First in a series
How does a tall, forever-youthful boy from a tiny Oregon logging town find his way into a suddenly popular Foursquare pulpit in Culver City, following detours into Australia and the South Bay?
Living in a world that instinctively, increasingly, rejects devoting a life to spirituality, this young man who looks as if he is preparing for high school graduation – his – pushed back against other diversions to carve his own creative path.
Attendance has multiplied at 10:30 Sunday services at the Vintage Faith Foursquare Church, Tilden Avenue, on the scenic edge of Tellefson Park, since Pastor Matt Kladnik and his family arrived a year ago last summer.
How dedicated is Pastor (“Call me Matt”) Kladnik?
On a typical Sunday morning, he will arrive at the picturesque setting of his church at 6 a.m. to prepare for the service 4½ hours later.
He smiles often, easily, invites you inside and quickly makes himself accessible.
Born in Salem, he attended school in the logging town of LaGrand. But the Kladniks had to be careful about sending out their laundry, about deciding whether to rent or buy. The family frequently moved. “Every three or four years, like a military family.” It wasn’t really the fault of his father, an athletic trainer for school teams. When a team would suffer through a poor season, the coach would be replaced, bring in his own people, and young Matt’s father had to find a new alliance.
Pastor Kladnik spent a year at Eastern Oregon University just before what has turned out to be his life’s work attracted him.
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Pastor Kladnik, his wife Grace and daughter Polly.
A Pivotal Decision
“I became a Christian at the age of 20,” he says. “I started reevaluating my life, the direction I was going, and I wasn’t sure if that was what I really wanted to do. I was working a dead-end job with men 40, 50 years old. They were doing the exact same thing I was doing at 20. I couldn’t picture myself being there in 30 years.”
The attractive combination of his outgoing (and easygoing) personality and his newly born religious interests drew the future Pastor Kladnik to Youth with a Mission, an agency that dispatches young people about the globe.
“If I had the opportunity to go anywhere,” he said over morning tea at Tanner’s, “I would choose Australia because of its beaches. This was when Australia wasn’t quite as popular as it seems to be now.”
Pastor Kladnik, just the kind of friendly visitor that eagerly friendly Australians like to welcome, was assigned to a teaching hospital. He says his broad two-dimension mission was “educational as well as experiential.
“Here was a chance to gain an education and to apply what we were learning. We did everything from beach cleanups to neighborhood events as well as church work. There were churches that needed preaching, that needed music, and we were there to serve.”
(To be continued)
