Pastor-musician leaves behind a different life

Ken and Kris Ainsworth were at the top of their games.

They both had great jobs, the pay was higher than either of them thought they’d ever deserve, they were ready to retire soon and had grandkids to enjoy. Besides, Ken’s professional music career had renewed promise.

Leaving it all behind in Everett, Wash., to become pastor of a little church in Coram, Mont., made absolutely no sense.

“So you’ve got to do it,” Ron Sallee, their own pastor, told them.

They knew he was right.

Candidate school and house-selling — steps that usually take three to six months for pastors being sent out through Village Missions, their overseeing organization that’s dedicated to keeping small churches open in rural areas — took the Ainsworths less than two months.

They’ve never regretted the move to Canyon Community Church.

“I have trouble with feeling guilty, because I have it so good here,” said the guy who’s now called Pastor Ken. “I love it here. So, God’s been pretty good to us.”

Both Ken and Kris grew up in the Spokane area, then married 38 years ago while Ken was in the Navy. They settled in Everett where he became a teacher in the 1,100-student Marysville school system and she returned to college to finish her microbiology degree.

He put 22 1/2 years in the classroom before becoming the district’s technology director. She worked her way up through three hospitals, finishing as head of the microbiology lab over 400 doctors in an Everett clinic.

Machias Community Church between Snohomish and Lake Stevens was their home church and Sallee their pastor. Both were deeply involved with the various ministries of Machias, where Ken had a chance to put his professional music experience to a new use.

Sallee, troubled that Village Missions had too few pastors available for its low-paying pastorates because of sizable school debts, started the free Contender’s Bible School. Ken and Kris took those evening classes from 1999 to 2000.

“Then Ron asked, ‘What’s next?’” hinting that perhaps it was time for them to pastor a rural Village Missions church, Ken recalled. But Ken and Kris decided it wasn’t.

So Ken volunteered to teach classes for Contender’s. Sallee started asking him to step in as an interim pastor throughout the state.

“I got a burden for small churches,” Ken said. “Contender’s gave us that passion.”

 In 2001, Ken released his first solo CD filled with songs of faith. His interest in going with Village Missions stirred again; Kris wasn’t ready. Two years later she told him she would go out of obedience; they stayed put. Finally in February 2009, during a drive home from a Bible study, Ken asked if it was time. Kris said she’d go in a heartbeat. Elated at the prospect but aware of the arduous process ahead of them, Ken stayed up until 1 a.m. that night puzzling through the details.

The next six months flew by. They went through an intense application process and on the fifth and final day of candidate school, they correctly answered the key question: “Are you willing to go wherever we send you?”

In two weeks, they raised the required $600 of continuing support. No homes were selling on the market at that time, but theirs sold sight-unseen to a military retiree.

The first week of June they started candidate school.

The fourth day of August they landed in Coram.

Ever since, the congregation and church board have bent over backwards to welcome the Ainsworths to Canyon Community. They anticipate needs before they’re spoken, point out the best cafes, provide friendship for the new kids in town.

“In many ways, Coram is an atypical field,” Ken said of their new home, or “mission field.” “It’s self-supporting, it has been for a long time. And it’s only a half-hour to Kalispell.”

Life as they knew it had changed, letting them focus on their ministry.

A bustling career life was traded for the serenity found at the front door to Glacier National Park.

“Village Missions says ‘We’re sending you to a community, not just a church,’” Ken said. “That’s very important. You can’t just sit and wait for them to come to you.”

So Ken and Kris are bridging the gap between the pews and the streets. Kris volunteers at West Glacier School. They take people to lunch and have coffee with the locals.

They attend school events in Columbia Falls to get to know their neighbors. They visit folks at home.

And they’re finding a lot of great people, they said.

“You just listen,” Ken said. “You have to be patient for sure. You also have to listen to what people are really saying … People will open up to us on their timetable, not ours.”

And the music thing?

“I just chuckle at that,” Ken said. “I didn’t think I would be doing much because others [in the congregation] were already doing that.” But Kris is on the piano and keyboard and Ken is slinging his guitar for church worship quite a lot these days.

As a kid, Ken wanted to be the fourth member of the Kingston Trio. He cut his teeth on the folk tradition. As a college student fresh out of the military, he played six hours a night on weekends at a wine and fondue bar in Moscow, Idaho.

It was a chance for him to try out his own music, tunes colored by the work of Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Paul Simon, Cat Stevens and Phil Kaufmann.

Phil and Denise Kaufmann, already talented musicians themselves, stopped by the fondue bar in 1974 and liked what they heard. In early 1976 the three friends formed Night Whale and began playing across the Pacific Northwest.

But Ainsworth had a young family to support, so in 1978 he accepted the Marysville teaching job and took a break from music.

That same year, the family started attending Machias Community Church and Ken’s song writing took on a new faith-based life.

During the 1980s he stepped back in with Night Whale, driving the 300 miles south to Kaufmann’s new home. At the end of the decade he was invited to join a well-established classic rock band from Seattle, The Rondos.

Both groups kept Ken in music for the next decade, although the nearness of The Rondos’ gigs made them his most frequent choice.

When Denise Kaufmann suggested in 1997 that they head back to the studio to put down some of their old songs before they were too old to sing, the two men bit. What was to have been their own keepsake turned into a CD and another round of performances.

It rekindled Ken’s interest in his folk-rock roots. Today, his CDs reflect those roots and Ken’s matured talent.

Propped on a time-polished wooden bench just inside the door and up the stairs at Canyon Community Church, a cardboard case of CDs holds samples of his releases — “Waterville,” “Machias Morning,” “Can You Believe?” and “There’s Only One.”

Another CD is labeled Canyon Community Church Congregation.

On his “Waterville” CD alone, Ainsworth displays his wide range from a clear tenor to respectable baritone, from the fun romp in “Grandkids are Cool” to the crushing despair of loneliness on the title track. And, although Ainsworth doesn’t list him among his musical influences, there’s a distinct trail of Jim Croce wending its way through the background.

“I don’t set out to write Christian or spiritual,” he said. “That’s where my thoughts are and it comes out … Songs come out of what you’re praying about, what you’re reading about.”

Even their drive into Coram after first touching down at Glacier Park International Airport inspired a tune.

“As I was driving here and came through Bad Rock Canyon, I said, ‘Wow! I’m coming home through Bad Rock Canyon,’” he said. So he put it to music.

Sunday night, he played that and other folk-gospel tunes with his Washington musician pals who traveled here for a Mother’s Day concert at Canyon Community Church.

In one sense, it was their musical hello to this new season of life.

The Ainsworths are in it for the long haul, they said. Village Missions likes that in a pastor; relationships take years to build and churches are built on relationship.

“We’re committed to doing this as long as we can,” Ken said. “We don’t know what the Lord will say. There’s a time when you’ve got to be realistic about the mission of the church.”

“It almost has to be a God thing that you can just close the door on where you’re leaving and just come here,” Kris said.

Ken just nodded: “We have no regrets.”

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com