Caribou Bible in Soda Springs is changing lives and transforming communities

By Karen Willoughby for UI Connections

SODA SPRINGS, Idaho – Sunday morning attendance at Caribou Bible Church jumped from 50 to 100 in two years.

During the same time period, the church added a “jail ministry, recovery ministry, lunch ministry, church ministry,” Pastor Jeff Uskoski told UI Connections. “You have this huge God and you have us ordinary people.”

“God’s love has poured into our church and people see that,” the pastor continued. “These ministries have begun from people’s wheelhouses. They’ve said, ‘This is my thing. I can’t wait to share it.’”

Caribou Bible Church today attracts as many as 135 people to Sunday morning services, plus 10 to 15 more at the new church started last May in a town of about 900 people 15 miles southwest that never before had an evangelical church.

“The story is all about Jesus changing people’s lives,” Uskoski said. “And as He does so, people are inviting their friends and serving the Lord, and that’s really neat to see.”

As a tri-vocational pastor – Uskoski teaches high school math from algebra 1 to calculus; he also coaches track and baseball – he depends on the congregation leading out as they see ministry opportunities.

“I was so apprehensive about the whole situation,” Uskoski said about being asked in 2021 to serve as pastor when the previous pastor left after 15 years. Uskoski and his wife had led worship at Caribou Bible for 10 years, and he had preached a couple times a year, but he was uneasy about being called “the pastor of the church.” Even today he says he is “pastoring the church,” an action word, a verb, rather than the noun pastor.

“I like teaching God’s Word; I like helping people,” Uskoski said. “But I thought pastors were really special people and I still have shortcomings; I still make mistakes.”

When Uskoski went to the county jail in 2021 to see an inmate after a death in the inmate’s family, the jail commander asked him when he was going to start leading services there. Others in the congregation quickly took over with Bible studies and ministry to the inmates.

A woman joined the church in 2022 with expertise in recovery ministry, and started a group for people dealing with addictions to anger, substance abuse, and more, from the “destructive path of life Jesus wants us to set people free from,” the pastor said.

That same year, a chef and her construction worker husband moved to Soda Springs and joined the church. “She has tremendous experience and even trained in France,” Uskoski said. “She has a passion to feed people and now leads our monthly food fellowship. Another member with a love for feeding high schoolers restarted a long dormant ministry we call ‘Friends feeding Friends,’ which feeds students on Mondays.

“We see now God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things,” Uskoski said. “It’s not that any individual is exceptional. It’s that God is extraordinary. It’s ordinary people pointing to an extraordinary God.

“We preach on God’s Word,” the pastor continued. “All the Southern Baptist things. Gospel-centric. The gospel changes lives. It’s been really neat to see.”

Soda Springs Baptist Church, which started in 1963, limped along for many years. Despite baptisms of 12 people in 1980, and 10 in 1981, worship attendance was 17 in 1986. It grew to 36 in 1994, and stayed in the 40s and 50s until 2016.

No Annual Church Profile (ACP) reports appeared between 2017 and 2021, which was Uskoski’s first year as pastor. By 2022, attendance had grown to 80, and in 2023, one hundred. These days it can be as many as 135, taxing the space available in the stucco building the church owns.

“That first summer the church went from being in the red to black,” Uskoski said. “We went from 35 Sunday mornings to 67 by the end of summer. Now He is really doing a work here.

“We’ve been making changes all along, trying to increase the health of the church,” the pastor continued. “We’re now an elder-led church. We started a ‘Second Sunday Supper,’ an old-fashioned pot luck with the church providing the main course. When you eat together 12 times a year, they become your family.”

Uskoski for the first time in 2023 attended the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, in Anaheim, Calif., that year.

“I didn’t know much about Southern Baptists until then,” said the pastor who came to Caribou Bible from a non-denominational Christian church. “In the Exhibits Hall I found a marriage course, bought it and we’ve seen God use it to redeem marriages.”

Important to Uskoski: being a good example.

“We’re located kitty-corner from the high school,” the pastor said. “Every Monday we – volunteers from the church – feed lunch for any kid who wants to come. At least 25 percent of them do. A majority have never been in another church.

“We love them and feed them and try to let them know love is not conditional. I think that has started to lead us to be like what [NAMB’s] Mark Clifton says: ‘When you love people like Jesus wants you to love, in walking out the gospel, God entrusts you with other things.’ We have seen that happening. We’re feeding up to 80 kids, which takes a lot of work, but the kids and the community notice we’re loving kids unconditionally, and that opens doors.”

On a personal level, Uskoski and his oncology (cancer) nurse wife, Hallie, prioritize their family time. They have “4 kids, 10 to 24. Two of each,” the pastor said, and make Friday their no school or work “family day.”

“When you’re looking at biblical qualifications for elders, they need to take care of their family well and have a good reputation in the community,” Uskoski said. “People tell us, ‘We’ve seen you take care of our parents, and teach and coach our children. It’s given us a platform to share the hope we have in Jesus.”

With that hope front and center, Caribou Bible Church is growing in Eastern Idaho. In cooperation with Salmon Valley Baptist Church, it started Caribou Bible Church-Grace last May. The mission congregation is in Grace, Idaho, about 15 miles southwest of Caribou Soda Springs.

Uskoski preaches in Grace at 2 p.m. Sundays.

“We have several of our church family who live or have friends in Grace and who want to reach their city for the Jesus who has changed their lives,” the pastor said. “It is the first evangelical church of any kind that has opened in Grace and we look forward to seeing what God will do there.”