The church that wouldn’t die

The charred, collapsed building of a Washington church smoldered like a crumbled promise: 16 years of faith and light destroyed in a few hours.  

You couldn’t have guessed how Adventure Community Church would respond after the fire five years ago. The following Sunday, God’s people stood beside the rubble and worshiped the King who always builds his church. 

Five years later, Jesus has again proven himself faithful: Adventure will break ground on a new worship building in March. 

“We’ve kind of called ourselves the church that wouldn’t die,” said pastor Jeff Hansen. 

A team from Cascade Community Church, led by pastor Randy Lawrence and his late wife, Debbie, planted Adventure in 2004. Since then, Hansen said the church has seen God do amazing things even though the congregation has faced several hardships. 

Probably no trial was quite as challenging as the March 2020 fire. The blaze forced Adventure into mediating with an insurance company, seeking town permits, fund-raising and trying to rebuild, all while living through the disruptions of COVID-19. 

“It’s been a long valley we’ve been in,” said Hansen. “[God’s] built resilience in us for five years.” 

The church raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, much from within the congregation. They persevered through architectural planning, design work and building permits. 

Through it all, Adventure never lost a desire to display God’s nature and blessed community in an American mission field. They know the gospel has so much power for people who want to open up about the deep hurts in their lives.  

They’ve even held onto the cross from the original building’s steeple, one of the few objects to survive the flames. Someday, that cross will go in the new building’s lobby, a visual reminder of Christ’s never-ending victory through the church that won’t die. 

“God wants to do something here,” Hansen said. “Adventure Church isn’t going anywhere.” 

Converge Northwest is a movement of churches working to help people meet, know and follow Jesus. We do this by starting and strengthening churches together worldwide. For 170 years we’ve helped churches bring life change to communities in the U.S. and around the world through church planting and multiplication, leadership training and coaching and global missions.