Fifty-seven years after members of the Apostolic Faith had worked together to construct an office building in the heart of downtown Portland, their children and grandchildren worked side by side with other laborers to build a new international headquarters office building in Southeast Portland.
On July 20, 1979, during the annual camp meeting convention, a groundbreaking ceremony was held at the building site located across Fifty-second Avenue from the campground. “The function of this office,” said the General Overseer Loyce Carver, “is to send out to the whole world the product of meetings held here—sermons that are preached and testimonies that are given—that God’s name might be glorified. These are typed and edited, printed, and then distributed into all the world, free of charge. It’s the same Gospel that you hear when you come to a meeting, but we try to put ‘wings’ to it so that it will go everywhere.”
From the first shovel of dirt, members of the local congregation invested long hours of labor in the effort, moving the project through the various phases of construction. Supervised by Elmer Luka, a branch church pastor with construction experience, the crew also included carpenters, electricians, plumbers, painters, brick masons, and other skilled craftsmen from Portland and a number of the organization’s branch churches. Moving day took place on May 19, 1980, just ten months after the project had begun.
The brick exterior of the attractive 20,000 square foot building features tall, narrow windows and is accented by metal trim. The printing department occupies the south end of the building in a one-story area with a high ceiling that allows for maneuvering forklifts and heavy equipment, as well as providing space for storing rolls of paper. The north end of the building is two stories tall, and houses the correspondence office and distribution department, along with huge banks of floor-to-ceiling storage for printed items. A chapel, south of the entrance foyer, provides a place where the staff meets each noon hour to pray for the many prayer requests that come in daily through the mail, email, or by phone.
Inside the building, a staff of more than eighty full-time, part-time, and volunteer workers handles the publishing, correspondence, editorial work, pre-press tasks, and other duties. Methods have changed, but the message they send out is still the same as it was in the beginning: God offers salvation, peace, and hope to all people everywhere.
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