Pastor Dave Beseler
Lead Pastor
Early Life and Family Background
I came to know Christ when I was about five years old. My family was very faithful in serving the Lord and many relatives served as pastors and missionaries.
Youth and Commitment to Christ
I was involved in youth programs throughout high school at which time I fully committed my life to the service of Christ. I attended Bible College in Phoenix, Arizona and it was during my senior year that I met my future bride and wife of now 40 years, Mindy, and together we raised four children.
Education and Early Ministry
After graduating I took a position as youth pastor but soon realized that I needed to pursue a seminary degree if I wanted to serve in greater capacities in the church. I also desired to learn Greek and Hebrew and study the Bible and theology at a deeper, more critical level than I had previously. Mindy had graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in electrical engineering and was employed at a very good career job as an engineer at Motorola. At 23 years old and with a desire to follow the Lord we set out for Portland Oregon, an unknown area to us where we had no friends and no family. We had neither job nor sufficient funds for such an endeavor and so this was a significant test of faith for us but the Lord provided for us all three years. I attended and graduated from Western Conservative Baptist Seminary.
Ministry and Chaplaincy
Through my church ministry experiences while at Western Seminary I grew to greatly enjoy evangelism and discipleship and so I applied for the chaplain position along with many others, most of which were much older and far more experienced, but to my surprise the Lord opened the door and I was hired as the prison chaplain. Soon after I decided to join the National Guard as a chaplain as well. I ended up serving over 20 years as a prison chaplain ministering at five different prisons in both Oregon and Washington states until 2010. I was chaplain for both men and women prisons and served at prisons of all custody levels, minimum to close custody maximum security units. I was blessed to have led hundreds to salvation in Christ and become baptized believers behind bars.
Doctorate and Teaching
In 1997 Washington State Department of Corrections provided a partial scholarship for me to pursue a Doctorate of Ministry at Bethel Theological Seminary which I completed in 2001. In 1997 I was invited to teach at Moody Northwest (Extension school of Moody Bible Institute) in Spokane, Washington and taught several courses through 2003 when regular military deployments made it too problematic to continue as faculty.
Church Planting
In 2008 we sensed the Lord leading to plant a new church in Airway Heights, WA, Crossroads Christian Fellowship. It was a successful plant which I pastored for five years and it continues to be an ongoing and growing church and is now associated with the Evangelical Free Church of America and pastored by my former Air Force chaplain assistant. In 2010 Washington State Department of Corrections closed the prison I was working at and I decided not to take the job away from my friend at a nearby prison, so I decided to leave prison ministry.
Military Chaplaincy
From 2001 until 2014, my service as a reserve chaplain in the Air Force included 9 world-wide deployments in direct support of Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom and home station active duty at Fairchild AFB Spokane, WA. After leaving prison ministry in 2010, I was asked to go on active duty and served at Fairchild AFB and then went to Landstuhl, Germany, serving as a chaplain for three deployments to the Army hospital from 2010 to 2012, ministering to hundreds of warriors who had been wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq. I next had the honor of deploying from 2013 to 2014 to the Afghanistan AOR (Area of Responsibility) to Kyrgyzstan, in direct support of Enduring Freedom for Afghanistan operations. After over 26 years of military chaplaincy, which included about 6 years of active-duty service, and being blessed with numerous and significant awards and decorations, I retired at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
Family and Ministry Support
During all these years, my loving bride Mindy worked for various companies as an electrical engineer. She was generally able to work at home and was also quite busy home-schooling our children. She continued to be active in church ministries such as AWANA and church nursery service (she loves tending babies).
Retirement and New Beginnings
In 2020, when the COVID-19 lock-downs began, Mindy and I began thinking about our retirement. We had been living in an increasingly more populated area west of Spokane and we desired to retire in a more rural area. Specifically, we were looking for a beautiful area where we could enjoy the outdoors, riding our horses, fishing, and most importantly, getting plugged into a local congregation where we could be an asset to the pastor, utilize our gifts for service, and minister to the body of Christ in a small community. The Lord guided us and then opened the door for us to purchase land 15 minutes northwest of Goldendale where we built our retirement home, which we moved into in late October of 2022. The church we were attending was without a pastor and after much prayer, we decided to serve the Lord, answering His call and applying for the pastor position. The church voted us in, and on July 1, 2023, we started our journey with the most loving community of believers we have ever had the joy of serving.