Nicole Bales: Everyday People: New pastor has a heart for outreach
Nov. 7—Bethany Free Lutheran Church — one of Astoria's oldest churches — has a new pastor.
Rev. Richard Carr, who joined the church this summer, brings nearly 20 years of experience as a pastor in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Hagerstown, Maryland; and most recently, Tioga, North Dakota.
Carr said that his love for the outdoors made Oregon attractive and that once he visited Astoria, he was sold.
"I loved being close to the ocean," he said. "I loved the woods, the hills, the mountains, but honestly, most importantly, I just felt connected with this congregation and the people."
Carr, who moved to Astoria with his wife and his youngest of five children, said he first realized he wanted to be a pastor when he was a child. While he was in high school, he decided against it, and it wasn't until after joining the U.S. Army that the thought returned.
Carr said he spent a lot of time reading the Bible and felt like God was again leading him to be a pastor.
Over the course of his career, he has taken a special interest in families and pursued further training and certification in marriage enrichment programs and parenting classes. He provides free counseling to couples.
Carr spent nearly a decade in Tioga, a small city that became a mecca for the oil industry. During his time there, he said he did a lot of outreach and helped build a new church.
He said he has a heart for outreach. His goal for Bethany Free Lutheran is to attract more younger families and make the church a welcoming place for children.
So far, Carr has started a sermon for children, which he delivers at the front of the church on Sundays.
Carr said he is also working toward eventually offering a more contemporary worship service for people looking for another style of service and another time other than Sunday morning.
As a drummer with a love for contemporary music, Carr said he would like to be able to bring those elements to the alternative service.
He said the church is also moving forward with plans to build a multipurpose building for the congregation and community on a vacant lot next to the church.
Ultimately, he said he would like the alternative service to take place in that building.
The Uppertown church was given the green light to move ahead with the project by the Planning Commission and City Council last year despite objections by some neighbors. The project also survived an appeal to the state Land Use Board of Appeals.
"The last thing we want to do is to unnecessarily upset our neighbors, and yet at the same time, we understand that change is difficult for everyone," he said. "And we're pretty confident that once this is finished, that it's going to be a real blessing not just for the church, but for the community as a whole."
Carr said he wants the church to be a place that is open to everyone.
He added that Christ teaches people to be the "salt and the light."
"And some churches have kind of isolated themselves and say, 'Well, those are the bad people out there. And we're the good people in here, and we got to keep ourselves separate from that.' And I don't believe that's what God wants us to do. He calls us to be the salt in a light, to be influencers and to positively impact the people around us.
"We do that in a lot of different ways," he said. "We want to be active in the community, getting involved in people's lives and enriching them and helping them and showing them that living as God wants us to live is a very strong benefit and helps to increase, I think, your joy and your contentment in life."
