Native Alaskan’s pastoral journey leads to Fairview  

Shadrach Landry, the pastor at Fairview Community Church, never planned to go into the ministry. A teenager growing up in Alaska, he loved hockey and his lifetime ambition was to be a professional hockey player.

When he told his mother this one evening during his late teen years, she said in her very low, humble voice, “But Shadrach, I always saw you being a pastor.”

He laughed at that. Being a pastor was not even in the picture of how he wanted his life to turn out.

God, however, had other plans.

“Really, when God saved my soul at 19 years old, it was just the beginning of a new start,” Shadrach says.

Shadrach, 31, was born in Salcha, Alaska. He grew up in a very rural area.

He was homeschooled for the majority of his childhood, except for a couple of years of high school at Delta Junction.

Shadrach’s parents were homesteaders and he grew up on a 320-acre farm, way out in the country in the middle of nowhere with four sisters and one brother.

“For the first couple of years we used lamps for lights and we would leave the truck running outside and use it as a generator if we needed electricity,” Shadrach says. “We pumped water from a well. My dad was a logger in his early years and a part-time farmer. We would eventually begin to sell cabbage to the local restaurants and stores.”

In his late teens, Shadrach began to feel a desire to know God better.

“I tried to ignore God’s tugging on my heart for about a year, but I finally realized that I could not resist,” he says. “God would bring about circumstances in my life that caused me to surrender to His will.”

Shadrach left his home in Alaska and moved to Kansas to attend Bible College at Spurgeon College, also known as Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is currently pursuing his bachelor’s degree in Biblical studies.

Shadrach is also a carpenter by trade and currently works for JE Dunn.

His wife, Elizabeth, is a homemaker and also pursuing a college degree in computer science. She helps her parents manage their sushi restaurant in Lansing, KS. Their son, Jeremiah, turned six on Oct. 7.

In 2015-2016, Shadrach served as pastoral intern at Calvary Baptist Church in Leavenworth. KS.

“I look back and see God’s providence along our journey,” says Shadrach, “A journey which has led us to Fairview Community Church where I have officially been the pastor since spring of 2016.”

Shadrach says Fairview’s recent renovation on the church building has brought about  a lot of excitement.

“I’m happy for the congregation, because they have been waiting for this for a long time,” he says.

Shadrach adds that the vision at Fairview Community Church is to glorify Jesus by praying, loving, and growing. It’s a vision that extends beyond the individual to the family and community.

“Someone asked how I would describe Fairview in a few words,” he says. “We are a congregation that loves one another! I’ve attended other churches in the past and each church is distinct, but the people at Fairview truly love in a way that is really cool to see.”