Why Christianity Struggles to Survive in Rural Alaska

“We’re about to get on a small plane. And my dad sent me this article from the NY Times. It says, ‘Flying in Alaska can be difficult. Mountains loom over airports, limiting ability to land safely, sometimes fog rolls in suddenly, obscuring views, and the cold temperatures can also affect the precision of some airplane equipment…’ This is great timing, Dad. Thank you.”

Thousands of miles from the nearest city and home to less than 300 people… sits one of the loneliest towns in the United States: McGrath, Alaska. 

As you can imagine, reaching it is no easy task. There is no road you can drive to McGrath– getting here takes some work.

But it’s not the only town like this. For many remote communities in Alaska, the only way to get there is by plane, snow machine, or even dogsled. And that’s not easy.

There are about 240 remote villages and communities in the state, and about 80% of these villages don’t have a gospel believing church. It’s not only hard to get to these villages and to live there but also to share the gospel and find someone who is willing to pastor a church.

This place is beautiful. But on the other side of that beauty is one of the most unforgiving environments in the world—not just for the people but also for the Church. 

And that’s why I’m here.

So, in a country that’s known to have a church on every street, how are there still parts of the US with little to no gospel presence? And is there any hope for the church to actually survive in Alaska?

Why We’re in Alaska

So, this journey began because of a map we’ve often referenced in other videos we’ve made. It shows places where the gospel is accessible and where it isn’t. And the United States often looks like this. Lots of churches, nice and green. Everything looks great, right?

But what about this corner? It’s not that simple. These maps are generated using a lot of data compounded from an entire country. But that’s hard to visualize in just one color. And sometimes, the details and nuances of smaller regions get painted over.

Some of our viewers, like you, pointed that out.  

And you’re right. And that’s why I’m on a plane to Alaska.

A Short History of Alaska

In 1867, the United States made what many thought was a huge mistake- a $7.2 million mistake when the US purchased Alaska from Russia. That’s about 113 million dollars today. Many thought there was nothing that Alaska could offer, so why spend that much on a useless, far away, cold territory?

Well, in the long run, that purchase ended up making a lot of money for the US.

This is our first stop of the trip. I’m at Crow Creek Gold Mine, a little bit east of Anchorage. People used to come here searching for their chance to strike it big.

You see, the US kinda hit the jackpot with Alaska. The state has an abundance of natural resources, such as petroleum, gold, and fish, making it one of the most lucrative states in the nation.

And because gold was discovered on Alaskan soil, the state had its own gold rush from 1896 to 1899, with about a hundred thousand people coming to Alaska hoping to find their fortune. 

But they weren’t the first people to call Alaska home.

The Darkness of Alaska

About 78% of the population in remote villages consists of Alaskan natives. Some native groups have been there for thousands of years, coming to Alaska from Asia on a land bridge. With their own languages, cultures, and traditions, there are various Alaskan native groups still present today, scattered across the state in different regions.

Their customs and traditions vary from group to group, but they are often rooted in two main values: community and nature. While some aspects of Alaskan native culture have changed due to outside influences and modernization, there’s still an effort to hold onto tradition.

In some native villages, some of these traditions and customs of old are still in practice, like sharing a moose or fish when caught, taking care of elders, and raising kids as a village effort. There’s a sense of real community. You need it to survive.

And surviving Alaska is not easy.

In the northernmost part of Alaska, within the Arctic Circle, some towns will experience up to 66 days of near-total darkness during the winter. Many of these small towns are hundreds of miles away from any sign of civilization, and the people here are, more or less, on their own.

There’s a darkness in Alaska. And I don’t just mean the lack of sunlight.

The suicide rate in Alaska is twice the national rate. Loneliness, depression, sexual abuse, and domestic violence often go untreated and unaided, particularly in remote areas.

To cope with these struggles, people often turn to alcohol or drugs. There’s a great cry for help, and those in need are often left alone in the dark with no help.

Meet Chris Kopp

So, it’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m meeting with Chris Kopp. He’s the discipleship pastor at ChangePoint, a church in Anchorage. Before that, he and his family lived and served in Galena, a remote Alaskan village, where he was the pastor of a local church for more than 12 years. He knows of the struggles of getting the gospel both to the big, busy, and diverse cities and the remote, faraway places in Alaska.

Chris Kopp: So the church in Alaska is pretty diverse. Alaska itself is kind of divided up into two different sections. There’s what we would call the road system and then rural Alaska—road system being places that you can drive, and it’s a very, very small percentage of Alaska that’s accessible by road. 

Most of Alaska is an off-road system. You can only fly there or maybe boat there. And those places are very, very far apart. And so, it’s that kind of a place. It’s that, that rural context, that really makes Alaska, a frontier mission kind of place. There are still communities in Alaska that have never had a gospel believing church planted in them.

And a lot of people when they think of Alaska, obviously, as a state in the United States, and they say, “Well, there’s churches on every corner,” and sure, there are a lot of churches on every corner, but the reality of what we know about Alaska, its demographics is that including the road system population, less than 10% of Alaskans are professing believers. 

And a smaller percentage of that attend a church of any variety. And so when it comes to road system or off-road system, the gospel command to go and make disciples of all nations just simply isn’t done yet.

You may land in one place that is so excited that you’re there and so warm and so inviting, and an opportunity to share the gospel just seems like it comes at every turn. You may also land in another place where, whether they know you’re a Christian or not, you’re an outsider. And so there’s skepticism and fear. 

Some of these things are based upon historical experiences that Alaska Natives have experienced. There were poor examples of missionary endeavors that have been done over the last 100 years, while simultaneously, there have been incredible ministries that have been done by pastors and missionaries serving in these communities. 

The key to rural Alaskan ministry is time and relationship. That equation of enough time and enough relationship to get the kind of gospel work to bear fruit into that community, there is no way to sidestep it. If you subtract time or you subtract relationships but have lots of time, you’re not going to end up with fruit that you’re longing to see.

How Remote Is Remote?

The remote areas of Alaska are known to be part of the “off-road system” of Alaska. About 86%  of the state isn’t accessible by road, which means you have to take a plane, helicopter, boat, or even dogsled to get there.

Forget Amazon’s 2-day shipping here. It takes a lot more work to ship anything around the state, and tricky weather conditions, as well as difficult terrain, can easily delay moving cargo, including food that could spoil or urgently needed medicine and supplies.

One thing is for sure. Alaska is one of the most beautiful places on earth. But it’s also one of the most difficult environments to live in.

Who would even want to move here?

Meet Brad Sturm

This is Brad Sturm. He’s the pastor of McGrath Community Church and is taking the gospel to remote villages of Alaska through One Wilderness Ministries. I wanted to visit him to understand better what life and ministry look like in remote Alaska.

Steven Morales: So how did you guys come to McGrath? What was your connection? How did you even find it on the map?

Brad Sturm: Yeah, it found us. We were at ChangePoint in Anchorage. They were having a missions conference. I was up just investigating short-term missions opportunities, and I met at that missions conference a guy named Grant Funk. He felt like we needed to learn more about what was happening, or maybe even more specifically, what was not happening in the interior of Alaska. It became apparent that there is a substantial need in McGrath for long-term ministry to be done here. 

Steven Morales: What was it like when you first got here? Say, what was McGrath Community Church like in terms of the people when you got here? 

Brad Sturn: Yeah, there was; it was a tight-knit group of families. They were committed to praying for the Lord to provide, provide some leadership. A pastor that would stay. So, yeah, they were in love with the Lord and fellowshipping, but in need of committed, long-term leadership. 

This is where our worship band leads the church in praise of the Lord. This is my Sunday preaching attire. And, and I, I look just like all my brothers and sisters sitting around. We kind of come together, and it’s just, it’s just life together here Sunday morning.

Steven Morales: So it was a like coming of this community then as a pastor?

Brad Sturn: So with regards to this church and the family that was already here, in a real positive way, I kind of describe them as a powder keg. They were just waiting to explode. And when some stability arrived and consistency arrived, the church was just ready to chase after the Lord, to devour his Word, to just grow in unity, in knowledge of him, in passion for engaging our neighbors, and things like that. 

And so, it really just exploded, and it didn’t explode because any one person showed up. It exploded because it was able to experience what God has designed for and intended for his church.

I think one of the things that makes the process of gaining people’s trust go smoother, maybe even faster, is to not have to manufacture fake interest in who someone is, but to legitimately desire to learn about someone, even, even to a degree, become other people. To adopt as your kind of way of living, the culture of the people you’ve decided to live among. 

You reach out to the people who are willing to interact with you and who know the people who are respected in a culture. Here, it’s the town’s elders. It’s people who have grown up in this culture, know it, live it, create to a certain extent, their own culture. Whatever I’m going to do in this community, I want to do it like the community. 

So, I’m going to learn from the community. If they’re burning wood, we burn wood. If they’re going to hunt, I hunt. And if I’m going to hunt, I want to learn from people who hunt and how to hunt. I want this to be my culture.  

Life in the interior of Alaska is a very difficult context for anyone, for the people who have grown up and lived here. There are difficult, very difficult elements to life, especially for people who come to this area and don’t have the tools, resources, and knowledge of locals that the locals do. So there’s the life dynamic to things that make things kind of challenging. 

And then, there is the ministry. Obviously, there’s the ministry side. And walking into a context where you do not have a blank slate, and you walk into a context, and you are handed a history that becomes mine. 

And whether or not I thought like the people or acted like the people or agreed with the people who wrote this history book, it’s now my history, and I have to deal with it. And it’s now my job to break down those misconceptions. 

And then, the reality is, the sad reality is, they may not be misconceptions about the history book and the way things were, even if they are misconceptions about the way things are now and the people that are there now. And so, we have to understand that. We just have to deal with that. We have to be patient and let time pass. 

People are moved by the needs that exist out in, specifically in the interior of Alaska, but more in general contexts like this, cross cultural contexts where it’s extremely rural, and then even isolated, and then tack on top of that, difficult living conditions. And then let’s just go ahead and throw in there a history of baggage and those kinds of misconceptions that one might need to face.

Someone interested in stepping into a role like that needs to have a certain mentality. Someone needs to understand what they’re going into, and they need to, they need to have the tools: the right thought process, the right doctrine, the right convictions in their mind to be able to stand because one of the most harmful things that that we’ve experienced out here is the rapid overturn.

It speaks volumes when followers of Jesus show up in a village with the pretense of being like, I’m here to fix your life’s problems. That’s what that’s kind of how it comes across. And then the difficulty that the society and the culture has been able to handle for generations shows up, and within just a few months, they’re gone, never to be seen again.

What do you have that I need? What do you have that could help me in any way if you can’t even stay with me, let alone help me? And then, when it happens over and over and over again, that lack of consistency ingrains in a society, you people are not worth trusting. 

And that there is going to be a long, drawn-out process, most of the time, in communicating and getting your neighbors to believe the truth that you care, and that you have good news, that you value them, that you can learn from them, that their culture is significant. 

This is not a short-term thing. You cannot come in and build those relationships and break down those misconceptions in a summer. We are told that we are supposed to go to the ends of the earth. And there’s nothing about that phrase that sounds easy. 

Ends are always difficult to reach. And that’s where we’re told to go. To make disciples of all the nations that are precious in the sight of the Creator of all the nations, so that one day all the nations will stand there and sing praises for their Creator.

The Work of Faithful Presence

One thing that stuck with me during my time in McGrath was how many stories I heard of, just doing the hard work of caring for and walking alongside different people through one difficult situation after another, over the course of years… and many of these stories ended with: “and this person still is not a believer… not yet.”

Every disciplemaker is looking at a field of “not yets.” The truth is, there are people who are far from God who aren’t going to start following Jesus just because a missionary shows up.

But they might start listening to the missionaries that stay. The ones that stay with them in the mud and the mire. 

That takes work, it takes resources; it takes time. But most of all, it takes a God who can do the hardest things because they aren’t for him. So, let’s trust him. 

And keep doing the work in his name, so that people from Iran and India, and even the remote areas of the United States—may follow and make known the One most worthy of our praise.