100 years of service

POST FALLS - Lydia Holland epitomizes what Pleasant View Church is about.

The 102-year-old woman still attends the mountainside church on West Riverview south of Post Falls whenever she can.

So how long has she been going?

"I've been going there since I was 21 - you figure that one out," Holland said, referring to the 81 years she has attended. "If the door was open, I was there."

Holland has the building beat, but just by two years.

The Pentecostal church, formerly a Baptist church, will hold a centennial celebration on Sunday starting with a special service at 10 a.m.

There will be a historical presentation, testimonies from longtime attendees, music by New Anointing and food and fellowship afterward. The public is invited and the address is 19587 W. Riverview Drive.

"We want to celebrate and honor God for 100 years of his faithfulness," said Drew Foster, who has been the pastor for more than five years. "This place has some amazing stories."

The church was founded in 1908 by the Rev. Jesse Millsap and his wife, Mattie, before the building was constructed two years later. Pleasant View, with roots to the 1890s, was its own community with schools (one built in 1910 is being restored), a feed store, general store and other businesses. A cemetery that still has burials is up the hill behind the church.

The Millsaps' great grandson, Jack Millsap, 71, has lived in that area and attended the church his entire life.

"Everybody lived in these hills in them days," said Millsap, a household name in Post Falls that has a loop in the area named after it. "The church has been easy to get to. It's hard to change."

Families donated the land, labor and lumber for the building. Records show only one offering was taken around that time. It was $4.88 with no record as to what it was for.

A bell is still at the front of the church today. The building has been used for Sunday school in recent years and will be used for children's church in the future.

The church was remodeled in the early 1940s and again in the late 1960s. To meet the needs of a growing congregation, a new multi-purpose building was constructed next to the church in 1980.

"It's amazing to be in a place of rich spiritual heritage," Foster said.

Margie Deaver, whose great grandfather Philip Giles helped build the church, has attended the church for 40 years.

"I gave my heart to the Lord and accepted Christ as my savior in that little church when I was 8," she said. "The title of the sermon was "5 minutes until midnight," referring to the second coming of the Lord."

Deaver said the blessing of the Lord and faithful people have kept the rural church going. Roughly 100 attend each week today.

"The people have always been friendly," Deaver said. "There's a lot of love in that church."

Holland said there have been changes over the decades, but the warm, community feel has never left the church.

"We knew everybody and everybody knew us," she said with a smile.