Lincoln Baptist Church welcomes new pastor

The Lincoln Baptist church welcomed a new pastor to town this month with the arrival of Marshal Visger.

Visger comes to Lincoln from Glasgow, where he worked as a Valley County Deputy Sheriff.

"I'd been involved in Southern Baptist for quite some time, and felt the calling of the ministry and I saw Lincoln was looking," he said. "There were very few places I wanted to move to and Lincoln was in the top three."

Visger comes to Lincoln with his wife Katelyn and a 10-month-old Chesapeake. He takes over at the church for Gene Young, who retired in October and moved with his wife Pam back to his home state of Texas.

Despite his desire to come to Lincoln, he said he didn't initially apply for the position when he heard it was open because he thought it would be filled quickly, but when he saw it was still open three months later, he decided to put his name in for the job. When he got a call from church leadership in Helena, he told them this was the place he wanted to be, and he met with them here on his way home from Colville Washington, where he was spending time with family.

A couple weeks later, he came to Lincoln Baptist Church to preach and found himself with a new flock.

Visger, who grew up in Eastern Washington and spent much of his life in Libby, said he comes to the town with an understanding of small town dynamics and the challenges Lincoln faces.

"I know where the economy is, I know where things are, I'm not naive to that. I just want us to be known as a church that really meets the needs and reaches the heart," he said. "I want Lincoln to be glad we're here."

With that in mind, he said they will begin hosting "Common Ground Wednesdays" beginning March 27 to simply bring community members together and to show the church is here to help.

"We're gonna be serving dinner for the community, starting at 5:30 p.m.," he said. "The 27th will be the first one, then it will be every Wednesday at 5:30."

Visger said he'll be handling the cooking duties and joked that it won't be good food, and said people might want to stop at the grocery store and buy a donut or something.

"But I'll do my best," he said.

One thing Visger hopes to do is to begin breaking down some of the barriers that seem to have developed between the different churches over the years.

"Walls and barriers between local churches do no good for anybody. We serve the same God," he said. "I would love to work with any church when it comes to Kingdom building and helping this town. I would be a hypocrite if I didn't."

In addition to Common Ground Wednesdays, the Lincoln Baptist Church will be hosting the Billy Graham Ministries as a community or even valley-wide event on May 4, 11 and 18, from 10 a.m. to noon.

"It's not a Southern Baptist thing. We're just hosting Billy Graham Ministries" Visger said. "It's really Christianity 101; the salvation, who we are, why we need it, who God is, and the ability to share that. Just good biblical doctrine."