PORT ANGELES — Heaven’s messenger played a harmonica.
He sang and strummed a guitar, too.
Busking on the pavement in Victoria, he gathered a small crowd of people who listened and gave him money. A businessman shelled out, as did tourists. So did a woman who looked like a streetwalker.
The Rev. Mike Jones was transfixed. Something about the Bob Dylan-style singer rooted him to the spot. His wife asked what was going on.
“I don’t know,” he told her that day in 1975.
“I don’t know why or what, but I’ve just got to be here.”
Jones, then as now the pastor of Independent Bible Church, was enduring a crisis. After 10 years of ministry, he wanted out, but friends had urged him to delay his decision for a few days.
He sailed across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to puzzle through his feelings.
Jones, 70, recalls wandering away from the singer to a nearby bench and opening his mind.
“Here’s what God put into my heart,” he said last week in his office three floors above Lincoln Street in downtown Port Angeles:
“’What this man is doing for one brief moment is building community. He’s bringing joy and life to them.
“’I put a song into your heart. You should go and sing it.’”
40 years at IBC
Jones in May marked 30 more years as pastor of IBC since that pavement epiphany, a total 40-year stretch that’s roughly eight times the average tenure for a minister in one parish.
He’s never regretted hearing that street performer or singing his own song.
Jones hasn’t spent every day in Port Angeles; he’s ministered and taught in 30 countries, from Africa to Afghanistan to Vietnam and the Philippines.
Yet his dedication to IBC hasn’t flagged.
Port Angeles is far from the coal fields of southern West Virginia where his father and grandfather managed mines and where Jones worked a short stint underground to finance his higher education.
He’d met his future wife, Jan Spoelstra of Forks, at Bob Jones University in South Carolina.
The Joneses arrived in Port Angeles after his four-year stint in the Air Force; service as a youth pastor in Anaheim, Calif.; and seminary studies in Oregon.
The Northwest posed a tall challenge to a Bible Belt-born-and-bred preacher.
Unchurched
About 80 percent of Washington and Oregon residents identified themselves as unchurched when Jones accepted an associate pastor’s position in Port Angeles. (By 2013, a Gallup poll showed 31 percent of Washingtonians and 29 percent of Oregonians called themselves “very religious.”)
“Having come from the South, this was really appealing in the sense there was a need here,” Jones said. “I loved bringing Southern Gospel warmth to this area.
“I found people very receptive to truth and eager to learn and grow.”
Not that a preacher’s lot in life was easy in Port Angeles in 1975.
“They had a very small congregation, maybe 110, but I was the third person on staff,” Jones said.
“They really couldn’t afford me, and proved it by what they paid me,” he joked.
Still, he was able to move his wife and child into their first house.
“This church has been a marvelous caregiver of me and my family,” he said. “It’s a wonderful church to be a part of.”
The Joneses eventually would have three children, now all adults. His two daughters live in Port Angeles. A son lives in Libertyville, Ill., near Chicago.
Nothing but Scripture
Jones is an easy-speaking man, relaxed as he talks about his ministry.
He displays no fiery zeal to a visitor, but an interviewer can’t mistake his depth of faith.
“The outstanding characteristic would be Bible teaching, Gospel, outreach,” he said.
“Sola scriptorum [Latin for “Scripture alone”], strong adherence to that — that’s our guide.
“Salvation through Jesus Christ, God’s grace extended to us, receiving that by faith.”
If Jones has witnessed wonders, parishioners have wrought many of them.
“The joy is watching ordinary people do extraordinary things,” he said.
“I find a greater delight in watching their achievements than anything I’ve personally been able to do.”
Saddened by changes
Jones said he’s seen Port Angeles change since 1975.
“I can remember the days of logging trucks so lined up, you could hardly get around Lake Crescent. I’m not saying those days were better; they were just different,” he said.
One thing he does lament is the loss of family continuity.
“You may raise your family here, but for them to find employment, they probably have to leave the [North Olympic] Peninsula,” he said.
“It’s a great community to have your family grow up in. It’s just sad that’s not true for a lot of families. They’ve had to move away.”
Epidemic drug addiction also grieves him.
“I think probably the drug mindset influence that has come into our community is the biggest impact that’s going on,” he said.
“I think the biggest change that I have seen, culturally — and this would be across the nation — we seem to be losing our moral compass. We’ve become affluent enough that the younger generation are distracted by a lot of adventure, I think.”
Heartache and joy
He’s also shouldered the burdens any small-town pastor bears.
“There are a lot of heartaches,” Jones said, recalling marital breakups, lingering terminal illnesses and the deaths of children.
“There are images that break my heart to this day, of a grown man carrying his 12-year-old daughter with leukemia through the corridor of a hospital.”
Yet the joyful memories outshine the dark ones.
“The personal advantage of being in a smaller community is you get to know a lot of people, and so you can influence others,” Jones said.
“A congregation that is eager for the truth, what a delight that is!
“I cannot think of any better vocation and any better congregation than this one. I have a deep sense of joy.”
Hooked on the feeling
Jones doesn’t explore his faith only in his office in the Upper Room on Lincoln Street or in the church at 116 E. Ahlvers Road.
Sometimes, he gets into his automobile and follows Marine Drive onto Ediz Hook, which shelters Poet Angeles Harbor.
“I go out to the spit and turn my car so I’m away from everything,” he said.
“That’s a wonderful place for me to spend time with God and to be renewed in spirit and purpose.”
Jones also looks to two little objects on his desk that were given him by former IBC pastor and missionary Gordon Gale: a tiny coin (reminiscent of the widow’s mite of the Gospel of Mark) and a small clay pot.
“’Remember, you’re an earthen vessel; you’re not important,’” Jones said Gale told him when he handed him the pot.
“’You hold in you something that’s precious: That’s the spirit of God.’”
Raise a new steeple
Jones wants someday to build a replica of the original Independent Bible Church.
The steepled clapboard building at 502 E. First St. now houses the Serenity House Thrift Store.
And Jones is preparing to transition away from being chief pastor of IBC, preparing it to accept another leader.
“A church can only grow to the length of the shadow of its leadership,” he said.
Jones found the foot of that shadow standing on a Victoria street, strumming and singing and blowing on a blues harp.
“God’s personal invitation to sing a song for him — and I believe he put a song in my heart — I think that has sustained me,” Jones said.
“I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll do that.’”
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
