
Clover Pass Community Church welcomed new pastor Jake Beaty and his family in October, ushering in fresh life to the congregation.
During a conversation with the Daily News on Nov. 14, Beaty explained how he was led to fill his first pastoral role in a small Alaska church.
Beaty said that in the early 1980s he grew up in Eastern Washington state in an off-grid log house that his parents built above Lake Chelan. They lived there for about seven years, he said.
“Those were my formative years, and I just loved that existence,” Beaty said.
Following that, he lived with his family in Lake Stevens, Washington,and attended junior high and high school there. After graduating from high school, he attended the Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York.
“I learned how to be a sailor, and got a commission in the Naval Reserve and I worked with ammunition ships in the Pacific Ocean for about five years,” he said. “Then I advanced my license with the (U.S.) Coast Guard to captain’s license and so I quit working for (Military Sealift Command) and I volunteered with a Christian humanitarian aid and disaster relief shipping ministry out of Lake Charles, Louisiana,” he said.
Beaty said, “When I was 27 years old, I sailed as the captain of an old World War II-era ship to Israel during the Lebanon war to bring them aid, to take a stand in solidarity.”
Beaty said that he had attended Christian schools in junior high and high school, but in college he noted that he “backslid.”
He recalled that in college “I was living like a sailor in just about all the ways that you can imagine.”
Beaty said that while he was working on the ship when he was just out of college, the purser invited him to lead Bible studies, which Beaty said very much surprised him.
“As I started leading the Bible studies, I discovered that I definitely felt called — it was my life calling,” he said. “I was 22, and so now I’m 46, and it took all these 24 years of experiences, apparently, to be prepared for the ministry.”

From left, Callie, Ana Rose, Jennifer, Sophia, Jake, and Lydia Beaty take a moment for a photo on a trip to the Misty Fjords National Monument. Image courtesy of the Beaty family
Following his tenure as the captain of the ship “Spirit of Grace,” starting when he was 27 years old, Beaty said, he moved back to the Lake Chelan family cabin for about five years.
“I met my Texan wife Jennifer in South America, (who was) running an orphanage,” Beaty said. “And, so I moved to marry her and start our family there, and we adopted the three oldest boys who were in the orphanage that she was running — three Bolivian boys — and had two girls.”
He and his family then moved to Tennessee, Beaty said, and then back to Washington state where they welcomed two more daughters, completing their family of seven children.
The three boys have moved on to their own careers, he said, and their four daughters live with their parents at the Clover Pass church parsonage.
Beaty said that he first heard about Ketchikan when he was preparing to move from the cabin in Washington to South America. He’d been working at a hospital as a materials manager in 2012, and the employee who was hired to replace him had previously worked at Ketchikan’s hospital.
That man told him, Beaty said with a laugh, “Never go to Ketchikan. It’s horrible. He said it rains all the time, he said the houses are dissolving into mush. It’s gray, dreary — you don’t want to be there.”
In 2021, Beaty said he enrolled in Bible college, and became licensed through the Christian and Missionary Alliance, which allowed him to then be eligible to be pastor of a church.
As he looked online for open pastor positions, he saw one that interested him.
“Oh, there’s this neat one, it’s got a nice-sounding name — Clover Pass Community Church,” he recalled thinking.
He selected the link, and saw that it was in Ketchikan, and his first reaction was “Oh, yuck! It’s in Ketchikan!” so he rejected the idea.
He considered several inland Washington state churches, but he said that he kept thinking “I love the water, I really want to be by the water.”
Several months went by, and he was considering a church located in Bellingham, but that one didn’t work out. He said that he was considering seeking a master’s degree to give his resume more heft, but he didn’t really want to return for more schooling. His wife decided to research whether that truly was necessary, and received conflicting answers.
Then, one person whom his wife reached out to mentioned that there was a church seeking a new pastor that would likely welcome him — Clover Pass Community Church.
Beaty said his reaction to that was, “Oh no! This is the sign!”
He said that once he reached out to the Clover Pass staff, “It all came together so quickly.”
It quickly became obvious, Beaty said, that “the fit was just perfect from the very beginning.”
Beaty said that his expectations of Ketchikan were so low following the first description of the city he’d heard, that “this sun that we have here is such a gift. I really see it as I’m not entitled to that sunshine. When I see it, it’s a gift. I just thought it was going to rain all day every day forever, and we get 12 minutes of sun and I’m so excited.”
He said that he feels like all of the moves that his family made were preparation for living in Ketchikan.
“My wife loves it here,” Beaty said. “We love the people. She gets out with the girls, they were hiking — they were kayaking at Ward Lake today — and they get out regularly.”
He said that his daughters really enjoy exploring tidepools on the area’s beaches as well.
Beaty said that his wife Jennifer Beaty had a baking business previously, so is looking forward to providing baked treats for attendees to the Clover Pass Singing Christmas Tree events in December.
Beaty also talked about his vision for the future of Clover Pass church.
“I want to love the people,” he said. “And, I want them to know that they’re loved, and in my research, as I learned more about the church and the congregation, there are some real sad components to their history. There’s some real hard times, and so I feel some tenderness toward them in particular and through experiences that we’ve had in our life and in our family, a tenderness toward people in general who are hurting.
“I want to offer them God’s comfort, but I also want to kind of exhort the church to be serving their community, to have a tight relationship with God, but then also find ways to be a blessing to their neighbors and their coworkers, their family and their friends, and share the news that Jesus is king, and the blessings and expectations that come with that,” Beaty added.
Beaty said that Clover Pass was in its first decades the “movin’ and shakin'” church.
“There are a lot of people who want it to be that again, now,” he said. “And then, part of our church story too, is of loss and pain and brokenness, and we are on the beginning of a restorative journey, and where we’ll be tomorrow is better than we are today, and that’s going to continue to be the story for years and years, I think.”
He added, “Folks can have a chance, now, to join us in the early days and help be part of that growth and that improvement in health, or they can wait a bit and see it happen.”
Beaty said that one thing that he likes about the Missionary Alliance as a denomination is that they are not a “faction — they didn’t break off from some group to start their own group. They began as two separate alliances — the Christian Alliance and the Missionary Alliance, and it was meant to be a place where members of multiple denominations could pool together, in particular, to send out missionaries to get the word out around the planet — to obey the Great Commission.”
Clover Pass Christian Church has several families conducting missionary activities in several countries, including Mexico, Thailand, Senegal, Egypt and Romania, Beaty said.
Beaty said that the Clover Pass Christian Church was founded in November 1974, and will celebrate its 50th anniversary in the spring of 2025.
He said that the last full-time pastor before his arrival left the church in the summer of 2022.
Beaty said that he’s heard, since he’s been pastor of the church, that “there’s new life, there’s new energy, there’s optimism and hope, there’s real growth” in the congregation. He said that right now they’re in a “rebuilding phase.”
His most recent career experiences have given him the skills to bring the church through that phase, he said. As an operations consultant, he was hired to help companies that were struggling and to find solutions that would give them a boost.
“I get to apply some of those experiences here to the church,” he said.
Part of that, he said, simply is the infusion of the youthful vitality that his four daughters, from 5 to 11 years old, have brought to the church’s congregation.
“They just bring this pizzazz and sparkle and fun,” Beaty said.
Beaty said that one goal that he has as he starts his journey as Clover Pass’ new leader is to implement regular dinner meetings with the ministry leadership team coordinators. There are several coordinators leading programs including missions, youth, facilities and music.
“We’ll talk about our ministry areas and challenges that we’re facing, and the victories that we’ve experienced, so we can share with each other those experiences and pray for each other — kind of team-building,” Beaty said.
He said that he’d like to increase community engagement as well, such as the ministry that the church used to have with the crew members on visiting cruise ships.
He also mentioned the church’s program through which congregants visit the Pioneer Home to sing during February and July, and added that he’d like to continue that program.
“We’ve got room to grow” in community outreach programs, Beaty said.
During his tenure at Clover Pass, in his first role as the lead pastor of a congregation, Beaty said there are a few things that have surprised him.
“I’m surprised at how much I love all of the job components that go with being a pastor,” he said. “I’ve always loved preaching and teaching the Bible. I’ve always loved that, and that was the only thing that I wanted to do. I was reluctant, actually, to get into being a pastor, and yet it was kind of like, ‘Well, if I want to preach, I need to be a pastor.'”
He added, “I kind of feel that God has just given me the gift, or it’s like a garment that he’s given me to put on. I care for the people who are attending the church — the struggles that they’re having and the questions that they have, the joys that they want to celebrate. I love getting to know them. I love that part, and I didn’t think that I would like it as much as I do.”
His favorite part of being a pastor, Beaty said, is that it is “just challenging enough, like I have to be praying all the time. It’s too much for me, it’s too important. I’m not sufficiently persuasive, but when I’m praying I’m finding that God is moving. God is answering prayers and doing things that only God can do, and it’s really cool to be in a spot where I’m seeing him move and I can’t take any credit.”
Beaty wrote in a message to the Daily News that Clover Pass Community Church offers “a whole new energy, a spirit of optimism and new life. We’re experiencing a season of spring after a long winter, and it’s good.”
Services at Clover Pass Community Church are held each Sunday at 10:30 a.m., and prayer meetings are held at 7 p.m. on Wednesdays. Youth group meetings are held at 6:30 p.m. every other Monday.
Clover Pass Community Church is located at the corner of North Tongass Highway and North Point Higgins Road.
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