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Sumner's drive-thru church has become city's biggest roadside attraction

Built at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, this drive-thru church still provides a place for prayer and reflection. #k5evening

SUMNER, Wash. — At Calvary Community Church in Sumner, on Easter Saturday, there were clear signs that we are living again in better times.

“We're out here today because we have an egg hunt and so there will be a thousand kids running around here getting candy and celebrating Easter,” said Tami Schmidt, the church’s Director of Communications.

But in the very same field festooned with plastic eggs and candy, there’s a monument to an unsettling time, when the world was in lockdown and people were looking for work arounds to the calls for isolation.

“During COVID we were trying to figure out a way to bring people together,” Schmidt said. “So we're like ‘Let's Build It.’”

Credit: Saint Bryan
The drive-thru church in Sumner was built in 30 days by volunteers

What did they build?  A drive-thru church, perhaps the only one in the world, where people can drive in, pause the day and reflect for as long as they need.

“People that don't even go to church come here and drive through and use this as a place just to get silence which we need in this very loud world,” said Tia Song, who meets with church groups outside the church.

Nearly 20 businesses contributed to its construction, based on plans drawn up by volunteers like Todd Larson and Jacob Loran, who helped build the church in 30 days.

“The plans were on a napkin,” Loran laughed.

“It was incredible to watch people come together and use the gifts that God had given them,” Schmidt said. “It should have probably cost somewhere between 45 and 50 thousand dollars but it cost us 44-hundred dollars.”

Even after the pandemic passed, the drive-thru church has served a purpose. As a backdrop to senior portraits and, in the Summer of 2023, a wedding between Rick and Denise Eakins.

“There was not one thing that went wrong,” the bride said.

“The best part is that we got married,” the groom said.

Times have changed but the original purpose of the drive-thru church remains the same

“Honestly I think it was a leap of faith to do something that was different,” Schmidt said. “It doesn't make any sense but it’s just something really cool to be a part of, that honors God and the community.

KING 5's Evening celebrates the Northwest. Contact us: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Email.

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