
The Klondike church building sat empty for several years until it was purchased by Don Holtger and his family, who decided to form a new congregation in the building. They cleaned up the building, hired a preacher and invited the neighbors.
Then, just as attendance began to increase, another disaster hit. In March 2012, an arsonist ignited a fire in the church’s sacristy. Once again the Brazeau Fire Department was called. The blaze charred the walls and floor of the sanctuary and destroyed its handmade altar piece, but the building was not lost.
Drew Christensen, a former firefighter from the town of Brazeau, was sentenced to 15 years in prison followed by eight years extended supervision for setting the church fire and other area fires.
Without adequate insurance, but with determined owners and well-wishing volunteers, efforts were made to restore the building. The altar piece alone had to be painstakingly re-created by a local cabinetmaker over nine months.
During the church restoration, the congregation met in an outdoor, open shelter cloaked in thick plastic, even during the winter months.
The Rev. Michael Fletcher, the church’s pastor for the past year, calls the church a “community hub.”
“Many of the folks grew up in this church, literally. Christened here, married here, family funerals here. That’s why it was really a heartbreaker when the fire broke out,” he said. “But by the same token that’s why you saw folks were coming out of the woodwork with donations, time and materials to get this thing back into shape.”
Fletcher, who works full time as a radio announcer and promotions director at WRVM Christian Radio, took the position as the church’s pastor after guest preaching one summer for the congregation of about 25 worshipers.
“I’m still doing my full-time gig at the station, but I’m here as their pastor on Sundays, and we do Bible study on Saturday evenings,” he said. “We’re very small. There’s much that we need to do, and we’re taking slow, deliberate, incremental steps as we grow.”
The anniversary event will include tours of the restored building by Holtger and other members who will share stories and show artifacts from the church’s history.
“This church, going through two fires, shouldn’t even be here, but yet it is,” Fletcher said. “It’s obvious that God wants this church to be here. All of this didn’t happen by accident. We want to bring the neighborhood in. Folks in this community need to be reached.”
