History of Faith Bible Church
In early 1955 the following families joined together as a group to form the “Faith Bible Church”. They began meeting in the home of Lou and Nora May Auge early in 1955. It was September of 1955 that they called their first pastor Reverend Clarence Kutz to conduct his first service.
Lou & Nora May Ague
Ernie & Ethel Hamilton
Otis & Geneva Mast
Joanne & Micky Downing
Al and Lois Oursland
By spring of 1956 the church had grown, and needed to move out of the Auge’s living room and made arrangement to rent the Grange Hall, which was located across from the present high school ( where Denny’s Body Shop is now located). They started looking for property and purchased the lot at the corner of Mahoney and Education Way in March of 1957. Construction began that summer.
The building of the new Church was a sacrifice of time and money. The U.S. Forest Service donated 20,000 board feet of timber for the Church. “Work picnics” were held many evenings and Saturdays so the men could fell the trees and hall the logs to a government reserve sawmill near Libby to be cut into lumber. During construction, workdays were a routine part of the church week. Construction of the church building was done by volunteer labor, as was the parsonage in later years. The church basement was completed and used for the first time on Easter, April 17, 1960.
Several years later the main floor was completed and the first service was held in June of 1967. The church dedication was held on October 30, 1968. The parsonage was completed in 1973.
In 1974, Libby experienced a severe winter flood. There was 5’2” of water and silt in the basement, which necessitated the return to “Work Days” to clean up and redo most of the basement.
Missions has always played an important part of the Ministries of Faith Bible. Beginning with Don Walters, who served in Japan. Bruce and Nina Wakelin working in Venezuela, were supported for 30 years. Dave Scovill was also an early missionary to visit the church from Prairie Bible Institute, Dave and Esther to this day are still supported by Faith Bible Church.
Early baptismal services were held at Troops Lake, between Libby and Troy or in the Fisher River, thereby limiting the services to the summer months. The baptistery was completed in 1978.
In 1967 the children began meeting separately from the adults on Wednesday evenings to have their own Bible study and prayer time. This later became Pioneer Girls and AWANA for the boys. After several years the programs were dropped for a short time and then AWANA was reinstated for both boys and girls, and continues to be a major program in the church today.
The church was founded with a strong conviction of the importance of keeping the Bible the central focus of the church.
“Holding Forth the Word of Life”
“Making Disciples of Jesus Christ”