In the summer of 1997, Pastor Bruce and Kathy Norquist were led by God through a series of divine circumstances, prophetic words, and confirmations through trusted Christian leaders from a variety of different Christian backgrounds to pioneer The Evergreen Church. The Norquist family began holding prayer meetings in their home to seek God about the direction, location, mission, vision, values, and strategies for beginning the church, and to “pray to the Lord of the harvest to send laborers” to help them. Week by week the Lord continued to add individuals to the group that He was calling to be involved with the church, until we had a core of about 40 people who were committed to launching The Evergreen Church. This is a community of genuine, caring people who enjoy worshiping God, growing personally, healing, learning, and helping people of all ages, backgrounds, and cultures in Burien to understand and respond to God’s great grace and love.

One of the first things the Lord clearly led us to do was to affiliate with the Foursquare denomination. This charismatic, interdenominational movement is strong in evangelism, church planting and missions, and provides accountability and support for the pastors and churches.

In February, 1998, the Lord provided a wonderful location for us to launch our church, the former Living Well Lady Health Spa, on 146th Avenuein Burien. The whole congregation and friends from other churches pitched in and helped to remodel the building, using their various talents of painting, decorating, construction work, plumbing, helping, teaching, and music ministry to enable us to begin holding public church services in April, 1998. We met here until January, 1999 when the building was torn down.

From January, 1999 to April, 2003, Glendale Lutheran Church, Neighborhood Life Center, and the Burien Elks graciously offered their facilities to us until we were able to purchase a permanent facility for our church. During the first years, a solid group of people became members, developed relationships with one another, and began to find their places of ministry. We also began participating with a coalition of Burien Churches in the Block Party Outreach at the Strawberry Festival, hosted a community Easter service at the Performing Arts Center, and expanded our small group ministry to include groups for men, working women, young mothers, Chinese Speakers, Native Americans, adult Bible study, Missions, and prayer to build the fellowship and personal care base of the church. We saw quite a few people come to the Lord, and be baptized in water and in the Holy Spirit.

In 1999 and 2000, we sent out Martin and Vanya McCrory to pioneer a church in Durban, South Africa, and Jeff YellowOwl to pioneer a church in Wapato, WA. We also established our mission committee, and sent individuals and teams to minister in several countries and increased our mission support to full time missionaries in 10 countries.

We added the following staff members between 2001- 2005: a half time administrative assistant, a treasurer/facility manager, an associate pastor, and a youth pastor. After much prayer and looking at many sites the church voted to purchase the former “Five Corners Nursery” building at 17700 First Avenue South, on the border between Burien and Normandy Park. Our whole congregation pitched in with their talents and finances to remodel, clean, and supply the equipment to furnish our new permanent church home. We held our first service here at in Burien on Easter of 2003.

We are very excited about the next step in our life as a church. We will continue to focus on involving church members in small groups, missions, benevolence, strong Biblical teaching, Holy Spirit ministry, intercessory prayer, and healing. In the fall of 2003, we united the church to participate in 40 Days of Purpose, a program that helped the whole church to come into unity in finding out how to practically live our lives according to God’s wonderful purposes In the fall of 2004 we hosted our first Alpha Dinner Outreach course, a 10 week introduction to the Christian Faith for people who are seeking truth or curious about Christianity. We are working in unity with other churches in Burien and the SeaTac Metroplex area through prayer, outreach activities, service and benevolence projects to reach people of every age and ethnic group in our community with Christ’s love. We’re seeking to reach more children and young adults and to establish Christians in a Biblical lifestyle, meaningful relationships, and fulfilling service.