Montana City’s Friendship Baptist Church celebrated 40 years of service to the community this past weekend and looked ahead to many more.
David Klass, with the support of his wife Cathy, founded Baptist Baptist Church on Jan. 12, 1986. They soon held their first service in a rented space in Clancy’s St. John’s Church, with 10 families attending. The congregation grew steadily, prompting a 1987 move to Montana City, several rounds of church expansion/renovations, and in December of 2023 purchase of a Helena house to provide a retreat space for the church’s missionaries.
With roughly 130 regular church attendees, Friendship Baptist has been led by Pastor Nicolas Karthals since Klass’s retirement last June.
“It’s not easy to follow a founding pastor,” Kathals told the congregation as he stood arm in arm with Klass after Sunday’s extended service. “But I am lucky to follow this man of God.”
During a break between services, Janea Karthals, the pastor’s wife, described the spiritual legacy left by her husband’s predecessor as “astonishing.” Klass brushed off such comments, crediting God and his wife for the church’s success.
“It’s not about me,” he said during a phone interview with The Monitor before the event. “We’re talking about how God brought us together.”
Sunday’s events included sermons from both Klass and Karthals, the former reviewing the church’s past and the latter peering into the future. Two parishioners were baptised and welcomed into the church before more than 100 attendees tucked into a delicious spread of homemade barbecue, baked beans, breads, and pies.
Myrna Summers joined Baptist three years after its founding and considered its 40th anniversary a real accomplishment. “It’s such a blessing because of the people we’ve met,” Summers said over a plate piled high with barbecue.
Klass’s daughter, Kjersten Blakeley, became emotional about the day’s celebration. “It’s a wonderful opportunity to celebrate what God has done,” she said.
Blakeley, who has known some of the congregation since she was two years old, looked around the crowded room with teary eyes and said she is “excited to see the life still in” Friendship Baptist as new families join the congregation.
New faces made Sunday’s anniversary all the more meaningful to Karthals. “It was super important to me that our people know where we came from,” he said. “That helps project us where we are going.”
For Karthals, that means continuing a legacy of giving back to the immediate and wider community. During Klass’s tenure, the church gave $2 million to international Baptist missions, according to the Monitor.
Klass fostered a strong passion for missionary work and planned to be one himself before he felt “called” to Montana. Today, Friendship Baptist sponsors over 30 missionaries around the world, while local members recently sponsored initiatives to provide Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas presents to those unable to afford them.
“We want to leave an impression on the Prickly Pear and Helena Valley,” Karthals said, “Because everywhere that Jesus went, all the cities, all the towns, he left an impression.”
That clear mission is deeply inspirational to the members. Every parishioner The Monitor spoke to, from those who have attended since the ‘90s to those who joined within a year, said that Baptist offered them deep spiritual exploration. Many said they’d gone to churches for most of their lives, but often felt that they’d simply been checking a box until they joined Baptist.
Sitting at the end of a table with her friend Rosie Risenberg, Sahar Mosher said she and her husband used to go to church because they felt “it was the right thing to do”, not because they felt inspired. Yet since joining Friendship Baptist three years ago, Mosher and her husband feel they have found their true faith.
She described Friendship Baptist as “a church that has a pastor who is genuinely called and is obedient in serving people, and just loving people for who they are and it’s backed with true biblical teaching.”
Risenberg grew up attending Catholic church, but never took to it. “I just didn’t feel like I belonged. And here, [I felt I belonged] right away,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”
Mosher, similarly, has found something special at Friendship Baptist. “For me, it has been amazing to realize what truth does when you accept it,” she said. “We’ve never had that at another church.”
