The Community Tested

Fifty years ago, celebrating a half century, the Longview Daily News headlined the city’s ideal: “Longview, advertised far and wide as a ‘clean, moral city’ tried to live up to that claim.” Among the metrics cited by reporter Agnes Staggs was the fact that in 1973 Longview had 29 churches to 11 taverns.

Those first 50 years Longview relied largely on institutions and organizations — houses of worship, houses of beer — for its communal sustenance. Especially in the 1940s and 1950s, people were joiners. There were clubs and associations on virtually every street corner. Folks were churchgoers and conveners. “Correct” behavior and conformity were expected, whether sitting in a pew or sitting at a bar.

Today Longview’s ideas of both individual liberty and of shared community have shifted. People are, for better or worse, more self-sufficient. Women have now entered the workplace in large numbers and family dynamics have changed as a result. People are more independent and transport themselves most places — it’s a town of automobiles — and tailor their own social lives accordingly. Church attendance is down. Divorce rates are up. And Longview’s citizens experience the downside of a more freewheeling, permissive society — addiction, abuse and crime.

This place still tries to be good and to do good. But it’s a changed world with fewer certainties, greater risks, and relentless, disruptive change.

FRANK MORRISON: MINISTERING

At the corner of Broadway and Commerce in Longview, site of the old Korten’s music store, sits a remarkable new gathering place serving contemporary Longview kids. It’s called Ascent, and it represents both an opportunity and a challenge for the community.

The city and county benefit hugely from its teenfriendly recreational spaces, state-of-the-art climbing wall, art studios, and (tucked in discrete office spaces for one-on-one mentoring and counseling) an inspired staff with a relentless spirit of optimism and fellowship. However, the young people and families are here in the first place because they struggle with addiction, domestic violence, mental instability, and disrupted lives.

“We see around 700 kids a month,” said Frank Morrison, a big, burly man on a first-name basis with virtually everyone in sight. “This isn’t clinical — we have another office for the medical side. This is a youth center — we do everything we can to provide them with relationships in a completely natural environment.”

We Want To Meet Our Clients Where They Are At

Morrison saw a need for mental health and substance use services to help address the root causes of homelessness and social dysfunction. Two-thirds of those served by Community House on Broadway, where Morrison is director, were coming from families struggling with addiction.

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In 2015 he founded and now runs CORE Health, an acronym for Community, Opportunity, Resourcefulness, and Empowerment. It’s more than simply a slogan.

Core Health defines itself as a “mental health collective,” providing therapy, medication management, emotional counseling and peer counseling. They’re strict in emphasizing a clean and sober approach and have zero tolerance for continued substance abuse while under care.

“We base this on relationships,” said Morrison. “We want to meet our clients where they are at. A lot of it is just convenience and comfort. We attract people who want to get rid of barriers to their getting well.” As we toured the facility we were struck by the diversity of clients and activities — in one day care room, four babies napped while their mothers met with counselors.

Core Health employs 185 people and has a remarkable success rate, estimating that around 75 percent of those treated for addiction stay recovered and clean. “We talk about calling up people not calling them out,” said Morrison. “When you make therapy convenient, in a positive atmosphere, and reduce the barriers for the clients, you can call people up to live a better life.”

Morrison urges schools, churches and law enforcement

— all sources for referrals

— to get more creative in their approaches to helping troubled youth and families. Their problems are usually deeper than just symptoms, and the CORE Health results speak for themselves.

•••

Going Places

Transit Manager Jim Seeks is a realist. Unlike his counterparts in Seattle or Portland, he’s not measuring success by numbers served, percent occupancy,or cars kept off the road.

“We have a simple mission: providing the ability for people to get to places they need to go.” Seeks and River Cities Transit are in the service business, pure and simple. Although they’d be happy to transport standing-room-only loads of commuters, they’re in business for the solitary senior getting to a crucial doctor’s appointment, the student doing a night class at LCC, those without the luxury of an automobile at their service.

For those critics who see sparse ridership on the big new buses, the answer is simple: what’s the alternative? And isn’t public transportation as vital a public service as water lines, sewers, and electricity? “We have a whole bunch of wonderful services here in Longview. But it’s a big place and it’s not going to do you any good if you can’t get there,” said Seeks.

As Transit manager he’s responsible to a five-member Transit Authority Board, made up of both Kelso and Longview members. Citizens created the Authority by voting a tax on themselves in 1987. A pleasant building in Kelso and sophisticated communications system are vital to their success and their user experience.

Seeks and the Board are continually looking at new ways to perform their public service function, including ondemand service, curbto-curb service, and ride share services that could dispatch smaller vehicles. Seeks, who’s himself driven cabs and buses, knows the vital interdependence between the rides and their riders. “It’s a quality of life issue. Simple as that.”

Institutional Change

Longview has changed substantially since Victoria Freemen directed her son Oliver to take a seat at Kessler School.

The past two generations have seen a remarkable transformation of the American population. The 2020 census hints at this change; the demographics of the Longview Public Schools illustrate it dramatically.

The racial/ethnic breakdown of Longview’s 2020 population is approximately 80 percent white and 20 percent collective minorities (with Hispanic and Latino the largest segment at 10 percent). Now consider the Longview Public Schools enrollment of 6,327 students: Minority enrollment 40 percent, white enrollment 60 percent. And the number of students with free or reduced lunch (one measurement of economic need) is 43.7 percent.

The significance? Like the U.S. population at large (where it is predicted that by 2050 the country will be comprised of more than 50 percent people of color), Longview’s future generations will look considerably different from their forebears.

As in other parts of the country, the “change agents” are our children. The State of Washington school system already has passed 50 percent in minority enrollment. It’s Longview’s education system, charged with shaping that future, that will bear the responsibility to adjust, diversify, and guarantee essential opportunities to all, regardless of differences in origin, economic status, or culture.

The Missionary

The lead pastor at the historic Longview Community Church doesn’t play to type. “I think of my service here more as a missionary might, not an establishment pastor,” said Dave Hendrickson.

This magnificent artifact of Longview’s founding cries out tradition, history, cultural continuity. How many people have worshiped in its pews, married at its altar, sung communal hymns, bowed their heads and prayed together?

Searching for a new pastor took the congregation three years, not nine months as they’d expected.

“We needed a leader who was strong but not overpowering,” said church elder Randy Sundberg, who chaired the search committee. “Someone to lead us into the future.”

It turned out everything the Community Church had going for it — its cavernous sanctuary, its institutional weight, its layers of tradition and nostalgia — suddenly was working against it. “Today God and the church are just not as much part of the culture here — and that’s true all over the place.” said Hendrickson. Church attendance is cratering. Budgets are being slashed. Worst of all, for an institution that feeds the spirit, the life was simply going out of the place. The church was dying, said Hendrickson. “There are people in this city who’ve never even heard of Jesus.” People know very little about what goes on inside church buildings, he added. “With fewer people coming in, we need to reverse that trend, we need more people reaching out.”

Mainstream churches feel these pressures all over the country. In hopes of attracting younger worshipers, some have turned from traditional liturgy to staging Christian rock concerts, complete with booming guitars and amps. The pandemic forced many churchgoers to scale back to stay-at-home zoom services. And many community good works that used to run through the church and its membership —- services to the poor and disadvantaged — are today run by secular non-profits and government agencies.

We can experience God in many ways and places, including traditional pipe organs and choirs, said Hendrickson. He’s an affable man in his mid-forties who’s traveled the path of a multi-cultural missionary, born in Western Pennsylvania, with stops in St. Petersburg, Russia, Charleston, South Carolina, and Sheffield, England, among others. “I don’t consider this building a liability,”he said. “It’s one of many places we can experience the presence of God.”

As Longview Community Church celebrates its own centennial, many of its changes reflect those gaining traction in the society at large: developing a team leadership approach to replace a command and control culture; looking outward at their potential congregants not simply inward serving those already on board; and raising up leaders from within the congregation itself. “Jesus said ‘go and make disciples,’” said Hendrickson, “and there are many, many ways to do that.”

As their centennial slogan suggests, Dave Hendrickson and his staff and elders hope to have it both ways: “Celebrating the Past, Pursuing the Future.”

Hal Calbom is a third generation Longview native and R.A.Long High School graduate. He works in public affairs television and educational publishing. This month he begins his sixth year photographing and writing Columbia River Reader’s People+Place feature. He is co-founder of Columbia River Reader Press. Reach him at hal@halcalbom.com.