Oregon Congregation Prepares for Opening in March

BEND, OR (February 17, 2002) - Cascade Covenant Church in central Oregon is off to a good start, with 97 attending the church's second preview service last Sunday.

There were 85 people at the congregation's initial preview service on January 13, according to Alan Petrich, who moved to Bend last June to start the church. A grand opening service is set for Easter Sunday, March 31.

Many church plant situations benefit from the presence of one or more Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC) congregations in the immediate area. Cascade Covenant Church is nearly three hours from the nearest Covenant church, but Petrich says he has felt the support of the denomination and his conference during recent months.

"Covenant pastors were gracious to me and sent me contacts and I had about a dozen people to call when I got there," said Petrich. "David Olson (who directs western church planting ministries for the Department of Church Growth and Evangelism) has given support and came to our preview service. Mark Novak and Don Robinson (the conference's superintendent and associate superintendent respectively) have been great to work with."

The 56-year-old Petrich has a musical background, having taught voice and music history as a professor at Westmont College in Santa Barbara. A native of Ojai, California, Petrich was raised as a Mormon and even took a mission to the Philippines and Hong Kong as a young adult. He fell away from the Mormon Church in his mid-20s while he was a restaurant owner, saying, "I didn't find contentment in religion, in money or in work."

When the restaurant business failed to satisfy him, Petrich turned to the ice cream business - a Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream outlet to be exact. In 1981, he became vice president of the Burlington, Vermont-based company and eventually wrote the company's operations manual. He still considers it one of his favorite memories.

"It was a great experience, but I had no idea it was going to be this big," Petrich said of his experience as vice president. "Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield are wonderful, giving people and their story is incredible. They were high school buddies in upstate New York and they started by writing to the Small Business Administration and getting a pamphlet on how to start an ice cream business."

Petrich left Ben and Jerry's after one year, before the business took off, and returned to southern California. At that point, he says he felt the need for a church experience. When he got to Santa Barbara, he looked through the Yellow Pages and found Montecito Covenant Church. He attended a worship service there a short time later and was led to faith in Jesus Christ on his first visit. He eventually served as director of music. Petrich graduated from Western Seminary in Portland with a Master of Divinity degree 11 years ago. He and wife Lori have two children.

"All of these things have helped me with church planting," Petrich said of his roundabout journey to faith and ministry, "because church planting is all of these entrepreneurial things."

Cascade Covenant is located in a town of 55,000 that has doubled its population in the past 10 years. The congregation meets at High Lakes Elementary School. It originally targeted the 30 to 45-year-old age group, but Petrich said that the initial preview service produced an intergenerational mix. The addition of associate pastor Scott Johnson (a youth pastor from Rocklin, California) has been a blessing to the church plant, Petrich added.

For more information about the church, call Petrich at 541-390-7932.

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