Building a Long-Lasting Church for Rural Alaskan Community

VIDEO SCRIPT

Corey Lynch, Samaritan’s Purse
In Alaska, there’s around 250 villages in the middle of nowhere, and they are off the road system. You can only get there by boat or by plane. So Samaritan’s Purse has an objective to build a church or a community center in each one of them.

Franklin Graham, Samaritan’s Purse President
So we’re in Port Ellsworth, where we’ve just finished building the church for Lake Park Bible Community. The team has done an incredible job building this building this quickly.

Luke Wegner, Pastor
For me. It’s like we’ve been working towards this moment. And so right now, it’s a moment of being surreal. There’s just a lot of opportunity with having our own space.

Franklin Graham
We dedicate it to the Lord Jesus Christ, whom God sent to this earth to take our sins.

Luke Wegner
How we were meeting before is we shared a building with ten Tanalian Bible Camp, and in the winter time it worked out well. But then in the summers we wouldn’t have space as a church to meet inside, and so we’d be meeting in an outdoor gym.

Corey Lynch
It’s so easy to build a building that won’t last. It’s very difficult to build a long lasting church for the body of believers in these villages. So that’s our focus.

Russ Richardson, Samaritan’s Purse
Well, Samaritan’s Purse in Alaska chooses to build state of the art buildings that are very energy efficient. They will stand up to anything Alaska throws to it.

Tim Key, Samaritan’s Purse
We built this thing all out of concrete, so we got concrete floors with hydrophonic heating in it.

Russ Richardson
You have over 1.5 million pounds of concrete. The outside is metal clad.

The roof is a very thick standing seam metal roof. The insulation is 16in thick inside the attic. We also chose to use the European tilt and turn windows, the most high tech window on the market today. There’s really no other building like this in Alaska.

Luther Harrison, VP Northern American Ministries, Samaritan’s Purse
For the 29 years I’ve been a part of this ministry, the volunteers have continued to come out and just pour out their hearts.

And every project we do, it’s Christian Evangelical opportunities to go out and be a part of building a church or helping families and being able to share the gospel.

Diane Owens, Volunteer
It’s an opportunity I never thought I’d have. I work at my local church, but this is an opportunity to help go beyond my scope, so I just think it’s a blessing for all the volunteers. So it’s just really great.

Tim
We’ve been very blessed in this community because they’ve taken ownership of this church, and it’s been a huge blessing to us and to our volunteers.

Luke
The doors will always be open to disciple the younger ones. We’ve got a space now to do that. There’s there’s places for for Bible studies to meet. There’s places for for moms to come and let the kids run around.

Honestly, the sky’s the limit as far as what we can use this for. But most certainly it’s it’s for reaching out to both believers and nonbelievers.

Russ
All of these things come together and you see Dedication Day. And it’s just it’s such a depth of love to build a building that can last. Because Alaska will try its best to make all its buildings fall down.

And how do you defeat that?

Franklin
Just pray for Alaska, pray for the churches here that’ll be strong and faithful to present the gospel. That’s what this is all about. And taking the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth. And that means Alaska.

People Interviewed and their Titles
Corey Lynch, Samaritan’s Purse
Franklin Graham, Samaritan’s Purse President
Luke Wegner, Pastor
Russ Richardson, Samaritan’s Purse
Tim Key, Samaritan’s Purse
Luther Harrison, VP Northern American Ministries, Samaritan’s Purse
Diane Owens, Volunteer

Recording Location
Port Alsworth, Alaska

Organization featured in this Story
Samaritans Purse – www.samaritanspurse.org