A place to call home

Places of worship were as important to frontier families as they remain in today's turbulent times.

From an original three churches established to serve the 203 families of the Matanuska Colony in 1935, the Valley religious community has grown to serve a multitude of faiths with church buildings, regular worship, and other support services.

The oldest church building remaining in regular use by a congregation in the Valley is the United Protestant Presbyterian Church on South Denali Street in Palmer.

According to Pastor Tim Carrick, who co-pastors the United Protestant Church with his wife, Leisa, the original three churches built for the colony were St. Michael's Catholic Church, St. John's Lutheran Church and the United Protestant Church.

Carrick said that 13 different denominations came together to form the United Protestant Church congregation.

"They had enough members for a separate Catholic church and enough for a Lutheran church, so the United Protestant Church was the everything else church," explained Carrick. He said the national Presbyterian organization had both a pastor and mission money to send to Alaska for the young church.

Carrick said the church functioned for years as a community church serving the multidenominational needs of the Valley until about 30 years ago when the population had grown enough to form separate congregations. Although the church is no longer multidenominational, Carrick relates that the congregation has chosen to retain the historic name.

The log-constructed church is also called the "Church of a Thousand Trees."

"When the church was built, you had to pay $50 for a permit to take more than 1,000 trees," says Carrick. And so the original church was built using logs made from just under 1,000 locally-cut trees, avoiding the extra cost.

According to Louise Potter, in her book "Early Days in Wasilla," there was no actual church building in Wasilla between 1917 and 1940. When she published her book in 1963, she listed four churches in Wasilla that had at the time both buildings and ministers and offered regular services. Those were the Presbyterian, the Church of Christ, The Assembly of God, and the Baptist.

Along with the burgeoning population in the Valley over the last decade, the religious community has expanded exponentially to meet the spiritual needs of the residents as well.

Today the Catholic Church, the Orthodox church and most of the major Protestant denominations have one or more well-established, active churches and congregations in both Palmer and Wasilla. There are churches as well in the smaller communities of Houston, Meadow Lakes, Big Lake and Talkeetna.

In addition to the major denominations, Valley residents can choose from a wide range of nondenominational Christian churches that follow charismatic, evangelical, Bible or full Gospel beliefs. At least one of those, the Word of Life International Ministries, conducts services in Russian for its not quite two-year-old congregation of Russian and Ukrainian immigrants, although translation is available for non-Russian speakers who are welcome to attend the services.

Some congregations do not have their own buildings, but hold services in other churches or spaces. For example, The Word of Life currently holds its services in the Church on the Rock on the Parks Highway, and the Mat-Su Native Community Church holds its services in the First Presbyterian Church of Wasilla on Bogard Road.

The Frontiersman's Church Directory, published each Friday, lists up to 50 Valley churches along with their regularly scheduled service times, children's activities, other spiritual and family services, locations and contact information.

Many faiths not having congregations in the Valley, such as Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam, do provide services and other support in Anchorage. For example, appropriate Islamic prayer calendars for both Palmer and Wasilla can be found on the Web at www.islaminalaska.com.

Information, Anchorage locations and contact numbers for these faiths, as well as other Valley churches and Christian centers not listed in the Frontiersman's Church Directory, can be found listed under "churches" in the Yellow Pages of both the Matanuska Telephone Association and the Alaska Communication System directories.

Just as Valley residents have gathered in Mat-Su from widely diverse geographical and cultural backgrounds, the religious organizations in the area have grown and diversified to serve the spiritual needs of this growing population.