Ministering in Northeast Oregon

Kaye Garver added the Joseph United Methodist Church to her list of ministerial duties in Wallowa County earlier this summer. - Photos/KATY NESBITT

Garver initially moved to Wallowa County to serve as director of the Wallowa Lake Methodist Camp and as lay assigned minister of the United Methodist Church in Wallowa. For many years she had spent the majority of her vacation time from her job at a water treatment plant in Washington volunteering at church camps. Garver had a passion for seeing that kids had the same opportunities she enjoyed as a youth attending camp.

When the water treatment plant closed, Garver was faced with an opportunity to change careers.

“My husband asked, ‘If you could do anything you want, what would it be?’’’ Garver said. “I responded immediately, ‘I’d like to work at a camp.’”

She let it be known at the Oregon Idaho United Methodist Conference headquarters in Portland what she was interested in doing. When she was asked to consider running the camp at Wallowa Lake, her image of Eastern Oregon was the dry fields of the Hermiston area along I-84.

“When I asked my husband what he thought of the job opportunity he said, ‘I love that part of the state!’ By the time we got to Minam on my first visit to the area I thought I might like it here,” Garver said.

The directorship of the Wallowa Lake camp was a contract for four years. As the contract neared its end, Garver was faced with making yet another career change. She considered a call to ordained ministry. An ordained minister in the Methodist Church is placed in a parish and moved from time to time as determined by the bishop.

Garver is one of seven ministers in five generations of her family. Raised as a minister’s daughter she moved every one to four years. When she considered the ordination process, her husband said that he didn’t want to leave Wallowa County, “and I didn’t want to leave him,” Garver said.

A lay assigned minister is assigned to a church or churches but has not attended seminary. One advantage is having more ability to stay in one place. An opportunity arose to cover the United Methodist Church in Elgin as well as serving the church in Wallowa, providing the Garvers an opportunity to stay in Eastern Oregon.

For a year and a half Garver also served as interim chaplain to Eastern Oregon University for the La Grande United Methodist Church.

“I was very sad to leave the position at Eastern,’’ Garver said. “I was just getting to know everyone.”

As of July 1 of this year, Garver splits her time between the churches in Wallowa and Joseph. Having served both Wallowa and Union counties, she describes the differences in the communities.

“In Joseph we have very busy summers with tourists and snowbirds, the part-time residents. During the summer in Wallowa we lose a few parishioners because their jobs take them out of the area seasonally for fires or road construction,’’ Garver said.

“Wallowa is small town with a constant population. Many of the locals have been here for many generations and it is a farming and ranching town. When I first came to Wallowa some parishioners came to church straight from the barn.”

The Wallowa Methodist Church is served by Garver.

“The parishioners in Elgin wanted to help me buy a dress because I dressed conservatively. I told them I dress down so that they would listen to what I say instead of paying attention to my clothes.”

In Joseph with its fluctuating population, congregants attend in anything from their best Sunday clothes to shorts and river sandals. And yet, in all of the churches Garver has served, there is a strong sense of tradition. Many have attended their church all or most of their lives.

Mainline Protestant churches have seen a steady decline in attendance since the mid-1960s. Keeping children and youth active in the church is a focus that many churches are making. There is an ever-increasing competition with sports and other school activities and kids often prefer contemporary music and liturgy. Garver said that a lot of new youth-oriented material is coming available for Methodist churches to help ministers keep their youth interested in coming to church.

After roughly a decade and a wide variety of ministerial duties, Garver has become an integral part of the community. She considers Wallowa County her home and the people she serves her family.